Fact: things are like other things. Supposition: liking

tweets is like a simile. A house on fire. Like

an inconsequence. My love

is like a rose. A daikon radish. Birdsong

like a car alarm. My love is like

a transuranic element. Or a glass half full

of milk five minutes

from the refrigerator, suspended

between palm, floor,

and the condensation that coats it.

Fact: some things are something

else. A thought is a single

-celled organism. Supposition: to speak

is a rhizome. My

love is a vowel sound. An assonance. A

round mouth’s red. Fact: the poet tells

me my bones are already ninety

percent cold

war detritus, which is to say

the act of telling bears the fact, not

the bones. Fact:

a prophet is always a poet, but not the reverse. A prophet

is an apocalypse. An apocalypse a sheet

pulled off a rear-view mirror. A moment’s

sun is days, minutes, or millirems. Accumulation

a spending. My love is a spatial category. A semiotic

decomposition. A childhood is a Kodak film

canister, or

a rawboned calf

muscle in white knee

socks. My love is

a poet. My love

is the face of a poet really which

is the face of the hunter half

transformed into stag or wounded

dog. A doe is a laurel tree. My

love is a baseball bat. My love is a wound

-up clock spring, a temporal

dissonance, a metaphor

is conceit, my love is like my beloved

is the species of dark

and warmth that closes

over hands

in coat pockets in

an air-conditioned room.