Day 7, 40 minutes, 40 poems, 40 days

This is a true statement

I watched a man die today,
deliberately and by choice.
No longer
able to gauge
how heavy my breaths
had become,
I needed to know
how perfectly
still the chest becomes
when all the beautiful
things are gone.

Day 5, 40 minutes, 40 poems, 40 days

What My Dog Must Have Known at the Moment of His Death in Five Lines or Less

My girl--
muddy, like the creek bed
like walks through wilted hay fields
and at last
salt.

Day 4, 40 minutes, 40 poems, 40 days

Form Exercise

Day 3, 40 minutes, 40 poems, 40 days

The Benefits of Godlessness

Prayers will not matter when the world ends
—sun swallows his planets; earth turns herself inside out—
we cannot be transcendent
ushering in the forgiven.

How beautiful, the countless bones
decorated particles, diamonds
created
to tempt the keepers
or destroyed,
to absolve our sins
against the gods
we once called stars.

Day 2, 40 minutes, 40 poems, 40 days

The Poet's Wife (Ars Poetica)

She wonders, some mornings
as she does now
if today he will
find the words to sculpt her
slight hips on the page. Hopes
he will notice
the lyrical rise and fall of breasts
and the crescendo of her exhalation.

He struggles most days,
to find words enough
to accurately describe a fern, let alone
convey the godliness of
her hip
pressed against his side or
the breast,
unassuming in its curve, rising.

Day 1, 40 minutes, 40 poems, 40 days

“No more dreaming of the day, as if death itself was undone. “

I always imagine my death in a bathtub.
It seems only fitting that
As I entered with beats and breaths
I should leave in deep gulps—water and lung
Counting backward to zero.