My name is sand: I make
Dumbshows on windowshades;
Wring hands; dissolve; swirl back;
Play furious, grim charades.

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

Lately I am changing houses like sneakers and socks.
Time zones wrinkle off me casually.
I have put aside with the laundry
a row of borrowed kitchens, look-alikes
in which I crack the eggs and burn the toast
but even in Danville, Kentucky, my ghosts
come along, they relocate as easily as livestock

The last grasshoppers
thinner than political prisoners
breast up out of the goldenrod.
They know they are flying into
the end of the journey.

A twitch stung from above face
I make a fever pitch
of $25 in coin
to help the large mammal
building

…do not mock us with examples
of breach, morals of escape –
indeed, as further punishment
our cells from side to side…

Those scars rooted me. Stigmata stalagmite
I sate at a drive-in and watched the stars
Through a straw while the Coke in my lap went
Waterier and waterier. For days on end or

when the wound speaks
how does it sound
has it authority
a record of achievement
that the leader of a nation
will listen to

oshkosh was full of those
damn mosquitoes and st louis
it rained all week in st louis
the heat is peculiar to itself there

Compose for Red a proper verse;
Adhere to foot and strict iamb;
Control the burst of angry words
Or they might boil and break the dam.

nor yet one dove beneath the vault
of fire will be sent on song
but sinks its neck into our throat
to sip the fireborn saliva