the races

Recently published as a broadside with above/ground press. Ask them for it. This poem came out of time spent at the track during 2005.


these days I have no requisite for form
held fast to the hem of dust and amble, shifting on the outsides of my heels
    a smallness in my chest

I am making boxes

a child’s eyes fasten from the right, small tourniquets of wet
my skin, the dry weave of an envelope

bristle turns to sand
losses align, finger a pattern

these lazy hours force a ripening
fastidious faces worn into dust
kicked up antipodal,
the hooves of
broken beasts

here, no one cares for love
none but the long day's occupation
sinks
under the canopy of city

and the imagination that there are better places than this
more legitimate
or better words to take me there

are minced beneath the loam of my shoe