*
In the cheek flies the blood’s red semaphore.
Has it been struck? Or is it signing shame,
Or love—one of whose corners dragged the ground?
The proper way to dispose of it is burning.

*
Standards of distance—cerulean, ultramarine,
Indigo. Point where all perspectives taper—
The mountain ridge like torn construction paper.
The voice bending, “My baby done gone and left me.”

*
Green snaps to attention in the trees,
Grass parading Independence Day.
But oh, it is deciduous, deciduous.
False summer is pledging his allegiance.

*
Dawn rises blank, hungover. Laundry pinned
Out on the front line waves its wan despair—
I give up—the morning after the night
Of drunken fighting. Three sheets to the wind.