hb

I venture to find reasons why I prefer

orange juice with pulp,

I can't find any

though I hadn’t considered long

 

before forgetting why it mattered

and trashing the carton.

How I can’t remove all the pieces

of reason

 

in precise conjunction,

the crossroads of an intriguing  look,

like the man I saw yesterday

with the supraorbital ridge;

 

eye sockets like snow globes,

densely lined containers defining

a skull bathed in multi-millennium of

altered morning,

 

cast and present

at a suntanned table for ten

where he’d talk with his Love and friend,

his two young boys,

 

one, a face to match,

curled features unwashed by dilution of now,

the prematurely pocked skin,

the way his friend seems to

 

mimic a certain atmospheric milieu,

ridges and jawline clinging to a past

we think about without comprehending,

his version of treading community a

 

Janes Addiction tee and

quizzing the youngest boy on cardiac arrest,

inaudibly

brutish lips

 

appealing to the distance from my feet

to landscapes inhabited

and landscapes

since drowned.