cinders on your tongue like snow.

While you are sleeping
in a bed tethered to the wall
by the cord

It could feel good to stare at numbers 
all day, another job but I can’t name any; 

You have shown me
that there is no trick

He takes night as a kind of medicine,
swallowing it with a buck and shiver.
Sometimes a drowning muse come from within

There was a time when
his words made me wet with tears:
Ah, our wedding day.

You must have looked so small
treading hungry water
with Rex and Elizabeth.

Let’s open
our mouths to the blue rain

         This night forgot us years ago
but could not wait you out.

Without television, they might have been
no more than stolen coins left
on a railroad track and flattened,