endangered

i remember learning about animals
their bright colors and habitats,
the categories
of their appetites,
and the different climates,
places where nothing else
could survive, adaptations
of the smallest kind.
such order.
and the animals,
endangered,
so simple
that we should care for their
unique and breathing bodies,
that we should keep them here,
that all that life
should continue
a hundred million years from now
or close enough to forever
to not quite matter.

and i was so young i barely knew
the heart that beat in my own chest,
the body that was mine, and was
not mine, i was very much
a small animal
learning other animals,
and on the sheet
was a photograph
of a nameless beast
and the children said the numbers
like prayers, writing the reports
in a hazy blue-green love
with clear, timid, love, calling
they must be saved

portrait

'do you draw?' 'yes.'

a minnesotan quickly draws my portrait on a post-it, in dallas, texas.

[something true]

once i saw the big texas sky,
the clouds roiling west, north,
all of them. when the wind and
clouds blow in, nothing
can stop them, the sea
is too far away, now.
so the land and sky banner out,
untempered parallels, flung into
the distance, the bright stars
the tumbling air
keeping us company

in order

let it get raw, let this forgetting

begin. the pursed lips

of a downward glance can't commit

to this second, to words, even.

and battering ourselves aspark, we circle
without pattern, the meaning coming

and losing, and coming, again. why
the black and white birds flock in order
we don't know, but a wonder, like knowing
what you wanted, however brief

perihelion

you are closer now
than you have been, all year.
but the angle seems to matter
and i am tilting away from you
and in the january air i think:
we could get colder,
couldn't we? if you left,
what if there was never any
equal and opposite reaction?

think of all the fields, the highways
all the cars, the old garbage in the backseats,
all the rough stone fountains and castles
the rusted bicycles, and the styrofoam cups
our grandparents drank coffee from at family parties,
all the bodies of grandparents, full of all the cancers
all the sands in all the deserts
and skyscrapers, and maps nobody ever used
all the stadiums and all the waters that could turn into
barreling walls
all the mountains, even sea mountains
all the shelves of sea life, dirt life, concrete life
a thousand times over

these things a thousand times over

tomato

the most sensual thing
I've done in months:
to take you out
of the plastic, wash you
in the cold water, cut
you into careful, even cubes.
how strong and tender and red
you still were
even as you broke apart
in my hands