We crank bones, we strip
strips of skin,
running meter sprints in the tracks
of our veins,
powering our fuel to fuck.
We do the generation shuffle.
We sing.
Our bare feet make blood brother bonds
with the linoleum, the carpet unraveling.
There's lockjaw in our spine,
each squirming vertebrae kissing the next,
stiff and bothered,
tonguing for freedom.
No better words exist beyond these
hollowed trunks, we say.
We say the journey isn't enough until our
toes are weathered stubs.
I've got a spare skeleton for you too,
We do the Saint Michael march.

Like an orange peel, you unraveled my skin,
slicking it back so that the insides
sat fresh on your tongue.
You were slow
reading over each slice with steady precision.
A carpenter, or a mechanic.
You were heavy,
drinking every drop of the juice
not minding the more sour spots,
both ripened and immature.

Like chocolate
like halved peaches in syrup
like the sun lifting its petticoat slow as an apricot
like warm snow
like ice cubes in figure eights down my chest
like a sugar cane field on fire
like spinning in circles until the entire world
melts down around me and I'm
smiling and the grass is catching me
in green tender.

I want to be the stones to your riverbed,
pipeclayed satellites
so that you move forever about my body
and I sturdy along the soft banks of your heart.

And to the softer parts,
to the dunes worn by rushing water and starfish,
sulking and easing their way under your skin,
as they do,
to those submerged shores
I want to knead,
smoothing over every inch of you
until you forget how heavy debris can settle.

Over the cliff of our bed
I am a waterfall.
My backbone curls into rainbows,
my fingers are little pink salmon mating in the spray.
Your shoulder is my shoal
onto which I am unsheathing black-sand claws;
a lazy gull stretching the winter from her wings.

There's snow on the mountaintops now
and my entire body aches.
No nicotine-yellow stains between the knees
but I'm on the porch or out the window
frost on the air, so on my nose
exhaling something like smoke
or indifference, maybe.

From here, there's a whole sky spread like
blueberries and jam, like
fields of stars and I'm sprinting
across them, east, each a little posy
on the palms of my feet.
or some angel, thighs apart, grape lips,
her shoulders tossed,
wan and against a pool of clouds
babbling nonsense like a child, or
an oil painting of the sun
over Rio, or over Borneo or Milan.
She's lifting my face
eyes not even meeting mine because
they're so far off and lost
soft and lazy
about them the reflection of
turquoise is earth brown.

My happiness is a panther,
weary with low groans.
She stalks upon me in silence
sinking low into the earth
so that she may soak the soles of my feet
and climb palms open up the
underside of my skin.

On the street in Tokyo one summer
a woman seized my shoulders,
her coarse hair as coal as night and hugging her face
so that when she opened her mouth
the darkness and roundness of it all
was as if a black hole were to engulf me entirely.
Good nature and sake
dried in spittle on her lip,
she cupped my breasts
and fed me the Universe
thick from her own swollen bosom.

I want to be the stones to your riverbed,
pipeclayed satellites,
so that you move forever about my body
and I sturdy along the soft banks of your heart.

"Damn."

I want to eat peaches with you under the misty sun
because I have baskets full and a blanket for our knees;

but even on my knees (in a heartbeat of course)
there's still seeds beneath the juice.
and I'm still a beast vulgar and hungry
face-first in fruit, tearing pink meat pieces,
slurping up skins in swallows.

I've got wet panties and talons, broad wings, broader feathers,
bellowing and wild,

but I'll drown in a splash of water-- cause that's just all it takes.

Most nights, I'm on tip toes, hands out
plucking away stars and planets and the moon
rounding up whole galaxies in my palms
and throwing the universe at you in armfuls,
blushing,
because I want to give you everything I possibly could give another
until you are full and smiling.
If only to hear you laugh the way you do.
If only to feel your voice, low and honeyed
in "sweetheart"s or "baby"s or "Shayla"s.

All dimples and curls and pigeon toes when sitting,
purple; and gold dangles
light-skinned girl, dark-skinned girl
depending on the translation
hips swivel to the left, breasts that follow
in commanding black bras
and matching lacy panties.
Rolling backwards into handstands for most motherfuckers,
else on the loveseat
whipping love back and forth between the swell
beneath the shorts
and beneath the outer layers,
the lip gloss smiles and masquerades
beneath the veins and bone and guts:
there's a naked, quivering heater
switched on all year long
its dainty wiring peeking out,
the head of the cord puckered.

I bought a sundress yesterday (for you),
did practice twirls and eyelash bats
in the dressing room mirror
as if I'd be meeting you later on in the afternoon
when, maybe, I realized,
I've wasted the dawn of my youth
searching for invaluable ideals,
for reassurance that I can be
treasured,
or for simply some truth that I am
a woman worth waiting for.
Honest, though, that dress is all yours
and probably
I'll never feel you slide it up my thighs,
but it's red
and it's yellow
and kisses just above my knees.

You confess your love like dropping a stone into the ocean.
She swallows it whole and greedy
rolls it about her mouth,
the open waves frill and spray in shudders
bashful, because she needs to taste all she can before it dips
below the surface.
and it dives,
fish or coral on its straight path? it doesn't give a shit
like you
like me, a barking a seagull over our rowboat
in after that stone
desperate after that stone
its slipping between my fingers,
through my hair
always just beyond, just beyond

over my shoulder the moon is a blurred marble
against the dull night of sea

and the farther I chase you,
the further I am from you ,
the quicker I remember I cannot swim.

I'm at the end of the trail, a caboose burning midnight like a poet,
like a nobody
I'm behind Blondie and Blue Eyes and Whiteskinnygirl number one two three
so that I round each corner dead last spinning my charred wheels tough
aching to understand why every other car
will always be golden to you,
to why I'm unimportant
yet you refuse to unhinge these wrists.
From the mountains, from the sea,
from the gravel beneath our tracks, honey,
I can hear you,
groaning my name up my knees,
"Shayla,shayla,shayla,"
a Super C the way you pump steam earthward
as if to make love to the rail I'm making love to for you.

My legs, two stalks of cattail swinging, against the amber yellow sun
are the single stability between us,
thin as a piece of green pastel,
the pestle and the mortar we've taken root in

fragility and so, you've got my hand
three four steps ahead
pulling us into a run my shoulder joint disagrees with
and over it, you're tossing grenades,
indifference which snaps at my feet
boiling the need to catch you.
You are my pond, my soil, my still of day
and still
beneath your palm I am a blossom, a
girlish petal pining in your breeze.

You're making a great circle around my Earth,
my green-blue sphere,
baby, you trickle sweet Carolina gold satelite-honey, daffodil swans snaking
through your orbit
while snatches of caramel pool between my lips.
such a tease
spinning those slender hips a sliver above my atmosphere
so that my fingers just brush the frills
of your skirt.
You push up between Orion and the hilt of his sword
tossing taunt eyes toward my galaxy.
I'm wide, I'm intergalactic,
I've got stars in the back of my throat,
electric and running hot for you.

Two beetles rub horns in the sandbox,
sun on their backs, baking the black sheen.
Twisting ampersands around the others' six stickly sticks,
they're no poets, but they're all Mojgani,
all O'Hara in the way they spiral and coil.