The name Glennis Dickhouse
surfaces.

She was married
to a test pilot

who was faster
than the speed of sound.

There are two leafless
trees in Paul Klee’s

“Beginning of a Poem”
and they’re

what I think of
when I think of us.

Somebody’s trending,
and he’s not

a sex criminal
or dead.

Maybe it’s
his birthday,

or maybe
he won a fucking prize.

The blackbird
must be out of its mind.

I’ve gone home sick
to write a poem.

1. Don’t try not to think; you’re better confused.


2. Turn everything off except for the space heater and the lamp.


3. Listen for what sounds interesting. Look for figures that seem to want to be.


4. Voice is a term intended to fuck with you.


5. The ugly is ugly and valid, as is the truth (whatever that means anymore).


6. You see Ronald Johnson’s “Beam 18”; you know something about hands.


7. The Spider as an Artist / Has never been employed –


8. Keep thinking about dogs.


9. Everything has already been written. You get it. Fine.


10. How it feels to wake up in Laramie and go to sleep in Brooklyn.

a world,
somewhere
before first heard,

it’s all I can do
to hold in
mind

the
shadow
of a cloud
on a mountain.

Rare, the days
I’m talked with,
rather than at or to.

It seems I’m present
only to be
made use of.

Amid estimates
of attrition,
my body’s

more shadow
than human, more money
than shadow.

It’s impossible
to say where,
if anywhere,

I am. Which is
to say I’m
not available.

A bird
seems to have

passed through
the impasto

with cream-
colored screams

and bitter
claw-marks.

You wave at me on your way to the beach.

I clap my hands and kill a mosquito.