Death of a Romantic for Kurt Brown Soul is the first to go, followed by Love, Longing, Desire. The moon is untethered, sunset mashed under a boot heel, all rainbows bled, constellations crushed. Forget the firefly, dragonfly, butterfly, moth. Singe the ladybug’s wings, pluck the bluebird clean. Uproot twining roses, jasmine, willows that weep.

Rose Petals in a Blue Bowl A swatch of sunlight slips over my shoulder. On the wall a reflection of steam rises from my tea- like smoke from a small fire or the spiral from your cigarette just before you touched my arm. * * * Revenge It’s like big, fat Danny Garrido and my fly weight brother, Butchie, fighting on the sidewalk in front of St.

What I’ve Lost A taste for Southern Comfort. Umbrellas: two in a week when I was down to eight bucks in the bank halfway to payday and rain in the forecast, tail end of a hurricane that blew through Cuba, kissed the coast of Florida and ricocheted into Philly where its gray buttocks of sky squatted over us for days.

Soul Mates When the first mosquito bites the day, there is room here next to me.  Lend a pole I’ll fish with you and watch the lines you’re looking for.  While we wait for fish to hit, we’ll share the tales that grow in length and breadth like loaves and fishes, mounds of olives stuffed with rinds.

In the Next Booth at the Diner She said, “Remember when you liked me more than crack?” and he said, “It’s only cause I hadn’t met crack yet,” and when she huffed and tried to leave the booth he grabbed her arm, and pulled her back and said, “We have to talk about the dog, remember?”

The ABC’s of Gift Giving About this bracelet, copper, Boring to anyone expecting always gold, which is a form of being Chemically challenged— Don’t think me that sort of Effing idiot, please—the modernist Francisco Rebajes learned design from the Gods and I would Grovel in front of you anytime, Hoping for appreciation, never mind an Intensely beribboned box Just now handed to me while we’re Knee to knee Like we’re encapsulated in a very small shovel.

Emily as a Choke of Silk Delicate beam, thickened in celebration of an induced vision, we have seen the barn on fire, but the barn has never been on fire.  We have seen the rivers emptied, but the sky has only grazed our veins, kissing them with degrees of warmth.  We have, with each other, been shoulder blade to shoulder blade with death, but not once have we given a name to that world, the one where we don’t exist together, the one where the names we speak give us no safety at all.

Bandaging My grandmother rolls the hem of her shirt as she would a piece of lefse, curling it into a tight cylinder, exposing her mole-dotted stomach, a pale, wrinkled mound, skin hanging in loose piles collected at her waist. My mother wears rubber gloves as she pulls away a moistened strip of pus-yellowed bandage like old wallpaper steamed loose by the heat of gestating cells, piping a cleaning solution over the bloodied gouge.

Ode to Kelley and Dee “Here the vulgar eye will see nothing but Obscurity and will despair considerably.” –John Dee So your red powder failed to turn base metals to gold. In your balls your angels still capered, ceding a language vouchsafed few men. And late at night that must have com- forted you, as you swapped wives, and broke through that tricky seal, the demarcation be- tween science and godliness.

Cryoseism Frost quakes, rare phenomena that simulate earthquakes, rattled hundreds of residents Thursday in Darke and Miami counties in Ohio and Randolph County in Indiana, emergency management officials said. —Dayton Daily News, February 11, 2011 No, they do not simulate earthquakes at all, not the kind that rocked Japan to its core, split wide the ocean floor and shot, fast as a jet, its deep waters to the closest and farthest shores, drowning mothers and fathers, children, cousins, and friends.