A bruise, blue in the muscle, you impinge upon me. As bone hugs the ache home, so I'm vexed to love you, your body the shape of returns, your hair a torso of light, your heat I must have, your opening I'd eat, each moment of that soft-finned fruit, inverted fountain in which I don't see me.

And I never believed that the multitude / of dreams and many words were vain.

Brimming. That's what it is, I want to get to a place where my sentences enact brimming.

The knowledge that it takes to write a poem gets burnt up in the writing of the poem.

To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he'd removed the iron sliver I thought I'd die from. I can't remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face.

Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

The lyric self is the self; the narrative self is not.