Accommodations

One spring and summer

of my life I lived nowhere

because that bed belonged

to someone I had been

before and I had gone

too far beyond. I was

scarce, I was like a silence.

After everyone slept,

where could I go, could I

climb in the dry bathtub,

was I going to break through

the weak lock on the back

door of a house where

people hated me, what if

I crashed on their couch

but I left before they knew

I’d been there. And if I

were still like myself and

I got that I could no longer

keep going, but it was clear

I couldn’t stay, either.

***

Tanka

if the spacemen come

let’s hope they bring their passports

so they don’t die in cages

before immigration cops

send them back to space

***

These Things Change Us

These moments like

a moldy cup ripe like

the earth and retrieved

from behind the bed or

our flooded feet once

water spills over the field

             or one afternoon

             in an old shed with

             a metal box whose

 insides heave with

             a thick web of worms

or regret that reeks long

on a tongue, its harm loud

like the horn of a ship that

shatters the air on shore where

they lose what they had left

of complacency, even

their common senses.