In the Neighborhood of Horses

I have a piano,
it goes off and on.

Ladybugs in the hand vac,
stuck in the paint.

Paint in the hand vac.
Six shutters on the walk.

The sea is like an ocean.
That dog had its teeth prepared.

The hills roll the bad air in.

No Such Thing as Fool’s Gold

Derived by force or chance
within an enclosed system
of echoes & stones
the occasional wooden thing
that will catch when lit
the quarry resides
in perpetual rain
slick & converted
beyond the usual doom
inflicted on anything not
human or whore
but glittering nonetheless
& no less worthy
of regard because

With One Foot in the Water
or The Preternatural Swiftness of the Estuarine Crocodile

or occasion by which we whump the bank expectantly,
collective eyes catching a leg, a tail in the reeds,
the boat so loud in its pressing the sound provides cover
for a fart that has physical presence as it runs down
a leg, darling, there one is, all seven meters of him
unfolding for some ultraviolet through the clouds:
a solitary click becomes a barrage, I stop counting
at 29 but fingertips go on triggering until the driver cuts
the motor and we stop, and we stop our fingers
to look at the driver. Is this part of the plan,
someone asks, to which the driver says something
about so rare-to see-so close / oh-how-precious,
and someone else asks, Is it even real it’s not moving
for fuck’s sake, and with something terrible to seize
we affirm the assertion with a murmur, angry and relieved,
and when we’re almost through a father yells
bloody cheat! with a grin and grabs the driver by the arm
as if to pitch him, and the driver laughs but his eyes don’t,
and seeing this, several on that boat step forward,
women and men, to get a hold of him, and when
he’s collapsed into the river, the thing moves
from the reeds and makes him disappear before any of us
can think to lift a finger, or a foot, to try to