zinc words & images

  • Interim

    I can see my fingers glowing With that particularly human Tone, when each tiny wrinkle and pore Captures the midday sun like the Undulating current of an Ohio Valley Wheatfield. Gold beneath blue Beneath yellow beneath red Beneath silver. A Renaissance Puzzle to be solved only Through that perfect mix of Oil, turpentine, and crushed…

  • True promise

    Lessen the lively way You say, forever. Forever Is not what you think it is.   Burnished steel with oil And old cotton shirts. Buttons On fire when the world ends.   Is it a guidepost or clock, An imperceptible second or The sun’s arc across the sky.   More so fatal reasoning And an…

  • Threaded Through the Air

    On my way home I saw a song or rather I felt a song and saw the man singing it. He was on a street corner bus stop, waiting, mouth open, leaning back for diaphragm’s sake. The sound traveled through my closed window and I turned to look and thought, yes, I feel that way,…

  • Say these words

    Your tongue is coated in gold.   Cradle me in your body And ransom time. You owe It nothing beyond human temper.   Your tongue is a trap, a blackhole, The ebbing of existence in return For fleeing neutrons and waning pulses.   Gold.

  • Late Summer Along the Missouri

    I followed a reed Down to the ground, It’s stoic greenness Leading my hand.   Fibers, like razors, Like all grasses slice The dry parchment of My palm and make a   Blessing of my life. Leaves, embalmed in muck Tangle with the fine hairs Put forth by your will,   Reed. I expect frost…

  • Woven

    ‘I’ve run in the winter With cold feet, brittle ice Sending angled signals Away from me as if The ice beneath me must Warn its brethren.   We are shod in last year’s Season, found by our mothers, Discarded by Autumn, But still something of our own. When the tapestry Of suspended water   Subsides…

  • Musings on a Single Topic #3

    What is a gift? “Lover You Should’ve Come Over” and every single person that covers it. This body, as broken as it is. My magnolia tree and fresh bread and good butter. Mark Rothko. The intersection in front of Mother India, and the beautiful fragrance I can smell while stopped at the red light. The…

  • Invention

    People are capable. Marigolds become brittle. What was worn is new. Fire escapes rain down Particles of soil seeping through the drainage Holes of a city garden. It is in the rust That change comes And in the taut drum Sound. Golden polish buffed With an old t-shirt And ignored by children Looking at clouds.…

  • Filigree

    My heart wants a thing It cannot name. Spreading Among rose bushes and Pushing toward sandstone walls, In a way it is directionless, Yet knows where it goes. Beyond Desire, to be taught by the sky’s Pigment and nurtured by salt Scraped from the ocean’s body. I cannot envision the place it Will come to…

  • Small Sights

    the bricked-up door manages all my visions. before i wake i hear the birds beyond mortar. from the bed with disrupted comfort, they remind me of what needs to be done. perch on. what is missed beyond that tree?