Playing becomes a problem within a problem.

North of a bottle cap lay Samarqand
With pocketknives we divvied up the spoils.

He never flies except toward spilling blood.

The doll will crumble if I leave her at the door. Already,
ash powders her hair. At night, we call our solitudes
equal, one as still as milk in a dish, the other gentle

The sun too is a taken thing. Across an ocean,
a man’s sister does not speak,
leaving this voice to fill for everything lost.

                                                                                The rough skin,
hair coarse as thick hemp, begins to feel like the cracking
in spring but still somehow retains its weight as armor.

There is no death in the sun. I know it will look far otherwise

     The tracks run side by side, like bathers’ prints
     in damp sand at ocean’s edge,

   Even as Shaman stroked her womb
   with the tip of his thaumaturgic wand,

Dull skies descended to empty hilltops
and ordinary seabirds paddled towards
the opposite bank of a glimmerless river.