re-read anna karenina so––
what is it about?
trains, from the cape to
cairo. Dada
died you did so what?
no one dies
like a shoe––
dachau is your fist
who gave you that peaked cap?
that totalitarian
timbre? Hooded eyes as
red as the heart
of the nile where the corpse–– still seditious
bleeds for all your people, dada.
for school-children and fishers-of-men.
to see.

When I was a child a streetlamp
puddled a blotch of mellow gold
and the aurora borealis

a litany for the in-between—
this is the pause
where breath fractures its own bone,
where words snag—
like kelp on red rocks—
unyielding, wet with salt and silence.

I woke up today when the hands met three,
A sudden waft of sadness took over me,
Though just a small thought, I sat in the dark,

The sunflowers that once stood
so proud, and so tall
now droop as if
their heads are too heavy
for their green, sinewy body.

beneath the cobble, my working
shoes shift between
the cracks, sticky sweet
a bird’s breakfast.