I want everything to happen at dawn,

sand between toes and plum light

on the water. You know

I get like this sometimes—I listen

for footsteps that will never come,

remember waves I’ve never seen,

watch them fold and break and slowly

whet stones that jut up from coastlines,

and today I learn something old

about the sea. Even the conch is a bit

of a blade, coiling itself around itself,

spiraling to a point, so that all we find

lovely in its folds forms

the outline of a dagger.

Coming Back for You

Coming Back for You

Tonight the tide will stretch out. Syringes

and splinters of glass will be collected.

Shells and stones that aren’t needed

until morning will be left cleaving beach.

You’ll forget that sound in a month

then remember it on a runway waiting

for your ears to pop. In Pittsburgh

a vat overflows and scalds a foundryman

while a young chef somewhere smothers

a fire because she lost control of it.

In a backyard, a boy learns a boomerang

doesn’t come back to you, only your location;

if you should be elsewhere when I return

I may be lost, twirling out of view, while

exhaust hurries from a bus in Michigan

hurrying a bouquet of passengers from an airport

to the missed. An arm scratched red.

A zippered pouch full of cures. An addict

who can’t stop picking at his face

rolls a scab between fingers

for the remainder of the trip. You watch him

while stroking a cowry on the necklace I strung

in Oregon. A pair of teenagers too frightened

to head home fall asleep watching dawn,

the Pacific comes ashore to reclaim a hermit crab

finding only the shell, immovable where it rests.

Hum of the Machinist’s Lover

Hum of the Machinist’s Lover

There is zinc under your

breastplate, copper in your

throat. I polish your steel

to a shimmer before

even considering

the music. Your tutu,

a nickel-plated half

circle with pleats hammered

one by one. Eyes flicker

like flashlights are behind

them because flashlights are

behind them, wired to

panels, triggered by my

touch. Place your cold pincer

against my fleshy palm,

lean forward on your wheels.

In a voice like cotton,

hum us a melody

from the speaker box I

soldered to your belly.

It’s fine if you’re afraid.

Tell me where it aches. Tell

me where rust encroaches—

I know what oxygen

does to your surface—How

could I not? I am breath

and air and air.

Hum for the Hammer

Hum for the Hammer

Be held. You will be unable

to hold back, and it will be

necessary to get used

to the downward swing,

anticipate the strike and love it,

if for no other reason than to love

the upward swing and sturdy

rhythm that accompanies the ting.

Be hickory or ash, straight-grained

and strong enough to survive overstrikes—

one miss could snap your neck.