The real question is what, not how. The grief that I hold grave in my heart, spend my days trying to resolve. What if I gave the same attention to happiness, would I find it somewhere in the queer ridges of my nails or the stringy backs of my shins? Decide to live on love alone and I’d either starve or conjugate, a little fondness joined to same until the sighs begin to sound like bells, giddy with momentum. – from “Woodpecker” Hard times, I thin myself to a shadow, the vague hint of footsteps behind my friend’s back, the faintest flicker at the fireplace. Not even war can stop me from loving the world, quietly unrequited. The killer virus shrinks at the very mention of quarantine. The tulip shoots shiver with purpose. Cold and cruel, a chorus complaint. Just touching a chair these days is a kind of embrace. – from “Happy to be Cold” In this state of perfection, we wake up to a bone ark bobbing on a blue wherever, just the two of us in our various roles. The doves will come and go, their breeze adding frills to the blunt tops of waves. The elephants, surprisingly, can swim. As can the caramel-coloured ants with their hollow abdomens. And those who can’t, well, they will ride the slopes of our floating shoulders, almost in the shapes of wings. – from “Blue Wherever”