The wildflowers

The wildflowers from your wedding strain
     from my windowsill to filtered sun.

They grow soft like hair from black soil,
     roots contained in peanut butter jars.

You were braided together with rings,
     sowing, even in summer, a new plot.

A conversion

My mother cried, my father frowned,
and the living room grew tense and full
like the Tolstoy I sheltered behind
as my brother admitted atheism.

Calgary customs

Calgary customs dissected my heart,
opening handwritten notes
collected in my wallet,

unpacking my clothes, and cycling
through photographs and phone
calls like a gossip.

I was whittled down to my marrow
and brother to a guitarist with
his pockets out too.

The empty airport exhaled when I,
like a stray, limped outside
in search of sanctuary.

With cropped hair

With cropped hair, your laughs

were cut short too.

So we folded our newspapers,

so serious in our

new, misguided sympathy for

the printed word.

Tonight spilled

Tonight spilled bourbon,
tears, and red bull across my
fabric composure.

The City and her orange tape

The museum's height forgave the City her orange tape,
while sunlight forgot each east office in limestone
glass, and red ink.  Yet what altitude absolved
and evening hid, still echoed through my voice.

Home by bicycle

My Schwinn spokes vibrated the neck of Sooner Rd

like a violin string, the lone Stradivarius in a roaring 

Stratocaster line under this Oklahoma, stratiform sky—

and I tuned this autobahn precise as Audubon. 

Breathing

White practice jerseys and shoulder pads outpaced my

stung lungs each season, I lagged heavyhearted.

So I learned the light patterns of my checkerboard 

campus with a camera for companionship,

but black, knit flowers, in hovering lace swathed

her dress and me—I never could breathe.