i.

No one told Herrera that strings could be tuned like this
a ‘D’ where where the ‘E’ once was
steel strings that ring like church bells when you hold the silver fret
She wants to have a fountain in the garden that grows grey and green with moss in decades time Willow trees whose fingers never touch grass
There’s always just enough space
She tells Peter over lunch
The bumbling kind of fountain that pulls from an endless well of water
Not still water, the kind that comes from underground
And pebbles in the basin—stones around the side
This is a fountain Eros will never see
though some say he lingers in the edges of the tide pool, only in the reflections You can’t see him, but hear him coo
soft like moss, hard like rain
kiss the water, fall, no shame
Herrera’s reflection distorted in the spoon
she cracks on the burnt sugar of their creme brulee
I couldn’t really love you anymore. Peter says.
You’ve become my ceiling.*

ii.

The construction of the fountain took 10 years
of which Herrara grew creases at the edges of eyes, white hairs plucked like weeds from her scalp when she looked in the mirrors.
She could never find the right amount of pebbles
that wouldn’t send water spilling over the edges in the summer
She stopped peering into the well too
—the last thing Peter left for her
Aging is only fun until people stop looking at you in the aisles of grocery stores And you remember how sweet it felt to coax the gaze of strangers
who wondered how you were in bed
She dines by the fountain weekly,
Visits by Peter were never so welcome as when she had no more visitors

iii.

In the lobby of a gas station,
Buicks blasting Springsteen and Dylan
Mud-towed and covered in a layer of snow and dirty rain,
Pelma’s car pulls in
She asks for gas and the 99cent slot machine at the back corner of the shop
Once for kicks, twice for luck
She bets two bucks and pays the rest to fill her tank
Cigarette in hand, she waits to light.
You see that house with the fountain out West?
It’s that kind you pity-build
They never turn of their lights,
If it’s never dark, then the day never ends.
Pack of Malboro 27’s please
Cash. that’s all I got.

iv.

Imagine. Close your eyes. He is standing too close to touch
You can only stick your tongue out and—
In the summer your skin is cool, pools of sweat gather in the nooks of your arms wrapped around her waist,
moving incrementally so it never gets too wet in the skin on skin
Decades later there will be a well that she calls a fountain
on your lawn
And you will almost forget desire
You will almost forget that once,
You would have driven cattle through a butcher shop to touch her face
The things you miss, because missing is your favorite thing to feel
that is to say
You don’t know longing without first knowing joy
Look at the light on the water, this means the strings are in ‘D’ again
Tell her to press down with her fingers,
The fault-line sliced in her arm by a steak knife
The blood will run dry, and powder her eyes,
She needs to look pretty for this moment
She hears the tune from the strings that are beside the fountain, the same strings that are in ‘D’, pushed by a man who doesn’t know how to use the strings, only says he does because who can’t play an open ‘D’. And who doesn’t like to pretend.
This could grow flowers
She says.
(and the pain! oh!)
I’m on the other side of it now!

*Manchester Orchestra – ‘The Gold’

Swarm of Blue Dots

She grew up beside a beach,
collected pippi shells
and bleached coral worn
into animal shapes,
waited for countless tides
to make sense of rockpools

Endurance divided into living
is carving a hollow
in the side of yourself
and filling it with whatever you can find
to see you through desire
and time

What is the name of that tree
with the fulsome leaves
she asks herself so many mornings?
Is it a lush forest of giant
greenery she thinks
she is waiting for?

Waiting is like gardening
at the edge of a wilderness:
beautiful ideas that might exist
are unreachable
but for occasional seeds
that she grows in pots on a shelf

There’s an abstraction
about waiting, a chain of poems
without endings: she goes shopping
and she waits, walks the dog
and waits, watches a pink sun
evaporate beyond a plateau.

The lilly-pillies are growing
in a savage heat that skipped
spring while light mirrors back
and forwards via the moon,
words faintly visible
in swarming blue dots of love
that fade and brighten

View from the Spa

After the drum of night rain there’s only tree fern talk
            in the arm of morning.  Sometimes she imagines the reverse- 

rain clouds with lilac gums sucking hard facts until they
            dissolve. She sees more clearly in the warm water of this ceramic

spa, an egg perched in its eyrie high on this island forest rise.
            She is undetailed, undescribed, reshapeable, ripe for newness

Vivid against the palette of sun, an iridescent beetle perches
            on her wrist. Ideas burst like fruit, like sky pineapples.

