it's      time      to     disobey     the
ordinance   of   fog.  time   to  not
answer   the   phone,   to   unbum
that last cigarette.  it’s  high  time
America opens its  windows  and
lays  off  ice.  it’s  time  to  build a
boat     and     row     home.      to
remember an  inviolate someone.
a domestic ass.  the  arthritic  fig.
a  ribbed  bowl with slippery guts
of sea  bass.  it’s time to  unspool.
to undust the  South  and  unmist
the  river.  it  is  time  to  unbloom.
to   unpetal  the  story:  one  gets
lost  for  a  petal.  a ring  is put on
it   before   the   end  of   another.
then  talk   of   promise   for   two
wild waxy petals. petals later, the
fog lifts. one  finds  the  way   out.
the   other   is   left   praising   the
distance— 

I love Jesus and Kenny, whoever Kenny is. I’m a genius at dressage and my favorite food is tripe. You’re taking a late-night bath and sending me a pic. We plan the future: your desk next to mine on the second-floor landing. Yours is neater. We pick tyrants: the Party or the Church. Mississippi is blessed. Balkan is an abandoned resort with phenomenal PR. I’m Lady Illyria standing before you, skirt up, and you, tongue-out, kneel before me. It’s how I colonize America. Days butt each other the way the calendar taught them. They push through the square frames and defenestrate. We go to a wedding at the Spanish ruins. Even the Spanish ruins in America are American. A geriatric band plays “Stayin Alive.” The stage is made of magnolia leaves. People dance like horses. We drive down the dark interstate of the tongue and run over a hare. The nightsky rips open. A buck knife flashes its stiff blade. We go to a wedding at the ruins. A geriatric band plays “Stayin Alive.” On the stage made of linden Tomaž Šalamun is horsing around. The morning that’s been years in the making arrives filled with sleep. They find you. In a tub. In a river. Underground. I love Jesus and Kenny, and other stallions, too. Your obit is a skit. Is horsehit. You’re taking a bath. Sending me a pic. I’m looking at your face. I touch my face. Pater noster, etc. I’m bent over—Šalamun is doing a pirouette, his shirt ripped open.

Another sudden southern spring in a dangerous and delicate business of making us stop breathing just enough our eyelids flutter and legs twitch. The understory of dogwood foaming at the mouth, the hemorrhage of terminal myrtles, the flowering quince cracking the seal in its messy habit, littering the ground with marginalia of internal narratives, closed loops and detours—what has survived the winter’s chokehold.

         I once knew a man who spent a decade restraining patients in a psych ward. He’d come home after work, pick me up like a fistful of bergamot, root and all, and hold me, still standing, as time would speed up and slow down, as if love was a survival skill and this was the final round before elimination. His arms bruised from putting down the convulsing proletariat, the bleeding spitting combative psychotic he’d talk about and I understood little of. His grip was home for a spell, and I was his first red-rumped swallow of the season.

         Spring is a sanity thief. Someone, please staple its mugshots to telephone poles, above bloodroots and the wilding Black-Eyed Susans. Someone, please help us in the hour of its involuntary grip.