un/ familiar/

From far away Forest Rec looks green but when you're walking on it it looks all muddy and bare, and the closer you look the less green it looks, it's just all these separate small bits like hairs and in between them is mud. We walk towards the middle of it and Sam is whining at Jase. Where's the zoot? He's so small, little roundheaded 11-year-old fucker, but he's always the one who wants the next zoot, light the zoot, where's the zoot Jase, and Jase is ignoring him so Sam grabs Jase's North Face...

Suddenly, the person next to you jumps up. Their knees are slightly bent forward, their body rigid. Their eyes are closed tightly, face flushed, arms outstretched, their hands clenching and then opening with the rhythm of the pulses. Their alternately rising and falling voice seems to shake and break us with its volume and intensity. Then their arms drop, their eyes open. You catch their glance and an expression of total, questioning bewilderment passes over their face. I want to be silent, but my tongue is locked in place, they say. I hear my words, but I do not understand them. Then, almost without having to catch their breath, they pass into language...

And suddenly I’m 5 again / Plugging my nose as I take my first plunge / Into the frigid backyard pool / What pool? What backyard? you ask / I don’t know, this is the first time I’ve been here...

I have been invited to go for a swim with Brendan Behan. It’s a little after 8am. It’s not an invitation I would usually accept, given the red flags on the beach this time of year, but I was bored, and the flights were cheap and Brendan Behan is very persuasive. The sky is whitening. The concrete walkways of the bathing place aren’t busy; a few sinewy older men exchange pleasantries in the changing area, delicately shake out their clothes, hang them up on the pegs provided so they don’t get wet. The tide is high, brimming around the rocks. Waves spill, now and again, across the grey plateau. The invitation stated, clearly, that offerings must be made to Brendan Behan...

I break everything I see / like Venus who cares / where the sun rises / if night could turn back / time I would file heart’s / teeth blunt...

When I was young, I played the flute. It wasn’t something I enjoyed very much, or felt I was very good at: when I first brought it home in third grade and tried to make a sound, I quickly gave up, dismissing my ineptitude as the fault of the instrument (I decided it needed valve oil, something I now understand is only necessary for brass instruments). I never blame the instrument now...

Grandpa has two homes.  He built his first on a small hillside / meadow, cobbled from uneven stones. Mortar snakes through / frost-stretched clefts.  The rough outside resists rain’s smoothing / touch, beckons the jagged outcroppings further up...