No Garden<\/strong><\/p>\n

In straw, a fire-web of light,
\ndrawn sinews of halt and stretch,
\nand I bury my wrists, move my
\neyes in dry scratches
\nof toughened fiber smiles.
\nThe dead hover in the hallows,
\nowls statuesque in hazy attention.
\nYou are the child lit at dawn, sighing,
\nengulfed steadfast in your raised eyebrow
\nfull of milk and heavy grains. Waters
\ndwindle outside, the stalks of red-tipped
\ngrasses struggle, the wind sleeps.
\nI am turned to the sun and made
\nto soften clay with persistence, but
\nthere is too much spit in my voice.
\nLike the corrugated pauses of crickets,
\nthere are codes in this aged soil.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Kilauea Caldera<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fires do not wait for us,
\nor their smoke and gassy fingers
\nreaching down every mouth
\nto touch the cough once, just once\u2014
\na gift from Pele, the spewing dance
\ncarrying along gulps of air.<\/p>\n

No time in arms, your
\nconnective mind and my hot
\nteeth\u2014warmed by spices
\nof coral, tungsten, meringue.
\nThis present crevasse is too porous<\/p>\n

for my own laughter: an epicenter
\nthat measures the day, the
\ncorrespondence between solid sulfur
\nand liquid rock consumed with
\ngrace and dead whispers.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

After the Underwhelming<\/strong><\/p>\n

We understood the patterns of work,
\nin the way bent sunlight lined concrete
\nwith striated shadows, dead crickets. Winds
\nlike claws dug at everything, the Colorado
\nfossil dust sharp, eye-seeking\u2014rain dotted
\neyebrows, curled leaves, fissile scents
\nunlike rain. We knew how our parents
\nlifted the day and settled before bedtime,
\nblew in and around us, spinning us along.
\nBut in the drum of traffic outside, the
\nparticular reach of the cottonwoods,
\nsomething stagnated and lost rhythm, carried
\nnothing but syncopated bursts and silences\u2014
\nthe loss of response even at the sight of milk,
\nbricked cheese. We held our eyes level and picked
\nup our feet: goslings in fear of fear, unaware.
\nAs the snows came and ice pointed, always,
\ndown at us, we hurried through the curtain
\nof dripping water, unavoidable as it was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No Garden In straw, a fire-web of light, drawn sinews of halt and stretch, and I bury my wrists, move my eyes in dry scratches of toughened fiber smiles. The dead hover in the hallows, owls statuesque in hazy attention. You are the child lit at dawn, sighing, engulfed steadfast in your raised eyebrow full […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2617"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2679,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2617\/revisions\/2679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}