in retreat i forget that i am not ageless

originally published in NEW Journal for American Poetry, February 2023

evening ginseng, ease and friction.
pricked nightskin, pocketing envy
on-call in long sebaceous life

submerging again, the exit, come, on—
now integrating after the prior interruption
the ledge, now rounded, now waxed,

blastform, ratio of softspeaking destruction
to remainder rolling remnants between
desperate fingertips, willing oilcling
meet piecing, speak

reinforcements cease at the sacrum
spiral in a direction, becoming
the devolution of orientation,

welcome frilled and trilling infinities
of unrest and restless material,
strung, naped to the clip, the line,
length and abandon, still trembling,
a labile resistance, ongoing

I was good in your presence
in my own, presences, all of them
ever-lattice, now-wind between
thickbarrel boughs, staunch presents

pregazing, ante-hension
on the peripheries of disconnect, sensation, otherwise
all that soaked through, dismembered inclemence

hung stem to slice, the deviate fruiting
all over, hands pre-worn since daybreak
the earliest grip came strong, thumbridge, indent to burst

never sat knowing near enough
to meet and make in facing,
fruitful and unsought, instead

stress-tested an undeserving berry
on a stalk on a vine on a bench
in the corner in the way

in the unutterable salience of inattention
nearer nothing now, each expulsion
blue and red, to gloss our affections

forgive me this infirmity
as ever spilling, domed vials, luxuriating
in fluid misapprehension, the white strand

silvering distance, retreating, nether
the river and its occupants, damp-skinned,
squealing, unused to meticulous disposal
borne another decade into mortal knit and splitting

cascade to quotidian altar, foot meets ground
idolatrous stance, broad-shouldered,
hung in well-traveled crevasses, the garment
maintaining double aspect, more perhaps
mirroring subduction in the atmosphere

steam and doxa’s kisses sent on
filling hearts, genera and foolish ores
a fondness that curls around the waiting form
deposing memory and its forthcoming, afterthought

said a young man to a young man
i’m an old man, full of regrets