“I Write to Run”
Let’s write for five hundred mirrors
to run faster than reflection
calling canaries to funerals
rain to the steaming geysers
to see ghosts at last through slick asphalt
an alligator forest
unwell in the box spring
maybe happiness will be whittling
up late staring at the fireplace
bone broth the color of human bones
a bandaged stranger
offers the horns of a boot
a way to fly to the roof of a high rise
a high tide of fish bones
the woman weeps
in shuttered rooms
it’s too late
she’s in your skin
birch bark through which the woman spoke in creaking
we met in the midnight velvet
through your skinny fingers
the cold be banished
from our igloo warmth
lonely mice in cabbage cottages
the knifed sheets
the cheetah chances
the cancellation of cougars
sucked hot through the interior leather
of masks, helmets, midnight indiscretions
zephyrs pant the gabled widow.
nicholauspatnaude 