K e l l y H o f f e r —

Constraints I give the page as it builds my virtual life

when I put a peach in my mouth I want to suck on its fuzzy heart

any mishap should be Eros waiting in a hedge, every meeting cut with foliage

the foreground and background oscillate beyond arbitration

clouds unsettlable, they are lighter or darker or lighter than the sky

lashes fall from my eyes without ceremony

there will be a wringer for clothes, a ringer for bells

my team will be stacked with sorrow

every patch of earth nominated by a commemorative plaque

I want anger to come only in flashes and leave           without residue

I want a loop of my mother embarrassing me, cheering

too loud in a grade school gymnasium

the dream of you takes flesh, clay cracks and falls     from your shoulders

I want to forget the things I want

to forget

my mother calls the mountain a woman and she’s out every day

your desire for me is of a size

undeniable, embarrassing

I want the drama of a snowcap

and for heat to be just       heat

Multiple fruit

a non-walnut tree shows me its fruit as if on a platter      with garnish

the underside of its canopy is the back of an embroidered sampler

small branches threading elsewhere to offer the sky

fancy baubles              the tree with the best fruit for imagining pom-poms

is the Osage orange, its ripening multiple, bumpy, and a favorite

of wooly mammoths and ground sloths

no one living hangs glass bottles around Osage-orange blossoms to catch

the chartreuse fruit in brandy   pears own this ship-in-a-bottle trick

then again, every fig captures a wasp                 so I am choosing

between fantasies of pliable flesh    knowing well the appeals of glaze slicking

a taut surface   and female inflorescence        Osage-orange wood burns hotter

than smoke-tree wood       a smoke tree is an image

of the atmosphere feathering, fibers camouflage as a shift in the state      of matter

to be the favorite of an extinct species is probably an omen

the Osage’s dried thorny limbs were cattle deterrents but the deer still come

to our garden, eating with the air of collecting

an offering from an altar

we have a poison pile in the backyard where we are heaping walnuts

the walnut’s core hard and round enough to roll an ankle, jill tumbling jackless, etc

down a hill of omens—and what happens                   to the stinger?

the air today without particulate, shadows too exact                I feel naked

facing the sun               I arrange          myself on a platter, managing my garish limbs

there are mice, their tails lacing

in and out of the compost pile

my retina holds a walnut tree as big as a house             with all its windows

my eyes take in           the poison and the inedible, red provisions untouched

noting the bitter with the cloying sweet

the smoke tree named for the flashless luck

of branches wrapped in a mauve cloud

and no fire

.