Five Poems

Rat Burial

Your rat looked up at the grey, translucent sky.
The sky looked down at your rat, having seen many.
Your rat had accepted being seen through as a fact
of becoming a rat, as the sky had.

Academic Support

From where I sit in my corner
of the high school library, which sometimes smells
like cigarettes, as it has
off and on for as long as
anyone can remember,
behind the decimal selection, I see
where the track abuts
the woods, the matte
and bleached-out quality
of a side street, the custodian
leant on his implement
in front of the intake vent.

Tree tips are silvery pricking
clouds with flat bottoms.
I'm all cut up by the blinds
and by the sconce light.
There is a dog on the baseball field.

Libliette

In a dream I was stung on the lip by a bee.
A woman lay face down on a plaid couch.
After a while, without lifting her head, she said,
how's your lip, any better? to which I said, libliette.
What do I mean by after a while in a dream? she said.
Just be a patient in a waiting room, I said.

What It Means

The freaked out blue in a windshield
means more sky is up that way.

Serious Poems

The latest poems to float down
from their high perches
were altered a little by the fall.

– the violent aeronautics of condensating mists
– adjusted and readjusted levels of seriousness
(people entering and exiting their buildings)
– the vinyl siding
—privacy arborvitae
– gazette receptacle
– auxiliary shed
– the suburban aggregate surface

changed them.

I note the changes from atop my saint's pillar
and draw them back in with a string.