Tender Pieces

here are two of the nine pieces i've written since i read Tender Buttons. the larger body of poems is roughly titled A Brutal Crib.

these poems are very new, very hot and tender. be gentle with them. they are not imitations. they know not what they do.



YELLOW LP
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Start with a modern understanding of the room around you. Does the furniture fit into a pin. Does the sound begin to drown itself. Is the toil too great. There are chairs, a latter, many saucers, clothes stacked. In this way we make music.

Move laterally across the cut and down below a forest of loud key strikes. A voice drinking water, a voice blisters, a voice and a lack of boombox revelations.

Control, it is then you begin to feel a loss of control. You are currently lost. On a pile of notes rests our forgotten heads. It is a relief to be sleeping, it is never terrible to sleep, never alone.

Begin to see a quality in the escape of wind.

A series of claps and a hunter's bow both splinter in the same moment. Eyes using light to make a sound that is more breathable.

Our voices manifesting as already being written, our dogs laying unwritten, wishing more written. Not insufferable and ageless yet more tired.

There are little shapes across the walls. There is sun and also night.





CELLPHONE
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A specific sight and the ability to anguish upon it, to tape crooked stripes against, to take up jumpy guitar strings.

Motion is related to finding. It is a color and finds for us. Can it combat fatigue and width. A dead squirrel on the porch is still a unit of time, a definite sudden chill across both shoulders. Several people stop breathing at the same moment.