Dear Cut/Throat,

If I could keep her
alert for the swift
interrupted lisp

useless rhyme cluttered
mother’s bitter tongue
episodic heap

language an old house
now a lulling sift
uncorrected script

and you before night
answered other than
poetry uncut

artists continue
their defective re-
cord like the trusting

animals they are
as if beautiful
thing/to discover

this passage follows
a pessimist and
the great sex spiral

enclosing next to
nothing—impossible
yet we stand transfixed

hoping frailty
supreme and the way you
walk and the way you

watch the water’s edge
slowly arriving
that your futile might

hands clapped together
first foot stepping down
hearing/touching/drifts

into the next verse
and sets a slow match
to a mouthful of

phrases old branches
brought down by the same
gesture used for dance!