Bringing back the bones,
I build an inked foot, a bloodroot
the reddest rose--

sow the black and
sew the row.

The line's for me to bide and bide,
to dwell upon,
to take my time,

I pine--and pine.

Mind the line
and bind and bind
The Spine.
I sigh.

Third Beach

We slip into our summer skin,
sunburnt bathing suits and stones,
hats, wide-brimmed,
our little legs dangle from the rock,
the salt flow, the screen door slap!
holding periwinkles and jellyfish in our hands,
berried cheeks,
toes sugared in sand.

This is what is inside:

a Rhode Island ocean tide,
stroking the land with each lap,
the skin of the serpentine by
the black shark eggs, pouched--alien things,
inked into the crawling sands
the rocks--pap, pap, pap--
fingerlings, shoestrings, beans and beans,
grapefruit pith veining their way to the
pine cones sold for a dollar or two--

"who ahhh-re you?"

Lady Pines on the Line

Lady in grey--pine, pine on the line.

The windows yawn their wooden tune,
a bird wears black as a kettle would,
a yew, arms strewn in the squared outdoors,
a pair of eyes hang on the wall,
her lips have bowed like floorboards do,
piano chords, too, red as roses, leaping like dancers
in the air.

Love song to the letters

I write with you in mind
every time:

a swallow on the line

the sway, the swing, a gentle thing--
let it sing and sing and sing
hold the rings that bind the bone, the spine.

Post-mortem

Molding the bones, the letters,
into lines, foot and foot,
forming my body, black
in ink, I die.

Stella, I Never Knew

I fear I took the life of a baby—
a pod, a seed strewn by the palm trees,
in the golden muck.

I suck the life from this name,
the sss in the S—
swilling around, pinching out air
those grey little lungs
before she came to be, sweetly.

The Ls love the roll and the roll, roll—
oh, the lulling of a tongue!
a bare note, raw and rearing,
a Floridian lullaby, dying.