In Venice, the rain begs you to write its own poem, though something about the way it falls here hinders you. Not drops at all, but insidious and slinky slippage, like imaginary serpents of water. It coils around my hand and wiles my pen into writing about something else entirely—candy or an aquarium or memory. (The rain will appear in those poems, but only incidentally.) Even now, as a few desultory tourists shamble and splash through the mostly empty … Read more

Leave your golden earrings in the sea.
Your bones too; bracken-hued, decanted.
Tuck your soul out of reach
in the pelagic shadows.
There’s no luck in drowning.
You are not a shiny penny.
No wishes were made. No fallen star
resulted in your body.
I will not love a single, silent thing
hauled out of that darkness.
You will not be kissed or forgiven.
The fire feeds. The sea consumes
its equal share … Read more

you’re my son tonight—
i’ve freshly shorn your hair.
the buzzer plods over your skull
like a tractor baling wet straw

now we’re disco-dancing, we’re androgynes;
sex and drugs, 2/3rds the holy trinity
handsome cherubs garbed in punch-sweet
sweat.
music crawls beneath the floorboards

it punches up… Read more