THE FORMALITY OF A SPACE CAN BE AN OVERWHELMING BOUNDARY

This being
the closest

I've come
to believing

in ghosts
come to

trying
failing to

refuse one
gust of sudden

spectral
déjà vu

in line
for road sodas

at the La Grange
Circle K

a sunset scenario
end of day

loose suit
sweat

tight shoes
everything turning

a buttered blue
ahead of me

in line
two strangers

singing
in harmony

out on
the blacktop

Sasha shotgun
grief gently

knitting her
air in and out

in the backseat
that freckle

of our eye
asleep

through
all of it

this sight
it enters me

sighs as you would
says cry or do not

of everything
that will be

know there will be
no saving any-

one or thing
eventually

released
then bringing

these scene-
breathed

details with me
back into

my own fair
dose of day

my hand well
cold with cola sweat

I start the car
start to tell Sasha

what I'm filled with
but there is only

so much
cracked insistence

a body can
transfuse

soon
we're in speed's

staid hum
commenting

softly how already
boom box

has become
an aged kenning

and other
minor observations

we think you
might have found

beautiful though
even among them

so many words
turn out to be

dead ends
gone dusky now

and hushed
we stop the car

again for breath
in the wind's

whistling guts
watch

a man leisurely
lobbing

a length of shale
the size of

a serving platter
at an ant pile

an honest
act of murder

practice
though even that

clump he can't
make depart

right
with us

he watches
the surviving

ants crawl out
the dust go up

and around
like some

at-first
antic and

then ever
more gently

wandering swath
the shape less

ghost-like
than like seeing

the air itself
remove its dust

mask
at the moment

it chooses to
suspend

all efforts
to recollect

every last
absented

portion
of its breath

__

YOU ARE FORTUNATE THAT MAYBE

the third-worst
thing

your mother
ever said

to you
was that

you
didn't know

your own
strength

usually
she said this

by way of
looking up

and away
as a little

invisible static
leaked from

her face
it sounded

only remotely
like the clearing

of trees
and brush from

the side
of this

highway
by several

large machines
seen from

far-enough
off their gaunt

yellow and
mechanical un-

gainliness
seems less

interesting
only than

the raw red
clay of

the ground
they gouge

and gouge and
gouge

or the little
bird-like

spurts
of smoke

they send
piping

into the air
the way

those tendrils
disperse

makes a dark
pairing

with what
your lungs

in the car's
still-visible

cold air expel
sounding

your own
half-hearted

tsk at
the work

the earth there
is being

put to
that sense

that
long-term

even improv-
ement is

a ruin
while

your child
in the backseat

asleep and still
unsure

of you
amid these

sounds
seemingly

at nothing
cries once

hard
enough for

your body
to demon-

strate to
itself

what any
animal knows

that that
throat you

must keep
safe while

all others
you must

if need be
with

your own
teeth

shatter
and that

in time
despite

yourself
you will be

capable
of neither

__

WHEN ASKED WHAT HE WISHED HAD KILLED HIM HE SAID THE WORD VERMILION

Opening the door
to my home

to find my car's
hood's become

a haven for crows
the sun rising

up providence's
crest pulling at

my eyebrows
casually casually

shooing the creatures'
singing beaks

and wings from
the dried speckling

of their night's
roost work I had

just a minute ago
been eating oatmeal

thinking the phrase
weeping comfortably

in one's oatmeal
was something

you might like
like stepping on

the beheaded left-
overs of someone's

flowerbed or how
the sun bled

through the iced
windshield in

the days of
Chubby Checker

stuck in the auto-
reversing tape

deck outside
the peony fields

now this every
detail listing

toward a dis-
comfiting intimate

ferocity the bon-
homie of my hand

become a daddy
long legs

or harvestman
to use the name

you for them
preferred proving

your shoulder
made an inviting

haven for damage
just before

drawing a door
on the air and

stepping through
it becoming

so confidently
and irretrievably

vacant you said
how easy it was

for recorded
music to be

piteous or did you
say precious be it

Art of Fugue or
Art of Noise

all you had
to do was hear

it fall from a car
door half a block

away while
sweating and

drained it gets
so tinny so

cloying that way
it was galling

magnificent
and hard to

argue with all
your claims

of specialized
knowledge

regarding sound
loneliness etc.

how you
found it all

wanting
and wanted

regardless
how once

when the talk
waned you

pointed to some
birds saying

they had started
following

you around
well I am here

to report this
morning birds

in such numbers
they could

follow anyone
they wished

these days
these days

it's becoming
common anyone

knows mere air
can fill with

vague imperiled
traces that it is

best to go
like everything's

a graveyard
your passing

that is to say
to proceed

humming
softly where

of a sudden
the shadows

get quiet
as they have

been gray
and beckon

__

These poems, and a few others like them, were written in a fairly short span of time. I'd been working on other poems of longer line lengths, poems where the line, complete, usually end-stopped, and dictated by breath and utterance, was a structural emphasis. In working on those poems, whenever I was stuck about or dissatisfied with line lengths, I would break the lines down to phrases, words, sometimes syllables, and the build them back up until the lines made sense to me as full, discrete units. That practice has extended into most of my writing. It's a way of pacing myself and what I'm seeing/proceeding through. As I started working on these particular poems, I found myself preferring the more chopped, halting phrasings that appeared as a result of narrowing the lines. This is nothing revolutionary, but it was instructive to me to experience the tensions available within the text when the breath was interrupted, when grammatical sense was torqued or confused. Those tensions of line, breath, and grammar felt related to the way the poems circle mortality and the tensions revealed in sorrow.