Wrapped in moss like a layer of new skin
over a third-degree burn, the hills invite us
for a picnic. Rain has washed out the stains..
Wet and moonless, the Japanese maple drips her pigment
onto a desolate, metal halide-lit stretch of road, until
pink-red rivulets parade ostentatiously toward…
It must take a certain manic energy, for an Arctic Tern to travel
25,000 miles a year, over every ocean and near every continent
on Earth, as though there were no borders, no checkpoints, no…
The first time I was called a poet, I took offense,
for poetry is good for nothing: it neither
makes love nor wages war, nor pays the bills.
The moon, cold and pockmarked and hard,
is not dainty.
The moon belches starlight,
has no gender.
You may think it inconsequential that an empty
tube of toothpaste is not, if pressed, empty,
but has more to give of itself. You may prefer
odes to lofty ideas, or nature, or love…
You don’t need to watch the news. Walk the
dog. Lay in the grass. Watch a cloud settle
into evening’s funereal pews. That terror which
lies in wait will be there when you return…
In Guangdon Province a young father rises early
for work at Doubleeagle Industry Limited, where
he operates the plastic-injection molding machine.
It is rote, if loud and dangerous work…
Don’t shoot the rats pillaging dumpsters,
or the man with rat-like eyes and rumpled
suit, who orders they be set ablaze…
I remember coffee-flavored ice cream at the Royal Scoop,
how it made me long to be old enough to drink espresso
like Dad. I remember stepping off the plane into the sweet
humid air, the tissue-paper feel of the Lei around my neck,