Some Playing with Dozens; Proceed to the Route by Rikki Santer

Some Playing With Dozens

my tongue encircles each stale donut hole in their carton like a thought experiment deep in the folds of memory

baker’s dozen of my misgivings drifts from the boughs of spring’s cottonwood tree

every soiled month of that year you swung back and forth from a trapeze of your own making

a dozen noons and midnights of spitting blame

your headpiece of antlers coerced twelve points that even you could not deny

it was your face cards that salted and dragnetted the navel of what lost its tenderness

a platter of deviled yokes surrendered that morning after their wedding

your neediness is so arrogant, its cruise ship has no lifeboats

your delusions are so illusory, your charades have squirming tendrils

your bouquet of roses was so mistaken; it could be a banished angel stripped of its wings

apostles dispersed in waves to leave this earth to endless questions

release of six pairings to the clouds, church of doves

Proceed to the Route

It’s a hard hope so ancestral. The tenacious parade

of red ants along the kitchen’s floorboards. Dust

of old stars measuring our end tables, gnarled spine

of the azalea never coming back. Molecules fret

in the coordinates of my mind. Heavy blanket

of dark swaddles the house as I feel again that last

gasp of baby squirrel that fell from the oak, and

you wanting to bury me alive. Night clouds drift.

Coltrane’s Dear Lord through earbuds. My jagged

pulse dreading the dogged musical chairs of us,

the weight of maybes within my bedside journal.

3 AM and the fantail prefers sleeping upside down,

an owl’s persistent syllables bend the moonlight—

mirror for the coming of another morning’s heart.