Opening

This bar grew from stone and wood,
russet and cream.
Trees lean on the porch, nonchalant.
I'll take what he's having.
Hear: phrases sung from in-between. 
        	Strange babies, 
        	microphones desirous of lips.

Buddy's car was having trouble, 
brakes like grinding teeth.
Overhearing, someone fixed it 
without saying a thing.

One table collects candles from the others;
they divine in flames reams of words,
faces Midas-oiled.
Without power, the set moves acoustic. 
        	Two inscribe a circle: their voices are caves,
cloisters of scarce-seen motes. Light falls far from here.
Guitars've outgrown us. Drums move inward.

I touch you, in the way it was before language,
and my lungs brachiate into song.

Recommended

Funeral Day in Saint John

Weeping by a fake porthole in the Hilton’s breakfast restaurant I eat seconds of bacon, and thirds My grandfather wouldn’t have minded my breaking kashrut He would have whispered “I won’t tell if you don’t tell about the cheeseburger yesterday,” and chuckled sweetly My mother is at her mother’s place not listening to the sound of the phone ring— sealing saran-wrap around a sponge cake, our Friday night leftovers soggy, teetering in the pan The ocean solution looks like all of us— in bits, floating wisps of white pollution What’s wrong doesn’t drown us We are doing dead man’s float except for grandpa My sister arrives with the breakfast vouchers I get whatever I want before I figure it won’t be out of pocket I would pay for anything today even though I’ve been on boiled beans and rice for weeks had no choices to make about money Her and cousin Jer come back from the buffet with full plates laughing about something Jeremy gets on the phone calling our younger cousins to join us We all eat as much as we can  . . .

dowry

my mother left me four flat rooms three washloads two fivefoot boys one tenfoot man when she went under she took her breasts her rippled hair she left me bonestuck bare they say i have my mother’s mouth they say i have her eyes  . . .