Sun shines
People forget
The spray flies, speedboat glides
People forget
Girls smile... people forget
The snow packs, the skier tracks
People forget
They forget they're hiding


Keith Sonnier, Motordom, 2005, Neon, Argon & Fluorescent Light

Lost Sonnet
-- by John Ashbery

They grow up too fast
these days. Unassumingness
becomes unwieldy, the woods
a place to walk from briskly.
You say your cunning comportment
is artless? Well then so am I
for containing you, champ.
Your tracks are alive with new interest.

The trail always sees what’s up ahead,
which is resistance. No tooth
or star contradicts what is made
and hard to screw up. Wash the guest’s
feet, the aviator. Jack was his name
and we were like brothers, though we never knew each other.


Me & My Devo Hair
-- by Jennifer L. Knox

laid on the chaise together and yearned hard
for a new car (among other stuff) while listening
to Herb Alpert as our club-footed seizure shuffled
up the patio stones. I’d killed many men (among
other stuff) but the twisted thing outside the sliding door
would not die—despite all the times I'd napalmed its
luminous lair which ruined loads of mohair sweaters
(among other stuff) and gave me headaches—such doozies—
they hosed the chalk outline of my skull off the sidewalk.
Then suddenly: large relief to not be Aztec (or was I?)
broke like Burmese rain. I wasn’t that bad. We toasted,
“Here’s to being waterproof.”


Sorry
-- by Eileen Myles

I can’t remember the 2nd
time I hurt you—

it was dark & someplace
in that darkness
was the thing I did.

You weren’t the target, I
know that, though
you might’ve been the bow
& the tension
I really think is love.
Nothing ever sends me away.
I’ve got your pain
in my pocket &
it glows in the dark

and in the light
it’s the softest kind
of singing woman’s voice.
That’s who you are. To me, I mean.
Let me hold your shoulders
back so you look
arrogant & beautiful
welcoming me into the warm
sad party. Let this
be the unfortunate hat
I hang outside the door
if only you will
allow me to come in.