—Like so many fine twigs 
snapped by the rainstorm
that’s sweeping this city today,

Burg, boro, ville, and wood, 
I hate those tiny towns, 
Their obligations. If I needed

In my front yard live three crepe myrtles, crying trees 
We once called them, not the shadiest but soothing
During a break from work in the heat, their cool sweat

She never knew one of us from another, so my brothers and I grew up fighting 
Over our mother’s mind
Like sun-colored suitors in a Greek myth. We were willing

                If done steadily, and with the kind of patience that belies all fear, 
it is indeed possible to walk the plank backward from the doom 
of vanishing

To look at them, you might not think the two men, having spoken briefly 
                and now moving away from each other, as different goals 
                require, have much history, if any, 

The solitary animal walks alone. She has no uterus. She has no bone.
She slithers around dark bars and libraries. She carves
a beautiful girl on the cave wall. She dances with Aurora Borealis,

Under the weather would put one
just about left of the cirrus and right of
the objective correlative,

Dürer’s fame meant he could sometimes pay with
his own woodcut prints and chalk drawings. 
This time, however, borax was partial payment for

Waiting for a deceased friend’s cat to die
is almost unbearable. “This is where you live now,”
I explain. “Please stop crying.” But he is like a widower