Gardenia II.

Down to the blight of the moon-rise I shunned
Ether dressed in her black dress, stood a leaf left
Never gazing beyond the twirling veins
In all the flowers and the rain

In mind.

and I’ve never known him
this man of earth, of war
and weedy cypress, lizards
and their fluted skins
married to the wind;
phantom epistles
from Vietnam

“When I Die” by Nick Pipitone.

When I die, I want to see Jesus’ face
wash his feet, though he’d wash mine
because he did it for the apostles

to grief.

bare-bones / wed to abandoning in-utero
fingers; the apple bursts
like an appendix

Ocean to Ocean.

Ophelia flowers

leaving

to the excessive

blindness

by the fingernails of psithurism,

and trees that inherit the blood red