LATE APRIL

Her pictures are all self-created

Simplified approximations

April on the edges of 

a Christmas tree so badly dated

Tinsel strings, the gifted dog

Summer naps with limbs made tan

by the bleach of cotton sheets

Holding hands against the waves

of colorized and stormy beaches

Now the war is dead and done

the captain’s hat a useless heirloom

Empty watermelon rind

still slim of mass and broad of volume

April with her knitted sweater

shadow-sculpted pinkie finger

April with the boyish hair

April, trouble, whistle-ringer

April’s got her camera on

to document a quiet schism

April shooting up and out

proportionating logarithm

Roadtrip to the country house

the floral couch now uncollapsing

Sticking heads through cardboard cutouts

tanning bed for spare relaxing

April in the margins of the

water damaged celebration

Parenthetical negative term

of a lopsided equation

Purple haze a Texas evening

bridesmaids a pastel contortion

Pursing lips and grinning, preening

Christians taking in the orphan

Doc who smiles in the field

grenade scales of squat pineapples

Digs a shelter underground

a lowdown consecrated chapel.
 

April went away because . . .

I can’t pretend I know exactly

Tinsel on the olden tree,

a daughter only most abstractly

Keying up that classic car

clubbing down the Christmas puppy

Laying in a timeless scar

cursing out the Baylor yuppies

Why’d she have to go away?

April, trouble, little sister

April twisting into May

forsythianic wicker-twister

Doomsday bunker under ground

will keep the shells and gases out

and dampen the ungodly sound

of neighbors crying out for help

But April hasn’t been here long

by now I’d hope she’s far away

And I guess she’ll have to bite the bomb

if she should live to see the day.