The plasticsmith waits for the children to return
with buckets full of scraps, bags, bottles, and toys
meticulously scrapped and washed and clean.
The buckets are weighed, then into the crucible they go,
rendered down to grayish brown ingots, made ready
for shipment from the Patch to the factories in the City.

When I float along the deep abyss, every rotting worm writhes
to be near me, every putrid parasite begs
for me to eat him whole. The School of Worship
comes out from hiding, longing for salvation
in my generous arms, and in the Midnight Mass,
the angler’s lure is dimmed by my dazzling spring.

When I wake, it’s to hear the last siren,
receding to its distant causeway, banks of
salt, their bygone shackles of sand.

I hear, dig out what calls to you down
to an aragonite shore—stay gentle, as
you clean away the remains of so many

Beyond the boundaries of my yard,
water flows through furrows in a field,
harvested and fallow now, where corn waved
and last year's winter wheat greened the ground
through all the cold brown barren time.

α) Radiation (This Place is a Message)

What am I but an emanation
Of energy better left
Undisturbed, a ruined
Palace calling out to you
In forbidden whispers
Of far-future runes?

A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn; he wonder’d…

bio Grandfather with a shotgun
caught me in the loft of the barn
two clicks removed from levitical codes

Star-rise. I wake in arms of amber light,
Awash in swiftly dreaming galaxies.
I turn, I yawn, a wayward, drowsy sprite
Untempered by dying vagaries.

for Yemọja

my mother keeps track of time by how much rain falls
heavenwards. i know it is night because there’s a torrent
& the grim reaper blades through the whirl. it is night.

are we not nomads in this midnight sea
lonely wanderers between the stars
floating through dreamscape nebulae
tempest tossed on gravity and tides

The atmosphere is breaking.

A puddle stands in the
middle of the street, reflecting
all our cracked
and rotting dreams.

Two bubbles, slick and oily.