Thirst

A frisson while the night passes

A maw to be filled with bloated stars

The frugalness of neon haunts your suffering

The moon frightens a stranger’s trees

Am I a ghost hiding in plain sight?
Am I a night tremor where the longboats pass?

& If I tremble, it’s only for my love of gillyflowers

That sing, in the wicked breeze of my thirst

Where I am lost, like a cataloguer in a storage room

Of pent-up desires. O cool fountains, interiority—

When do I go to sleep? & In the din

Of a grinning force, how far away is night?

Sometimes it rains here, in the penitentiary of my age

& I am baffled by goslings who have no care for frivolity

Then winter really rubs off on children’s red jackets

& I muffle my knees like a mud cowhand & stutter

In the brackish, sheet metal music of days’ slow death

Shimmering under a wreath of seas