oh look, iambic pentameter

i wrote some sonnets.


GOING OUT FREQUENTLY TO SEE IF FRIENDS HAVE ARRIVED



1. the nuclear

small hands gathering the overripe fruit,
it liquors itself up in the cellar,
amorous provisions. new dicot shoot
from the pome. an unintentional blur,
maybe hemlock for the tannins, maybe
we divided the heart in threes, the map
thrice overwrought, red as grosbeak baby
dunno if we owe this to fate or hap.
the less swollen demarcations of love
we will drink the red-elderberry wine
an unripe drunk, spoken too soon, shove
this all back down to the cellar, the line
getting a bit too hard to swallow now
or delineate for we are unsure how


2. three-part sink

the tenuous folds fold of the river--
repeating whorls, eddies i can not shirk.
i am peeling potatoes, i shiver
the eye skin off. father is out of work,
we are all growing. knick-knack-paddy-whack,
sleep pasteurized by repetition. ask
for a glass of water. a nostos crack
i never appropriated, a flask
of propolis, what if i never feel
like life amounts to anything profound.
lest i be held responsible, the keel
of the matter: the knife making dull sound
like how i might have to go this alone
the honeybug babe, give a dog a bone.


3. vacant

when the children were swans, everyone found
jesus. like she's a ripe lollipop, like
she's not full grown, soft hair silk, venus mound.
like she still believes in a spring god breeze,
somehow more comforting than anything
we'd ever admit to, not maternal
but we were fathered into this: bless bring
undergirding the kings, plains, paternal.
briefly, the inhuman effort to make
the world a home. pines and pinks, blush toxic
for the step-dad, the wan width, this mandrake
womb-world. her belly bare more anoxic
slowly filled her pockets with stones. sea god,
too young to be fertile, a cygnet nod.

4. papa dear

memory: map of a childhood home.
tiptoeing down the hallway little pit-
pit-pitter patter, arc aspen grove loam.
your symbiosis with your hard sun grit
environment. girdled birch, gestalt trout:
more than a sum of their scales, more than a
sum of rooms, roofs, leaves, knives. they still passed out
mouth-to-mouth. barking up day after day
after seventeen minutes neither had
any air left. of stalling senses, mess
made your sense of space for we writ we had
the anthology of our lives: chirpless
childless, browned triptych of the heart for
day dinner. we will not dishonor or.


5. shotgun wedding

[process rendered unusable]


6. pleasure/not pleasure

[process rendered unavoidable]


7. begotten

dogged ice solstice, harvest orange sapling
moon blindness, recurrent myopia
like a quarry of hunters dappling
the starred sky, swollen cornucopia
waxing pregnant on the horizon. hiss
and spit. how we only see what we want
to see. the one who really lost sight. miss,
memory takes some form other than quant
constellation sound, pray she just born in
sepia-tone roots to inner wood veins
no one would know had we not dug our fin-
gernails in the corky bark. this remains:
birds in the street like fallen crescent moons
i recall blue evenings in thrums, lilts, croons


8. little sister

we owning the land begot to us, oh
daddy dear, we come three-fold and wounded
from the forest of your kingdom, three doe
deer, from your the furled place within your bed-
chamber, your loins, three deer fawns tender and
spectacular bone structured white-
spots we love live you all and full our hand
but the foil distance too weighing, the height
our delicate bones can not bore rich. we
may not be honest but true we spake of
striae, dominions, pencil-marked maps, plea
for sweetbreads, honor. little sister dove
shivers, out of discomfort, she quits us--
a shame, stigmata at once come to suss.


9. unpredictable

[process rendered shameful]