DO NOT CROSS

police tape
snakes its

plastic skin
around the

belly of
a car you

never know
the kind

of night
you’re

in the
jelly from

the jar

THE SMOKING POPE

is a blue hat
full of solitude.

His pantaloons

a blaze
of deeper blue.

In his hands:

the lit fuse.
How funny

to play a cartoon.

Mostly sunny.
Mitre, cap,

crown of linen.

A man to
dip the glam

of sin in.

ADVICE

Think buckshot:
Not the rifle,
but the musket.

Ear-horn of
powder, arm-
deep in black

soot. Think
flint lock
and flash pan.

Muzzle blast.
Hollow point.
Don’t paint

the rounds,
don’t ready
the bayonet.

No aim
is necessary;
nothing is true.

Think percussion
cap. Any metal
as shrapnel.

Any spark as
lightning;
be bottled.

CONVERSATION WITH BALLOON DOG

She remembers well the night they kissed.
I wasn’t always this contortionist,
he told her. Just imagine how it feels
to be tongue-tied and twisted at the heels,
your ears slung low as if you weren’t a fox.
She smirked into her scotch and clinked the rocks.
He lit his Camel like an inquisition—
the inhaled air inflating his position.
It’s not so bad being a dog, he smiled.
After all, even doggies have their style,
do they not? God, he’d wink if he could, the mutt,
she might have thought, or popped his rubber gut.
Yet when the band broke down she dropped a quarter
in the jukebox, let the soft jazz support her,
as if a sax and horn could conquer thirst.
The tension built and built until it burst.
So are you into latex? he finally blurted—
his squeaky skin so kinky she converted.

–from Alien Ekphrasis

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HIKING ALONE

I shimmy out on sandstone and slate rock,
past the soft ledges where the last shrubs

grow. I’ve got my camera, unshuttered and
silent, ready to take back with me whatever

I’ve come here for—sore arms and a sunburn,
blue sky like something new. At the floor

of the canyon far below a stream flows from
nowhere to nothing, from one unseen cavern

to the next. I could think of a fish gazing up
at that quick flash of sky as it passes through

the white froth of the rapids, the silky silver
where the water pools. Oh, I am grey, I could

have him say, personified—moved, even
full of emotion. Oh, my scales are golden-

green—I could give him color just as easily
in the kind God of my imagination before

plunging him back into his comfortable
dark, this eyelet the only opening for miles.

How easy it is to paint epiphany, I think, like
the gaudy sunset now settling above the tree-

line I could call a bruise or a blush, windburn
on a woman’s cheek, though it’s only the

scattering of dust in low light, what one shakes
from a shoe, combs out of stiffened hair.

How easy, too, it would be to slip off this ledge,
to get lost out here, fall asleep on this rock and

let the cold night wake me. I could hold out
on figs and freshwater; I could chew the fibrous

bark off a Joshua tree. I could love the moon
like a mountain lion, stalk shadows, sharpen

sticks. Come morning I’d find the dirt road
and then my car at the end of it. Brush the dust

off my pants. Buckle myself back into habit
with a metal click like the sound of my one hand

clapping for joy—however briefly—at all we
ever wanted: a little darkness to climb out of.

–from American Fractal
first appeared in Confrontation