NEWS / PACE – PLACE – PLACEBO / FOUR – FLOUR / LAD – GLADE / GRID / HUT / PAT – TRAP – TAPIR / MAT – TEAM / JUT / WOMAN / LAZY / BAIT / CHUTE / KITE / FORK / GOAD / ZEE / BARE / DIG – GAINED / ONYX / QUEEN / HEX

I dig the wind scaly with kites, nonreactive

to its own refashioning. Not lazy per se, but nor

a team of one, needing no resources beyond itself.

Onyx baited light, gained a gleaming.

We gleaned from news our values—

the values put on us and put forward by.

A fork meets flour if flour has met that which

begets dough. Eat et and. Hand to mouth

to mouth. I’ve learned better than to tell you

how something looks without first

looking to see. There are other ways. An otherwise.

Gaze-licked and goaded, the queen flashed

the lad. His pat buttered her. A mat

lay like a pat of butter on the hut’s crumbly floor.

The better to greet you. Excuse me,

may I replace your trap with a placebo?

May I tamper with and redirect the hex?

To be ended as with a zee, expectedly.

Bloody, bloody. Was the alphabet corralling

the way words formed with the alphabet are—

seek to be: woman, man, clothed,

bare, bear, tapir, etc. Four sighs struggled up

the chute of my throat and settled

in the glade. A gator stood in for something,

jutted up like a palm of mud. A slick hand

makes a quarter go away. Absence heaved forth

fascination. Mood as placenta, nourishing a face.

We use this grid to know ourselves.

Pace from point to point, then tinker

with hunkering. That where we are, there is!

DAY – DAILY / MAN – MAGNET / RAIN – DEBRAIN / TONE / HIRE – THRIVE / SOY – YOGIS / MICE – CLIME – MALICE – CLAIMED / GNAT – GRANT – TEARING / POX / JUNE / BUSY / FOX / HAY – HAIRY / LAP – PLACE / WOK / LORD – ROILED / FOE – FORE – FORGE / JUNK / QUA / WENT

Your malice forged quite a foe

lapping at you for debraining.

A junk lord went man

on us, thrived like a magnet

in rain. Grant us a June

a wok would envy.

May we be soy bits

twice browned, our tenderness defected.

A conjunction no longer roiled

the sentence settled in

my mouth, though the confession

did as a fox might

securing a new hole

and established its hold

over an empty place.

At the fore of our mice-days scattering

of us parting more profoundly

than a biblical sea

an umbilical myth nourishes

your largesse, and yogis seek you,

houser of gnat-bodies in your syrupy cup.

If I lay out hay for the dream to chew,

will it let me approach it?

If you vote a pox off the island,

will it seek vengeance and inscribe

itself in your very cave?

Your tone gets busy with your meaning,

bares it. I never claimed the hairy pew

of you for sitting. Gross. As a film grosses,

as a film of fuzz hugs a thigh as

a breading hugs. It’s true, no one will

have (qua hire) me—not so much

biting as tearing. We know the climes

we each prefer. Daily we anticipate

hearing the other’s preference.