It ends because the beginning won’t jumpstart
again: red smudge of a mouth, lipstick everywhere

the afterthought a comet leaves on its way
out. What makes this moment unfold like a fine

woman raising herself up from the bathroom floor?
Honky-tonk in the honeyed brown of an eyeball?

Perfume & its circus of heart-shaped introductions?
It ends because the needle always winds up in

the lead-out, like a man pawing around for broken
spectacles after he wakes in the world’s rubble.

Hand over hand he paws, through stilted guitar
picks & abandoned stilettos, raised skirts & rocks,

glasses as chipped & smudged as the topography
of a skipping record. He could be Albright

himself, foraging the still-life swish of low-rise
tutus & skyscrapers cracked in the twisted

aftermath of a smile. Even without glasses,
he remembers her in high style: magnanimously

coming down the blue & violet threads of night,
her green dress clashing with the bathroom tile.

How much they want us to leave them alone
for a while,
they are tired of the thrum of motorboats,
the cargo ships
that beat in their ears
all summer

that sound stuck in mom’s ears forever,
beating against the roof of her coffin.

Maybe her ghost has forgotten
the dead fish, ragged fins
and drowned possums, their furry bodies
turned into soaked balloons

as they rode waves next to plastic buoys.
But they are always with me.

Today I watched a different river rise again,
in a different year, a different city—

nothing can be stopped.

A thin layer of steam reaches from
eddies, and comes up to meet me
in my swimsuit and sandals

and the oars I hold in my hands
like rakes that could stop the water,
like rakes that could stop the dead.

I sing her name again and again to the water
because I don’t know what else to do,

I don’t know how to cradle mud-soaked blue gills
and bring them back to life,

how to feed them to the hungry ghosts
in my dreams where I become part of the river,
where I become part of death,
where my bones turn to liquid, then mud, then dust.

Here is the blue gill I saved for you, on the longest day of summer.

the train never comes.

You smell it anyway, its blue-coal
body. In August, the fringe sticky

with Queen Anne’s lace, you might
walk these tracks inside

gigantic noons. I walked them.
You might smash bottles,

start fires, watch clouds from
your back, breathe clouds through

the red sparks of cigarettes.
Take your first sips of bad

sweet wine, cry in a graveyard at night
with your best friend, a half moon

and grave dirt in your hair.
Have your first bad kiss here, like

swallowing a living fish. If you see
the older kids, run, god

knows why. They will chase you
into the waxy halls

of high school. Unlike me,
you will have all your music

in your hand, the best
movies, a phone that calls

everyone at once. Look up.
The big fires of June stars

are so slow and boring they will
keep you awake for good.

Swim the mucky river.
Wash your hair in clover-smell,

the swish of trees. The crows—
you can’t not love it

when they chatter the sun down.
Follow gravel roads

to screaming crickets
and beer, sleep out

on the hood of your
hand-me-down Honda,

wake up with yellow flowers
in your mouth. Walk the streets

on the first night
of fall, every tree swelling

with what I can’t say
and see in the lit-up houses

beautiful pictures
of strangers.

The cat is dying—though I know we all are, since the day we’re born or before that, when we’re that cell-knot of an embryo, that hoped-for thing or mistake. But the cat is dying more so than usual, and I have become a person who follows a cat around the house with a handkerchief, hoping to catch the strings of snot that trail so pitifully from his nostrils since cats can’t say what they need. And they hate to breathe through their mouths, the veterinarian says, and she emphasizes the word hate the way preteen girls do when discussing their morphing bodies. In fifth grade we all wanted to be veterinarians, but by sixth we were over it and planning our pop-star careers. Discovered so young, the magazines would say. By then we’d learned something about animals, but nothing about death, except that sometimes a father will leave a note that says I didn’t think any of you loved me anymore, which they’ll find with him at the beach cabin, the tide outside receding before it comes in.