TRIPPED CIRCUITRY
trigger ripened spring this rain
runs rust into gutter murk
molded riverlike. parallel
resistors underhand under
order enduring this tinkering
tapering watermouthed sound
dripping terminal at daylight
braced against the flimsier
wrist. what gives?
reflection in some varnished
mailbox after cereal steeped
to glop cradled inside
a toddler’s spoon.
for these highest holy hours
i decorate my father’s
plumbing with citron
curlswerved into my man
made lake dreaming of the
silfra of regretful restoration
projects in my childhood
suburban conversion
polar coordinates that
would have made it all
easier it’s been said.
father raps a fist against
my sternum to remember
i’m still his here.
a robin swollenbreasted
chirps into our chimney.
reared into familiar
distraction raked into our
unlockable restroom
i did not think to rehearse
this did not clear the counter’s residue
until it had hardened.
another crippled spring
wrinkles into arthritic summer.
CURIOSITY DELAY
Consistent with this inheritance
of habits, the sputtering of my
knees wakes me when the sun
is wantonly tonguing its horizon.
Demure asphalt’s dew turns to a
haze, rusting streetlamps seeming
to evaporate as if a gaping freezer,
just for a few timeframes, before
the city turns them off. Against
some judgement of maturity, I
imagine a mole underground,
opposite grainy guardrails,
upset by the reality of employment,
kneading eyes and solidifying out
from sheets to flick the switch.
Decorating eyelashes with steam,
I recoil at cold, droop at procedure.
I go downstairs to be welcomed
by my mother in her dry kitchen,
near-drowned in silk pajamas dined
on by a decade of moths. Her fist
domesticates a Japanese meat
cleaver as she speaks, without
turning to face me. I must
decide if I have heard her voice,
only, or my name, or a declaration
of her lilacs’ durability in the
garden out back. Or perhaps
something else, unworded
and confidential in that
unavailing way, that will adhere
to skin until, in peripheral sight,