On Balloon Boy

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_4/Nik1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

There is a pretty distance between you and I:
I want to say it looked like a star fish, no,

jelly fish, it’s undulation in the sky, the sky
a refraction of the ocean, the terrible terrain.

But I will not say that, I know it’s tired.
I will name you what you are: bird, fish,

reality television star. The boy next to me
just realized there is an art to photography

a difference between snapshot and composition:
here is where I say daguerreotype in loose association

like a tethered balloon, a pretty word,
above us in the whim of the wind.

I send this poem to Carrie; we are immediate
and she asks why no attic. Look it up, there

are words missing: garret, loft, pitched roof
and sky parlor. At what point on a map does this

idea become a field, does it split and expand
into fertile land to become a place where we watch

the silver balloon sleep atop the wheat
finally like a child it’s been put to sleep.

On Heat

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_4/Nik2.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

-for Carrie

We blow fuses by the ac
daily the power’s old here
wiring all cruddy

give up on fingering the slots
old spade pushed between metal
and metal completing the connection

walking to the hardware store again
instead up the street to St. Joe’s
for four dollar Pernods splash

of water no breeze talk to neighbors
on the street about the heat
the hanging vines hanging all through

the patio Japanese ornament the cheap
paper lanterns out of season
Christmas lights white blinking

electrically over us green swallows
us like the sun did just an hour
ago I don’t know what to tell you

to do about work the smell of anise
its sensual dryness
in the mouth your wet skin

tongue parched by salt
I think of the packets
they put in foods to suck up

the water silica and the word
basilica comes to mind
turns over on the tongue

the way wet works up the nostrils
olfactory the sun’s oil factory
ha ha darling kiss the feet

on this table each leg laughs
by night’s close bar’s closed our closeness
miss each one each one

in a different surface dirt
cobblestone grout grass
like a bird isn’t there a bird

called that I want desperately to call you
that a basilica dirt cobblestone
grout and grass the way

a structure crumbles under
water the want of water
its waves of heat

On Domestics

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_4/Nik3.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

The color of humidity, the sound
of cats on fences, a bug
against the window. They flutter. All night

you split cloves of garlic, press
the crescents with a knife, split
the flesh from skin, lick your fingers

and push around a spatula, brown
with oil and burn. When you cook
I watch you work a dangerous unknown:

I have no idea how that gas gets in here,
or where it comes from, but just pay the bill,
the cheapest. I imagine pipes upon pipes

of pipes intersecting pipes, each empty
to the eye. Under the city they shake
with voluminous pressure and thump

meters into our home. Water, too, I have
trouble with but I know somewhere
there is a store of it, something full with

it. When I was a kid, I would say the word reservoir
over and over again until it became meaningless
the way a look will. How do we contain

something so volatile?   My first apartment had a gas leak.
I lived with a migraine for about a year.
After awhile, you stop smelling it and only understand

the problem through others — Smells like gas in here.
The collection of green glass under the window sill:
Pelagrino bottles, beer bottles, why do we keep them still?

We talked about making our own simple syrup,
turning sugar in boiling water and filling them. A cute
side project to pass the time, but they remain empty

save for the light that fills them.