Collective Poem

ONE

the moon rises naked with
transplendent vulnerability conjured by
the harpstring boughs and the whistle of
the November bluster—the clouds muffle
the moon’s moaning.

TWO

the way thy blood spouts from
the stretched-out ear is as a barrage
of i love yous capitulating over
the roundabout fluctuation spent
through times’s virginal body.

THREE

broken down, cautious breath details
an aching prostate, a spot on a lung
and a clogged left ventricle—
the tar disrupts the blue-blood
and the way it forks, the way it contends.

FOUR

broke lips are deferential to
a congregation, deadly to a white wedding
as the bride falls from blaring church towers
into the hymns—into the gospel
where Mary weeps and hides.

FIVE

two peaches, six plums
and a handful of raspberries in the satchel
of a wanderer who uses his tongue
to navigate the sagging ground,
the temperate infinite plains.

SIX

on words and on images we suffer
in the rooted demise of vertical splendor—
all along the odes are exposed
to the lightning storm
and to adoration’s doting fingers

SEVEN

a dean man; a treasure hunt
kissing up to lifeboats in the salt
dug up in Utah (where salt declares itself
emeralds, birthstones,
locked into a peasant’s wedding ring).

EIGHT

my mother cooked rice in a black pan
and underneath the grains tomatoes
stew in chicken broth: underneath her flesh
my brother stews in fluid
in my mother’s frying pan

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