Three Sonnets for Arden
Splendor
You’re the answer to the question
in my heart
when I first grew aware
of the sun’s heat on my skin,
saw flashes
of the greenish ceilings
where I was born.
There was a time, I remember,
when I couldn’t form a question,
couldn’t understand what it was
to ask for something,
and by the time I could,
the light was already fading
through dim hallways.
Breaking Through
There is seduction in a question,
the way asking feels like hot velvet.
Tell the Domino’s delivery guy
about the psych ward,
and he’ll shrug up an atlas.
Tell the woman before you
about the crow on my head,
and she’ll smash an hourglass.
So many clichés on Twitter are true,
but you
slid in a burst of dark hair
and tongue so wild
I couldn’t chat up my neighbor today
for the sky goosed to color
Refuge
Who could love a freak
but another freak building a nest
of skunky, sun-drunk flowers,
of half-lit words streaking in the dark?
Hot seed split in the teeth of dreams:
morning light freed from tenured trees.
Meet me where I told you despair’s
a sweet spot — just beyond, between: life.
Guilt is a grave we bury with tongue.
Soil like womb as poem liquifies
my skull, grass electric.
We melt the tombs together,
news of war, the light revenged away,
and you’re here, now, with me: stay.