Distant cabin creatures creep—the largest, praying mantis teal
            arching it’s overcarriage—the green train of dawn whispers

along a jetty with fish darting beneath—slick silver imaginings,
          rememberings—a horizon of time to grow familiar with what’s new

What We Won’t Know

Abundance is everywhere, grassheads heavy with seed,
millions of tiny discs shining on the surface of the lake like starbursts.

In the shadows, at the edges, small brown ducks drift,
smudges of ink on watery fingers. The house of poetry

has walls in colours yet to be named: perhaps love is soft moss
underfoot, without slipping, the deepest green?

Dusk is the cool rich blue of pollinators after their day of creating.
Cuckoos drift across stippled cloud, their sky path recorded

on the surface. In the future, will their feathers be planted,
grow in the soil? Will the horses that drank here

have the faces of ferns? I’m eager for autumn’s quiet kindness
after a year without seasons, of scorching heat.

One day, we will look outwards together in the same direction
so give words to me. I don’t want anything else in your absence.

Noctalgia

The loss of dark skies is so painful, astronomers coined a new term for it
—headline 9/17/23

The country of my own past
seems oceans away, or just one step
under a mossy lintel into a fantasy
world I might have read in a book
held under my desk in eighth grade

before the teacher gently noted
even earnest kids like me needed
to pay attention in class. Kids like me
who weren’t rich in money—
and how much that mattered
in the ‘80s, decade of Reaganomics

and bewildering designer brands—but
were college bound on brains and family
expectation. Page 172: a girl who likes
dogs and horses better than people

walks with friends across the campus
quad, the dark wind of October
blowing their eyes bright, hopeful.
Page 378 (I read long books):
students crowd a ping-pong table,
laptop keys clicking, asking questions

before they send their fledgling words
into the ether. Page 26: a raccoon kit
reaches into the rubber boot
of a ringleted child, barn door

open behind them. Please don’t ask
about the 500s, when the protagonist’s
sister dies and her last hope for wings
withers in hard frost. I honestly don’t

want to make page 1000 with the world
as it is and my genetic inheritance
of fearful unrecognition, mind
gone awry inside a body that just

won’t die. But perhaps the next
200 pages or so could contain
some green ease, less pain, more
floating. I try to remember I can
only read one page at a time
and shouldn’t this be the one
where the once-girl is happy? I wish

for one of those weighted bookmarks
so lead-heavy they fall through
time so I can start the book again,
remembering to remember every
tender equine nose smelling of sweet
alfalfa, every sharp spark rising
into the distant, glittering sky.

This World Always Offers Reasons for Despair

war     again    in places where 
people already have     too many stones
children suffering like     the dog
I saw a man     hitting      with a metal rod
at the off-leash park     that’s usually
my haven

how can we     take care     of them?

in my own head     a wrongness     a well     
endless and raw     nothing dropped
will ever hit bottom     I am not
even sad     just lost to myself     or
rather     part of me curls     on the blue
linoleum     of my childhood kitchen
pain     boiling over on the stove

this morning    late October
the light     creeping down
sideways     as if reluctant
to touch our     earth
my legs carrying me     undirected
(automatic    like some guns)     because
my dogs must     be walked
lest they break     the peace     of the house
     
I spot     a blue jay
sky-colored     strident     far from innocent
why was that ravenous bird     made
so beautiful     I do not want     to love it

What the Insomniac Thinks

When my shoulders touch the sheets, the sleep
that had rubbed its warm fur against my ankles

while I sat on the couch after dinner
dissolves. So my mind takes up this challenge

and posits humans eating hot wings because we
want to fly, and suddenly there’s a woman chasing

moths and stuffing them in her mouth, her body
hollowing, attracting fairy dust. And do we

eat fish to belong in the cradle of water,
potatoes to know the darkness

with its roads of mycorrhizae connecting
everything? And how many of us have wondered

if fungus underlies existence, mushroom trips
showing exactly what’s real? Some time later

beings of light—clear vessels filled with magnitude—
bend over me as I garden, hold my hands

holding the trowel, as if to make sure what grows
is right and good and even magic. How else

to describe the profound strangeness that is sleep
but as a sort of magic, a compost

in which we deposit the scraps of the waking world
and hope for the nourishment we need to go on?

19xx

Nothing says last century
like hot vinyl seats
and Under the Bridge
driving for the fun of it
and smoking
trawling for the thrill
tussling the railroad tracks
with me in the trunk
not knowing if I’d
make it to thirty
or Thursday