The case of a piano holds the precious soundboard

for l.

Waiting for blackberries to fatten and purple.

Waiting while thorns lengthen into strings of numbers.

Telling the whole story to a hole in the dirt next to the hotel hedge.

Images improperly numbered, sliding over each other

making a glossy noise but no smell. Elegant teeth, fingers

splayed over keys. Tattooed abdomen, hard and hairless

as the skin of a thorn. Sexual ice pond.

Waiting for stained fingers.

Waiting while Lucifer falls from the black sky and lands in the brambles.

Looking away while he pisses ice all over the berries.

Numbers as boxes stacked x levels deep.

Messages written in the dust with a pricked finger.

Box cutters that disappear from shelves

and reappear frozen at the bottom of a pond.

Ciphers made from the sand spilled from a boot.

Sleeping tablets, & piano wire unraveling.

Pause in cold orbit to keen the ear.

Waiting for the piano to blackberry and smell like something.

Untitled

for C.

When you were a man

You gave woman a red rock

and with her body

she made it a jewel

When you were a woman

you put a pinch of salt

on man’s tongue

and he swallowed it

Outside Inside Outside

Shoes, coats, and hats scattered through the trees

To the house, the tower with a doorway glowing red,

Always open, smelling big and burnt.

Here the moths are under glass and closets in every room,

Mouse caves, cupboards, and staircases.

Text appears from the beneath the table,

Coddled eggs under the chandelier, greens

Feathering out on a platter, candied lemon rind

In a silver cigarette case. Inside the sugar bowl

A rushing of wind. On the creaking chair one glove

With a lightning bolt sewn into the palm.

The corn husks,

The violet hourglass,

The knitting undone.

A brick thrown through the window lays finished

On the kitchen floor, and out there

The grass gets pricklier down to the ocean,

Where questions are cut in the bubbling sand

The yawning sky and the glass behind.