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Between me and the sky is a screen door and a whole mess of wind.

At a red light he touches his cheek. The stubbly skin is sensitive, febrile.

Forgive my father, the promise that he made, that I could turn all this to gold.

Strange then, strange now, that language wants to be alone with me.

It is right that tears fall for something small and forgotten. And I would never scold the onion for causing tears.

We spread. Kneel. We’ll come out missing parts. This we know.

One said she heard the jazz-band sob when the little dawn was grey.

My mother and I remained apart. My father came late to the party.

She began to see the word, or traces of it, wherever she went.

He came into town with his big red pen and began revising us.

Ajax killed men and then animals thinking they were men.

I waited and waited, rethinking first sentences in my sleep.

Bees kill wasps by gathering around and tightening in the middle.

I could go in for some pie why the hell not, there’s so little time.

Sixty-year-old veins look like giant roots breaking through earth’s skin.

Love speaks in silence, on behalf of lovers too tired for words.

I’m recalling his socks, the inked initials, the splashes of blood.

My lust works like the tides pulling in reverse, controlled by a simple ballast.

The poem I can’t yet write saves itself for when it can’t be avoided.

David Lee

Beyond her ampleness, he stands a small man vanquished.

My mother is queen of buttons. She shows off the prized ones.

A memory in the drip, drip, drip of the kitchen sink that won’t stop.

On a morning in November words appeared at the end of my pen.

Flesh is temporary, memory a tilting barn dismantled nail by nail.

Salt provokes, tenderizes. Your wounds, your dinner.

Think how you move, how a room changes with your smallest breath.

My soul is simple; it doesn’t think. Something strange paces there now.