Immediately Thinking

toothless as salt: crimped rim. Overfed gateness.
A little leaflet of tears lilts, falls out. Garden
chewing on the stars and enclosed, the fissure
you’re hearing sinks what you’re hearing in the days,
toothless as salt. I guard you, I read
until I am carved.

*

a hole that rotates into a day thus largely I survive
apocryphal event and reason to hang her harp
through the convolvulus of an engine of our love:
that all dolls like ours be beaten, be written, be teared
away. I had produced no music. And the friends move on.

—Steve Willard

Steve Willard’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Joss, and Volt. He lives in San Diego.

Originally published in the summer 2004 issue of Boston Review.