absent magazine

Again, love organized the burr pattern
where history strangers off.
The world revolves in a paper grain
in the drippings of a night fold.
Let’s say we talk with greater alacrity,
then leaf, you and me.

Or, do we say, now that we know how little
the sandpiper’s feet are that we
regulate the dramas of our contradictions.
My secrets no more than eloquent dish
chatter in the compulsory
goodbyes of dusk’s sandy complaint.
The trees carry what is imagined
from the windy panorama.

You know, the paler belly
where the veins raise
in the tops of old hands.

The evenings of struggling with absence.
Though, promise coaxes us out onto

the terrace where the street’s runaways
feel their enlightenment. Even in Arizona.
The movies address this, regularly but
in New York they only try

to explain why the lady looks
through the articulate keyhole.
That bags the siesta. Which had little to do
with sleeping anyways,
and more to do with being awake.