proof

step all the way in why wait to go home
again just to keep reading just
cross this block of church
there is a special problem with serial commas
this void daguerrotype this movie set this crime scene



© alr 2010

forward

attached please find
a red 3 blinking
in a black tunnel please
repeat all music
find a commute
attached in flashback


© alr 2010

sf

turn the corner early nobody
on carmine
sudden slender anon
round glasses, wave hello,
would this be you
at fifty
to not know this
is like woolworth apex
invisible in cloud



© alr 2009

noir transit

to the wrought building’s subway threshold rush,
plush russet chamber, drop us from our day
gondola to a bygone avant-garde

the gust and push, the letterbox and ash,
the countries of an Eliot or Crane

is dying easy — taking off a suit —
the way you miss
a train
pulling away




© alr 2009

Giving

In this makeshift room
nondescript phrases

halfway there
you okay

linger too long in the air

I am never the addressee
but in the cloud of how you doing and relax
I empty and double myself at the same time
and staring up into the light imagine purgatory

as a functional space just like this one
where, drained, you ask if you can go
and a last disembodied voice will speak to you
They won't hold you hostage no more.



© alr 2009

Physician

What anger in
this rough patch
of skin.

How I would rather linger
on the memory
of surprise,

the way it took a minute
for the simple eros
of diagnosis to sink in:

a hand had reached up
and was touching
a face.



© alr 2009