A manifesto on the poetics of C.

for her birthday,

Oh beauty who fell asleep

on your birthday,

we swipe at you.

-- Rae Armantrout

1.

lived, a day

wrapped in absence of air,

we stopped to offer, twigs

and light,

wet pools of paper,

soft vehicles of travel,

some say the tributaries reach,

reach up,

a taste for mindfulness

and edge,

2.

what any bird

would trust,

a shining resource

some things are brutal,

incomplete,

are hard to speaking,

speak,

length,

a force of nature,

3.

an orchid bears one flower,

bears,

an earthly house,

words: a hard taste,

tempted,

mind the dedication,

slipped, a slip in,

hidden,

4.

the pace of silence,

slowed to crawl,

could singe

and shrivel,

a portrait made

is not what’s kept

parted, drawn

a laundry, white room

, curly hair

brush: relentless

, counting strokes

5.

layering, a tendril

, tidepool

deepest blue,

6.

a bell, rings

long, and

often questioned,

in full view,

your technicalities

wrote out sentences,

corrected buttonholes,

the leathery strap,

a carcass heavy

as a book,

7.

twinned, partitioned,

morning-wide,

relatively small,

and singled,

Pims, held point,

cotton shirts,

and finished,

estimations flutter,

natural,

a paper cup,

8.

, the city well

has run dry,

sparked

from metaphor,

portrait of

your dinner,

flared, a tempo,

not a statement,

definition,

9.

past lives

so frequently recalled,

present a field,

proposal of

cupcakes,

curiously dismissed,

the sake of argument,

like one

silk stocking,

, present

10.

who are you

, really

littered resemblance,

an emblem of

your swooning door,

another birthday,

emotional worlds,

the trickery of logic,

let who you are

, come