bouncing under rubbish brush in the Californian 
gob of a Sun. It asked: When did you last feel clean bone, hun? When
                       did you last pass your hand across a piercing point and
                       ​remember that Icarus 
became his own grave? 

watch, now
as the poet relinquishes
her hold on biblical blamelessness;

​grab the scalpel.
carve the line.​
hold the gingham-pressed girls
               tight beneath little hyacinth blooms-
               fluorescent flickers inside.

​Sel sent me a postcard from Paris, made a phone call from Montevideo, and mailed a package from Nepal.

​I wrote back to her - my fingers wrapped tightly around the wooden colored pencils she sent me last summer, the ones engraved with poorly translated Romanian phrases in gold.

silky ripples pool up beneath the nape of Liberty’s neck
under this characteristic Arizona blend
of heat & spice & dust & song;
she covers artificial canvases with bloody opposition
i turn to the sky.

Each word you spoke, each thorn you flung 
Used to pierce my fragile heart
Each string of happiness hanging on
​By the force of dreams in the silence
Yearning for more stillness and delusion​

CATHARSIS

​These days--

​These days I roll out of bed with an innate weariness that stretches back to the beginning of time, back to the creation of humans, though it is always with a sense of individuality that this funny feeling takes up space in my mind, and it seems as though I’m the only one who has ever felt low. These days I listen to classical music to remember that it is autumn: Bach, Beethoven, Chopin. There are the newer composers, too. Marianelli. Alexandre Desplat’s Little Women. Bluebird. These days I feel a different kind of loneliness, the loneliness of watching things go by and by, like tracing the blurry outlines of buildings through a moving window.