from "Benjamin's Spectacles" winner of the Kore Press First Book

Letters to the Dead


Fresh figs on the counter—

Fellini’s 8 ½—

What happens after betrayal?

I don’t want to hold a man’s hand—

The hunger it spruces—

That flying green—

A beetle shell—

A wish not to be windexed—

These excommunications—

Thimblefuls of relation—

Inner conversation—

Hopkins’ letters to the dead—

Heart-shaped leaves outside my kitchen window tremble—

How it disturbs me—

Knocking food off my fork—

Like a hair shirt—

A man withholding love—

Is this all he can give—

Am I ungrateful?

Gesammelte Briefe, Passagen-Werk, Berliner Chronik, Illuminationen—

The order of books on my table—

Smell of old pages—

The hunger-striker undoes his stitched lips—

Poetry unhanging itself—