Evan Nagle

Venice  Beach

   Rubbed lank, bleak, like a lake,
Black ink lack-plashes blue.
The water, water
    The water
   Reasonably eats
Away the rock. And if truth, too,
Scoffs again at the gains
I've made, rubbing my lackluster
Grasp down (dumb) to vapor,
I can't complain. I'll let her.
        Earth in her
Underthing and I (in hers)
In mine. This is

    Where water's water's
End, and air's is air.
   The very shed-
Smelling fish-coughing seas
           Around me—
   They're fully flung, and
       Then, they're disciplined.

Wind From What Moves

Birds—
They are a law. Like rain is
A law
And legs on a live horse. Or
Pittsburgh, where all possible laws sit around
Feeling sorry for themselves
And where the lakes go springing leaks like gray old ghosts,
Birds—
Some say they're a stupidity up in the sumped-up air
But gray, anyway, there.

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