from The Book of Declarations

All countries are founded on disaster.

All countries are founded on laughter.

All countries are founded by the rain.

All countries are founded when someone is buried.

All countries are founded when a child is born.

All countries are founded when the rich are buried and the poor are burned.

Fragment

Famously, in the Iliad,

no one had any Penicillin

and everyone

from the lieutenants up

could lift a boulder

over their heads.

No one’s really sure

on that last one,

but we do know that ancient men

burnt men,

though they’d yet to discover

gasoline

and under their blood

almost everything

was smooth and muffled

like the quiet inside of an apple.

Poem

I give what I can

all my people

all their apples

little by little

your sweet feet

on my land

Letter Passed to a Friend Traveling South to Sell his Bumper Crop

come to me with your

bright knives at my back

as the districts of evening

fall like nations I will

arrive during a lull

in the snow I will not

be there to make it

cease I will be there

fibular sister for your

scalpel-bright ceremony sister

I am out of stamps

consider me your dearest

friend south of the mountains

consider this my rsvp