Your Octopus Heart

In the rush toward spring
your octopus heart
tires quickly.

Guests spy on you
over a neatly placed
centerpiece.

You’ve chosen burnt umber
umbrels and tatted
Queen Anne’s Lace.

Dinner chat turns to seasons.
Your octopus heart
tires quickly.

[RK, 2/8/21]


Yet Another Winter (after Pinching Weeds)

Those weeds sprout in your dreams
and fill pouches with pollen and
yellow composites.

Flip-flop between what is expected
and what you thought
you wanted.

[RK, 2/8/2021]


Full Moon Burning Ritual

A setting moon lights
the garden wall.

A rising moon frackles
in bare tree branches.

Going up or down
takes on new meaning.

“I will let go” becomes
“I am letting go.”

[RK, 2/8/21]


New Moon Burning Ritual

No bucolic names
for that which is unseen.

Look up, redeem
your lost faith.

[RK, 2/8/21]


The X-Ray Possibilities of Fig #5

Have you considered tomography as opposed to geography?
Look in instead of on. That lead shield is just a shield.
Every shield eventually yields.

Have you considered psychology instead of sibilant undertones?
Co-dependency is so 1980s. Put those pruning shears and
cross-country skis to good use.

Have you considered how round stones look like dinosaur eggs?
Your guests cannot tell the difference. Consider shirring them
into breakfast or picnic crêpes.

Have you considered the side effects of your X-ray vision?
More noise is added to the therapy file. Blueberries and
fallen trees call your name aloud.

[RK, 2/8/21]

Writing Crop Circles

This was difficult in the Midwest
where small, irregular quadrilaterals
defined the agriculture we knew.

Was it any different during your
little house on the prairie decades?

My southwest mountain sojourns
missed the huge desert whorls of
alfalfa, lettuce, and cotton.

I made toxic notes to that effect
in coded language I no longer understand.

Now we go down to ocean shores
where crop circles reinvent themselves
and pulse in fractal waves.

Observers will claim indifference.
We know better.

[RK, 2/7/21]


Partial New Me

All the bottle caps I collected as a child.
All the book clubs I belonged to as a pre-teen.
All the movies I recorded on videotapes from broadcast TV.
All the scratchy library Mozart albums I copied onto cassette tapes.
All the documents I saved on floppy disks.
All the leases, cars, and furniture.
All the friendships and posturing.
All the organic honey and glorious weeds.
All the memorized light and sound.
All the winter constellations.
All the photo albums.

Documented, filed, unfiled, deactivated.
Clean slates, new leaves.
The imagined escape and
watered down revisions.

The upshot shot through with shots.
Blank, blank, blank.

[RK, 2/7/21]


Bad Invalid

WON’T recline or rest
WON’T admit temporary defeat
WON’T allow the milk to curdle

WILL slam a book to the floor
WILL intentionally crush weeds
WILL tear up unsent letters

[RK, 2/7/21]

Coronavirus #4

People are coming down the trail.
Put on the mask.

Alone, take off the mask.
Alone.

Supermarket crowd deserving of
two masks.

Alone, kitchen board games,
comfort food.

Laundry, white cotton,
the perfect clothesline, and
crisp February breeze.

[RK, 2/7/21]

Asemia Epiphany

The illiterate broken dish,
eroded seashell, pencil stub.

The garden slug, pitchfork,
fascicles of firewood.

Like Na'ashjé'íí Asdzáá, the thread unspools
from your hand and runs away.

Caught, you feed the sewing machine.
Language takes hold of your intent.

[RK, 2/7/21]

World’s Largest Ball of String Reconsidered

The life lines of marionettes,
unhinged and predictable.

Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos
laugh into their espressos.

[RK, 2/7/21]

How Can You? (after Sleepwalker)

The summer light, just so,
but which way was North?
Insignificant scars collected in childhood,
their meaning ultimately forgotten.

You memorized song lyrics.
They return, lead you from the bed.
Your capable footsteps
keep rhythm with musical hooks.

Are you certain you are awake?
Awkward dreams fill to capacity
with memories so gray
they appear stolen.

[RK, 2/7/21]


An Explanation of Why Moving Forward is Impossible

Don’t you miss creating 
the sunrises and the eclipses?
Don’t you miss tattooing 
your own skin? 
I reach back and pull rabbits
from my portfolio. The punters
are not amused. In fact, they are
incoherent, nonplussed, and bored.

What could you possibly 
be doing right now? 
I can only imagine.
I’m drawing circles that look like
the flip side of a top hat. Inside
are those fast paced animals
I used to fuel my intentions.

Maybe it takes that long 
to bleach away the old 
designs, the symbols that 
no longer pertain,
to erase the transcripts  
of mountains of mistakes.
It is an awkward thing, to constantly
burn memories on scraps of paper
absolving one’s self of complicity
in the production of abstract thoughts.
You once told me, “Words mean everything.”
I only partly believed you.
I thought the brushwork holy
as waterfalls and gravity.

Whatever your story, 
I am waiting.  
This is a fraction
of the story.

[RK/LSS, 2/7/21]

The Symbols that No Longer Pertain

the tarot reading
the wheel of fortune
the clover leaf
the gold ring
the homestead exemption
the courthouse license
the engraved invitation
the belief in cause and effect
the indemnity clause
the living will
the power of attorney
the engraved stone

[RK, 2/7/21]


The Wheel

barrel hoops bind
baritones chime

a pushpin pushed
into a spare tire

tuned aeolian harps
lack codas

solicitation burnishes
this archetypal circle

[RK, 2/7/21]

Failing the Multiple Choice Exam

The correct answer 

has it own agenda 

and will write itself—

or not— 

some time after 

the test is over.

[LSS, 2/7/21]

Feng Shui

The icon on the weather app

suggested sunshine this morning,

but the afternoon sky is still

quibbling with me 

over  the perfect arrangement 

of clouds.

[LSS, 2/6/21]

Crisscross

One sincerely curious eye,

one eye cynically certain—

your balance momentarily perfect—

until the dancing bear 

drops its ball and you 

watch it roll into 

opposite corners.

[LSS, 2/6/21]

The Kindness of Prepositions 

Light 

on the horizon.

No horizon 

in sight.

Seeds simmering 

in pots 

under artificial light.

[LSS, 2/5/21]

You Wake Up in the Cloud Quarry

and find yourself already 

inside the first explosion

inside the rubble and dust

inside the day expanding

inside an eggshell sky.

[LSS, 2/4/21]