Three Poems

Hidden House


The mail comes in at midnight
delivered by quiet carriers
    in germ masks,

More and more
I cannot hear the sound of man;
taking heed as if inside an animal

Skeletal babble like ice cubes
floating in a cooking pot
cracking like a back





Old Cold



We battlefields,
gripped like gargoyles
perched on white buildings, panting,
staring down our debt
invisibly fixed under the arm
like a deer tick

It is an old cold,
the sky blue as skin,
holding everything that would fall out
in





House Arrest



Being with you, I hear buildings crumble
Your good looks turn to soil inside me
Shutting out the lights in empty rooms
No one counts the pets we’ve kept as home

In the dark I become a beheaded queen
Wringing my bloody hair into a milk glass
When I run headless through cold rooms
I’m no longer known, only the dog remembers me