LILY BROWN
WATER-ROCKING
The kid in the lot eats
from a paper box.
A horse sticks to his hood.
A figurehead freezes
on its ship. The road isn’t water.
Pink memories of teeth,
crinkling, celebration
a shot in the
face. The dead spoil
the view. Water is salvage.
Water from
for a pool in the
hills. A big red boat
with blue trim floats,
some water
slams against a rock.
Far away, another rock splits.
The top half shoves the sand.
Children lose. Bears slip
from chunks of
ice.
The kid with the horse
on his car drinks
beer
and crushes the can;
he takes three
parking spots to parallel
the ocean.
THIS
BACKWARDS
All the once new things rust
or go missing.
I think the plastics
to sink them. Rock, snow globe, buffalo nickel
collection…this or that
amalgamation of shiny unrecyclable shit.
The sun on the dirty river’s mug was
better.
At the high window
someone’s face was stronger.
The letters, non-silicone, nonpermanent,
an invisible anchor
on sea floor,
under a boat I’ve never
seen,
reflect like a watch face
on the ceiling.
———
In January the hills
unbutton their pants,
ward back the swept-up
winter,
eastern plow’s attempt to
file.
Here, west of it, hill with cleft-chin
climbs, big
with water-busting
leaves, above the freeway.
Tree posing as flower:
make the machine
mistaken.
———
A woman talks quietly.
It is her nature.
A man talks loudly.
It is his nature.
Have they chosen each other or is it fiction,
what they see?
Through his eyes, through hers, light may
bounce
specifically from their
features.
I can’t see light sneaking
anywhere. He says, while you enjoy your coffee,
I’ll go to the bathroom.
He says, here’s the
light. I place it in your
glass.
Here’s how light stays when I’m gone.
TRANSFERENCE
I
am watching TV. We expect too much
from each other. Our faces are made
of stairs.
Each step hardens.
Each
case concludes nothing.
I
am floating
down the stairs
after a morning
of serial drama. Fantasy
plays its part; TV weds me
and reverie.
A sailboat’s a vessel.
A
sailboat’s on the stair.
I’ve
let you box my insides.
TO LEFT, FROM RIGHT
Lift up and enter the body
from above. Be the window
that lowers to wall,
in houses on bays,
where glasses are ships. Sink
by sleight of water
and not by wreck.
———
Conversation’s cobbled
from complaint. When none remain
I am a case complete. The
difference between people
and drakes is we paint ourselves.
———
Waves are greyhounds
that out-shoulder one another.
The seal’s not stopped.
Surface
breaching is more than we
manage.
———
I found the secret—
Don’t tell
him what he sees. We can’t see
from his mammalian eyes.
There’s one question.
The name we’ll give
it’s an apparition.
———
The seal’s whiskers sense something
above and to the side.
———
When I say we I don’t mean
we’re the same, I mean
we fall on each
other.