this thin curve of land
“this life is a fist
of fast wishes caught by nothing
but the fishhook of tomorrow’s tug”—Ada Limon
it’s like this
at 23 everything tugs at the infinite
possible even along the tips of black leaves
that fall through the rear-view window
a father sifts through a screen door
the world worried and cloaked in neon
the slabs of light squirreling beneath a stone of shadow, hawk-eyed
romance dialed in, meaning served up in a gimlet glass
shot after shot after shot
everything but death
lives between the jukebox glass and the record’s sway, my love
the music and the wobble of your life
beat sings in a slab of light picking out a stone in the dark
eyes rhyme the world with a new species of grass
Spodiopogon formosanus
a narrow pendulous grey-green leave topped with airy pink inflorescences
in a good year we learn to live ahead of the dying
stories in our bodies, language made up on the spot
a key in a lock drags the night light through
what spills get left on the tiled floor once made up in the backroom scribble
love licked up long along the borders where we fell apart
and everything became one in the juggle, my love
papers torn, memories undressed and we awakened
ambidextrous
in the morning along this thin curve of land, both your hip and the island’s
a world of centripetal tropic arrests the morning and its departure
sings stiff-up words that neither bemoan nor bamboo the loss in the cage
ringing in the air nets of construction, chevrons of cloud and clock and birds, fit
you ghost, so it is like this
say it in our names
