Where there’s smoke
there are mirrors

and a dry ice machine,
industrial quality fans.

If I’ve learned anything
about the present moment
 •

But who doesn’t
love a flame,

the way one leaps
into being

full-fledged,
then leans over

to chat
 •

Already the light
is retrospective,
sourceless,

is losing itself
though the trees
are clearly limned.

The very flatnessof portraits
makes for nostalgia
in the connoisseur.
 
Here’s the latest
little lip of wave
to flatten
and spread thin.
 
Let’s say
it shows our recklessness,
 
our fast gun,
 
our self-consciousness
which was really
 
our infatuation
with our own fame,
 
our escapes,
 
the easy way
we’d blend in
 
with the peasantry,
 
our loyalty
to our old gang
 
from...

We gathered in a field southwest of town,
several hundred hauling coolers
and folding chairs along a gravel road
dry in August, two ruts of soft dust
that soaked into our clothes
and rose in plumes behind us.

By noon we could discern their massive coils
emerging...

I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest,...

We gathered in a field southwest of town,
several hundred hauling coolers
and folding chairs along a gravel road
dry in August, two ruts of soft dust
that soaked into our clothes
and rose in plumes behind us.

By noon we could discern their massive coils
emerging...

This disease has come back
With frills and furbelows.

You must give your whole life to poetry
Only a few survive if that—

Poems I mean, paper crumpled
Shades of another water—

Far springs are what you long for,
Listening for the slow drip of chemicals

Through a...