Table of Contents
Pressed against these days, & against | Someone left the lights on, so that nearly | Always, as if on cue, the trains | So maybe to region here means without | Over the fence, & inside this hour’s darkness | When left behind those other rooms | With every apology, however small, comes | Or maybe to region here means | Or maybe to region here explains | In the journal of memory, no corners | Every chair can be alone, sit | If every sorrow located along | Tonight finds the chair again, but this time elsewhere, | Because the journal of memory stays | If beyond the picture plane, just past | Where a slow & gradual greening, well | Sorry should know better, but sorry’s only | Suddenly doors hold up the beige of this | In the only lighted window, an empty chair | Our hands at dusk on the railing between almost & | Say rolling, or where hills crest & give | Before any typo put down, a near-guilty | That sense of scale & some distance makes | Marked by weather pattern & daylight, we can | In the journal of memory, any page | Already a ghost, this town | First worries of the season & all we’re thinking | Held, no stilled, there the hours | Call it deliberate, yours, & then | Nearly finished now, the building becomes | Every built thing learns to lean & buckle, any | This morning a ladder | Today the road on the bridge painted | Rare, of late, a day of river | This year has never started like this, the headline read | Late night & only sometimes, we let | These days want belongs | Here: this corner in any season, each | How that word stretches to mean: little | Or maybe to region here means not diminishing | No one on the curb across the street | Grown accustomed to weather’s rough | How that city became a city we didn’t | Almost-summer a wide porch | When we mark where we were not, | Call whatever between us a near vocation, part | Not only what defines every condition of | If looking a small window | Elsewhere’s never a place | Every doorframe holds tight | Or maybe to region here requires the opposite of | How the journal of memory forgot to note | Because there are rooms empty & rooms | In the journal of memory, another | Once leaning then taken down to expose | Early summer & that building yawns | Because the parking lot was & now isn’t | In the journal of memory, not only | Nothing opens these days or opens | Because the weeks limp by—every limb heavy | In whatever clearing we made, settling in | Where looking out also means what comes | To make of this day | Some days landlocked doesn’t mean water | If any season could, this one | Or maybe to region here could be | Sometimes, lately, not knowing how | Every so often the journal of memory concedes | Every kind of season makes mirage of | Drenched, the journal of memory | To discover a city’s skyscape could be made | No fish swimming in that barely | If the journal of memory leaves behind | Maybe it’s all just waiting, what we call | Barely morning & the men | Notes | Acknowledgments | About the Author | Free Verse Editions