The furniture here: a space
aching to wear your texture
once again. By night
it is my grief—an ambush
of ghosts. What grace
shall I turn to? Behind
every sacred canvas
on this wall I have traced
out your face. The
webbing of these cracks
I keep neglecting
so I can gather a living
symbol of what spiraled
between my wants
& your wading away from me.
There is nowhere to move onto.
I have sealed the door
to the stairwell of my spine;
my body a basement
brimming with aloneness.
There is only this ribbed
window through which I stare
at a larger window stained
with the moving trace of you.
Aug 11, 2021
Aug 11, 2021 at 1:12 AM UTC
I never meant to fall
but sunrise greased your chassis.
The crest and fall of your jaw—
the blade and bend of it,
mudslide contouring of it—
dropped me ribless at your feet.
O promising land, crisp field
of flesh, whose fireflies
steered my eyes in the darkness—
your land, where my eyes had strayed—
scaled over eolian caves, the slick
basins of your clavicle, onto
the hexa hillocks clustered
like honeycomb chambers
on your abdomen.
I never meant to fall,
but the cursive lines of you,
I might have trod with loose eyes—
even now, there is a voice
drawing them to strike
at the aquifer beneath your waistline,
voice of vined thirst,
of torso and tug—
with them, I struck and drowned
Jul 31, 2021
Jul 31, 2021 at 4:28 AM UTC
press your ears to the green
of your eden. listen
to hell, its realness. it is the feeling
that I write from. a distant burn
that blinks in the blackened
pages of his chest
as a star—only a piece
of the map that has led his heart
to yours, only a sliver to be scrapped
by sunrise. I could speak of this:
his garden, the teeth around its margins,
or the way I waded near its grin,
with both eyes unbuttoned & my soft
heart worn inside-out. but your flesh
is ivory, & where it tapers, a key
to his own. but your throat is flute
enough to tread through his walls. listen.
I will speak of the wild heart
holding you. I have touched it
with my shadows, the deep
rays of my dreams. I have been
to its shrubs that whirl about
like wicks, the ponds full of laughter,
& the caves with leaping
tongues. they are mystery
& aplenty. I could not quench them,
but you will, you will. if one
day, as you lay in his fields,
I stumble over his sky like a word
on fire. remember,
love, to make of me,
a better wish.
Jun 9, 2021
Jun 9, 2021 at 5:58 PM UTC
you are the hand
hauling back
my cries. my mother’s
mother hardened
from dust.
you are almost
my eyes.
you are not sky
or frozen air.
i suspect
you have no skin.
love is my left
wing smacked
on your pane
that i mistook
for an open door.
i let the nights
do their undoing
of my feathers into light.
maybe this way
you would welcome me.
Apr 30, 2021
Apr 30, 2021 at 7:54 PM UTC
I am ready
to ring your rib
around my wrist
in triumph—
the faintest of relics
enliven me. My lips
still layered
as in the night you lost them.
I hope to hammer
your heart
& stuff its soil
in the sutures
of your skull;
I want to call that
the shadow to
kintsugi;
I want our memories never
to seep; to set
them up for decryption.
Unloving is a study—
consider an archaeologist’s
tentative hands
demystifying an artifact
once treasured for its secret
& leaving no spots
behind.
Apr 25, 2021
Apr 25, 2021 at 11:24 PM UTC
Still, you are a muted morning
cradled like a mango—yet
to yellow—in the basket
of my ribcage. May your tongue
have no take from
these tomorrows that taste
of teeth. Dawn where the red ash
stings, fetch your face
from the flames;
if you are fleshed with mine,
flay it off—slowly
you would bleed your own
light. If the night
strips itself of its black dress
and hangs it on your heart,
do not be afraid
to wear it. & When
the weight of your warmth
brings the dust hard on
your knees, kiss
me back, & heal,
rise still.
Feb 1, 2021
Feb 1, 2021 at 10:19 AM UTC
Surely, that sunset is only
his lemon heart falling down
the globe. Love, how you draw the red
from his aorta, smear it
over his center. Surely, this slow sneaking
darkness is only ink spilling to grieve
his beloved—see how metaphors rip that fluff
to constellations; their twinkle would trace
her torso; her treasures; her tales.
& earth would shut its mouth
to listen to his star-studded silence,
would stare as color fades
to soul. Surely the sky is not
so different from me.
Dec 30, 2020
Dec 30, 2020 at 3:11 PM UTC
There’s a holocaust
sweeping through my body
but i call it
love,
strap myself to its stake
as a sacrifice, relish
how its fire
dignifies me,
how the tongue-like torso
of my scent
rolls out to taste
God.
You, with the hot air
for hair, you
with the sparking skin,
feed my flames,
you
hearteater, the mouths
on your cheeks
open wide
& I enter, as if to join
the rest of me; see
how all that is left
circulating in my veins
is your voice; my body,
now inanimate,
an instrument for your
heartsong—hear
its cinders sing like
cicadas—here
is the sequel to your stones
thrice striked.
Dec 26, 2020
Dec 26, 2020 at 1:29 PM UTC
your heart unmasks
to a dagger, already deep into my atriums,
until my muse is replaced
with the bleeding, and each stanza
is your shadow
in shackles. a poem is just a poem
until you perceive it
out of paper—in the silence,
scratching against your skull—until
it begins to burn, your body
bright-blue beneath, your secrets
streaming out like incense—until
it is a grave, with you
more alive in it.
a poem is just a poem until it bites,
until it howls, until it makes
our memory its metaphor
for midnight.
Dec 13, 2020
Dec 13, 2020 at 1:24 PM UTC
Done, ends stitched in a seam—set
to be worn over yourself.
A stain so bright, you sparkle.
Too far forward to flip. The sipper,
the straw, the soda. Bleeding ink
every blink, but still brimming.
Ripped apart like a rainbow.
A love letter to life still
in the works.
So dead you’re divine.
Only visible in the love-light.
Weird as a plant that bites
the bully, as a phlox
sprouting through sand.
Wingless like wind, fin-less
like a fluid. Lost but
listening to your own heart.
Found.
Dec 10, 2020
Dec 10, 2020 at 3:44 PM UTC