zinc words & images

  • Traveler

    The Starry Sky and no-man rest beneath an awning sign. The Milky Way high above and waiting for the tide. Uncover if you will all the structures staired and risen. Leave the air a gaseous object ablaze for those who listen. Crickets stir and play me off toward the turn-down twilight. It’s what I know…

  • Grand Idleness

    The small of her jeans Was something only he noticed The pocket for a quarter Or another small implement of love Her name, typically American Without irony But it was the smell of laurel That made her different 20 patch acid eyes And the thick hair of genetic wonder He composes a letter to her…

  • Means

    are you reminded that you will die soon is it too much to bear that someone young doesn’t need living irrelevance never cracking a spine and watching deep voiced narrators does not qualify opinion or respect those gathered roses died long ago, when muscles could flex and confidence appeared across any vision to you now…

  • What words

    Bespoke sky Dawning leaves Fragrant hue My deeply fickle love Your words are not the honey Of a ballad Emptied thrush of pain You left me wanting Hyperbolic reassurance Not the tuneless voice I hear Coming through the door Silenced with the night Urgent in the morning Fearing dewey light

  • This, Partly

    Metallic sweat pressed your body and personified the heat, giving it the character of desire. Pluck a vein, an artery, one of the nerves that runs from deep inside my neck and down my leg and ricochet like a tuning fork on a steel beam. We’re marked with the pumping blood. My veins let me…

  • Tithing

    the eager man always officiates over the corpses littering the bridal highway lightening his heavenly load burdening the young woman who sees the magazine stand urges herself to abstain from the musical notes pressed so hard against her solarplexus that its breathing becomes her own and the hot sweeping air of its mouth envelopes her…

  • A Song is Not a Song

    All the high notes you loved before are sharp, reverberating in what is left of your brain. This thing takes no advantage only waits to lose space and die, unmasterfully on the loose ground of your foremothers. But, who knows where the cell divides. Scientists know the rna, the chemistry, but the spark of death…

  • Warning

    Sometimes I wonder, Virginia, why you told me the things inside me are transient, that all bodies are drawn to the dark soil. It fills my belly as it filled hers, its testament to misunderstanding and the witness of historic unraveling. Bade me put rocks in my pockets. Lift me to the arched back of…

  • April 30

    The soft touch of breast And the red bell pepper have in common summer, when both are discovered. Do you remember your neighbor when you were 11 And she 13? You could barely stand to look at her. So bright, like standing between the vast expanse of ocean between Honolulu and San Diego and the…

  • April 29

    I could fall asleep with my head bobbing like a novelty. i know it was you who took the branch and left it in my path, it was like you were saying something but also not saying anything. The greatest magic trick ever from the spoiled milk you turned to cheese to the harpsichord shirt…