“The bottom of the sea is less cruel than you’d think,” she tells me, four drinks deep at The Schooner Hannah (the dive bar, not the boat), leaning in to play with the links  of my secondhand crucifix. She’s the great-great-grand daughter of shipwrecked Cape Verdean whalers who didn’t drown, somehow, but instead built, from wet sand,  tidewrack, driftwood & clamshell, houses at the sea’s nadir. They fell for subaquatic fiancées & interbred, she tells me, making a life in which …

as always, my life has become the blade-tip of a spade held by morning just before the coagulation of light as always, there is no princedom  in loneliness, a liminal space, the beginning of a godless season twilight’s spokes spin away the sky & like a martyr the moon is forced to burn over this garden on the edge of town I do as I have done every humid evening and hang pulled weeds on the fence I murder the simple thorns  but not before they claw their names across the lines in my …

Those embalmed  and those with one leg Those who go away to work every morning The ones who have children with other women Men who write their dreams down Tailors, male and female alike Those with over-large ears Heroes except for Homeric Some who flew  Women who smell like wet leather Adolescents, male and female alike The ones who have never been photographed Men who refuse to ride horses Sailors …

We take for granted the hinges that guide us to the next room Something my dad once said         Go back now         No         that’s not what he said he said Lean into the gravity of what  you choose          Become the bend         the crux a small ‘v’ managed by the mind that can’t be         touched         in some decent manner,   …

snapped enough rabbits’  ankles to know  it’s no use to scream  I’m sorry  into voicemails how  many this is the last  time’s do you think  you deserve at your worst  sleep found you  with your shoes  still on and morning  caught you  with your stomach  leaking into the threads  of your dress shirt I wish  your shadow  would scare you  back to well  each morning I wish your dreams  wouldn’t …

At this point, I have lost track of most of my losses. I try to dwell on fingers and names, the little silences I can take a nap in. They never last that long, and I brew coffee when I rise. It all sounds dire, taking on a doom and gloom that reads biblical to some, more like dystopian science fiction to others. There are more birds tattooed on forearms than actual birds in the sky. Horatio only dreams of a giant robot capable of smashing his enemies, and what clutters heaven and Earth is …