Haiku Reviews

beside the boardwalk

feral piglets

obscured by wild fennel

I set fire to my used tissues, godding

(“to god,” transitive verb)

smoldering spineless cranes

Signs on county road lawns

and in financial district windows

realize the horror Halloween suggests.

Bare walls again.

We’ve hung larger frames

with lesser nails.

the puddle grows

at the end of the driveway

equal parts carsoap and marchfly

I can play silence

in the key of flame

crashing into wick.

The arc of the moral universe

is dripping down my chin.

I’m blind to ends.

A barber snipping air.

A grillmaster flipping smoke.

stranded clouds

and the cricket static signal

the summer shorting-out

Oh, carpentered heart,

full of Müller-Lyer arrows

and Cupid splinters.

Batteries pass

between Walkman and Gameboy.

Report suspicious baggage.

My computer counts

its own bytes. I guess

it’s honest with itself.

Why, when I wish us well,

does it sound like I’m speaking

of houseplants?

something in the

air chases cattle

‘neath the elm

I wish I had taught

the algorithm better.

Now it teaches me.

And yet we

accumulate elders. High humidity,

no rain.

You want to believe

you can record a moment

not already paused and posing.

We owe ourselves a

ballad. Verse upon verse with

an insistent plot.

We owe ourselves a

ballad with choruses we

don’t already know.

The venter of love

is a threat. A canopy under

which I’m dared to walk.

Radio versus

the unrelenting glare of

Grief the Mutator

when squirrel chatter bleeds

into rocking chair creak, I

recollect delinquent gods

The moths of all time

fill the sky at once, and we

insist that was then.

I, too, have many

aunts, and some distant cousin

added okra to me.

Been busy in my

other future — long walks, still,

but nearer to you.

Take our taxes, take

arms against us. But we have

hands and history.

Fresh from the Frog, it’s

an all-new Gilmore Girls! Can

Rory face the void?

like eye under lid,

paused before a warm wall, we

mime instead of rest

if only i had

given up dreams and hobbies

a little slower

set free with nothing

to do besides believe in

hand plus soap plus hand

Careen through rivers

alluvium, past that dock

you dreamed, dockless kid.

you sure raise your risk

for someone who hates fate for

having favorites

not knowing what it’s

like to not be chased, I

might not slow to mourn

you can’t start a duel

without a glove; my doubts would

kill for that much style

Our clothing is wrong

and houses are clothing now.

Stay away, undress.

an adult

visitor

trespasser from birth

Will fall follow once

we’ve been swallowed by the snake

that ate our summer?

Could get by broken

until you slipped like a syll-

able from mem’ry

SHOW ME MAGIC: a

wizard weaving safety from

my lizard synapse

Born a pepita

and paid in pumpkins, ‘course I

thought wages were fate

Stuck in a pose you

learned from “Yoga for Mourning

Carrie Fisher.”

You told me, purpling,

“I am the Moscow of pain.”

Meaning what? You’ve won?

if shrugs were lightning

and thunder were an eye roll,

i’d leave you droughtless

build and burn at once,

I’ve learned in my career as

a boom carpenter

what left my chest I’d

clenched desperately like oak

under grip of squirrel

stories have been told

over the course of the word

“go,” so please talk slow

After the decade we’ve

had—how not to ooze gnat and

oleaginy?

you had something sharp

to play once, but now you’re caught

throwing rock paper

Left my tadpole ass

behind: a gift for science

for posterity.

you must’ve witnessed

me mock the sound of you when

you are wuthering