Read Mosquito for Free Online

love is what I hate about myself.

Preface to Augury
    In this place, beside a sigh of traffic,
Regretting nothing as it passes, there
Once was an endless trilling in a wood.
They say it, & saying it makes it so.
    â€”Larry Levis
I. Cardinal
    I saw you kissing
the black pearls
in your reflection’s eyes
& wanted to taste
the endless gift of a tire
filled with rainwater:
concentric circles
loosening themselves
from the throat-wrenching
grasp of the world.
Archimedic rhythm
that, when balanced,
turns you back
to red—a heart
bursting in flutter
above a chain-link fence.
Turned inside
out & pulsing
sugary—thick smoke
in summer air.

II. Oriole
    After the storm,
the horsehair nest
you weaved lay frayed
on the bottom step
like a nail-filled sock.
For weeks, I crunched
the retort of fallen branches,
gathered newspapers
from towns hours away.
By the time I restaked
the vine’s bamboo poles,
the comb you’d stolen
from the bathroom window
was tucked in the tree’s V—
mother’s gray hairs
unfurled into the air
like a night photo
of fireworks.
Two days later
the comb shined new.
You disappeared into
the lassoed tornado,
hiding your plumage
in a privacy where anything
could happen: promises
of wheat fields smoking
like pyres, tomato plants

pecked in the fibrous dark.
What do you name in your
never-ending shade?
Which sacrifice is true loss?
Veiled, a song rattling
the knob-shouldered sumac.
Fork-lightning, fire; raw-throated
through the orchard’s cobalt day.

III. Magpie
    Do you save
the best for last
like I do? Eyes
taken first, rib cage
scoured white.
The squirrel’s belly
must be tender
for you to pick
cruelly all day
with your dagger face.
Reminder of night’s
warm sidewalks,
you are a shadow
in pawnshop alleys.
Watching
from the stop sign,
morning legs
exclamation marks
against the rising sun.
You predict scars,
count soft parts
like a gambler
already spending
his winnings.
Surer than hell
he’ll taste the queen’s
sweaty kiss
after his double down.

Sophisticated
    Spin with me, flamenco-style.
    Â 
    Here—a boutonniere weaved from tender split nails.
    Â 
    I am a three-winged angel, graceful with my fingertips.
    Â 
    My sound, the small particles of prophecy.
    Â 
    Do you believe and stay attached
to your small desires, old fruits,
or do you want to lie down?
    Â 
    It could be foam-white,
the I cannot remember room
or your eyes are white as the clown
fish’s belly. Here is the highway
    Â 
    to the lumpy bed, moldy
with floodwater, headboards
carved from church organs.
    Â 
    It is not necessary to sleep.
    Â 
    The shortcut is closed, laced steely with daytime.

    Â 
    I am here to help. Flares, a white flag.
    Â 
    Siphon gas from my lungs, spread my jelly and sing.
    Â 
    I am one fraction away.
    Â 
    One one-hundredth from what will make all the difference.

Below the Nearer Sky
    The goldfish sprints, fantail
spread like fingers on fire.
    Â 
    It fast-forwards for days—
figure-eights a whirling fury
    Â 
    that spills. Spinning drunkenly,
everything is forgotten. It burns,
    Â 
    a lightning-struck barn.
Its silken flesh unfurls, ribs
    Â 
    shine like a whittled moon.
But skin knotted into ruin
    Â 
    can’t stop it: the staccato jazz
your fingernail flicks doesn’t help.
    Â 
    It will never quit, you think,
until the summer morning
    Â 
    it’s found belly-up in dirty water,
still as a town ravaged by storm.
    Â 
    The fishbowl shimmers dark and golden
as if, in your absence, the heavens

crawled in—packed star chunks
cellophane tight; waiting for you
    Â 
    to shake off your impossible dreams
and bow to that half-whole reflection.

Happy Fun Sex Movie
    Night light rubbing & riffraff.
Singing waxed violence, sky sharp
as razors & fortuitous.
    Â 
    Nibble my nape. My snappiness.
I’ve been blue-foxed, led shackled
to solitary confinement in a field
    Â 
    planted with mimes. With darts.
They tickle my larynx.
Sickly with