YesYes

From Time to Time
by the Skin of Your Face

Things past tumble back, thoughts gather
thoughts: dreadnaught, thickset, a roman
candle. It is a bedroom that wants
a southern addition; it swelters and finds
license. Idle hands, young shoulder, sweat lines
from neck to back, a father stitching
a wound in his arm before it can finish
what it was saying about the godseat. Or was it
the goblet? Numinous iota, I dare you. Race
to the pilings and back. Like ants bearing mint
across a white counter, it is too much
of a good thing. Nostalgia, the distance a sigh
travels before reaching its source. A torment
disguised as reverie. It is written on the side
of my skull. Did I have a twin? I had notions
that part of me grew toward the earth. originally published in Cutbank Review

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Put Right One Might Say
It Was Your Own Fault

Plucked out of marl and mud, patched up and paraded; parading, as seabirds on dry land, palpable indecision. Like gnats, thoughts came forward often, to nag often or pretend to be holy. Untied elephants. Then a shrieking like a mandrake, asking, who unto me do I deem my boss? Who with golden surmise? To make disorder but to show stability, the goal was always to diminish and hit right, then retreat, advance, break again what they support. So in the branches in your skin, they went looking for you. In place of your eyes they found foxholes and hoary days. Or was it prowling anticipation that tied me up in this tree?

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