For me

The Wood Veneer

Reflected trough the whiskey glass: Routine equivalents. Bar-­‐hopping in the mix.

Barn-­‐swallows. Minx.

I am not root-­‐salvaging. Not compromising here.

Wish he had been someone else.

Correspond with a letter. I went

someplace else. He(a)rd the antelopes. Pulled them with a sleigh. Or let the sleigh be pulled by them. Sled down the icy

slope, swallowing molasses. As all-­‐white canvas slit diagonally with a box-­‐cutter.

Remember who they were

when all literate? Could I learn to smell again. Re-­‐remember what once made me (happier than this).

Rowing and row-­‐ ing. Large gray elephant. Frozen over, the antelopes drowned in the lake.

Gone extinct by winter, good night, we wish ourselves past loves

pantomime.

Cardboard love paintings, ominous characters under the lake glass. Peer through

to the animals under your feet, find Cardboard love pantomiming on the telephone line: O cord, cord,

did you need a soul for that?

In the eighties I was free. My chakras like a Rubik’s Cube, and his

rung by hula hoops. Did mine not find a counterpart? I don’t know pellets of snow, Can see,