the race of the sun
pattered through

on angled feet,
the gypsy-psychic

moment stood

honeyed and crisp
ready to be bitten,

the breath told
a breeze away

from the weapon of
dusk soon approaching

come with me

said your eyes
as they picked blades

of grass and placed them
in a crown

and I took you by the teeth
and kissed you

the skyline watching
all the while

my orchid now blooms
twelve to match
the bird pecking at
midnight

the yellow tongues
of blushed cheeks
become fans for
soft, white petals

inner honeycombs
turn red when
you say
(in perfect sobriety)
how beautiful I am

and for a moment
there are orchids blooming
in the diner

I see a ****** of crows
parting the sky with
a ******* V

it hawks and blecks
down as if to say
good afternoon
to the child wheeling
across federal
on her
pink bicycle—

a travel
that rots and witches
the sweet, grey air
sailing into clouds
of pounding tide—

jewels

colorless
and divorced
drifting
across the
blue-domed
pearl of
missing you

I ain’t waiting in the dark no more
I ain’t proud
I just want to hold you

I still have
your taste

in my mouth:

the dregs
in your blood

your ghost of

disparate powders
and hair
your

red bone

daisy veins

body
sewn to

a butterfly

and the
rain falls in

twelve beasts
as I tell
the window

how I still
write you

when the thin rain
tents over

and patterns
your name

on my roof

I wake up apart
and exquisite just
having slept nine hours.
there is a stout rain—
fallen, realized—water
on my mind in the
arms of the wind.
leafy is my yawn.
longing is my love.
and my hand rises
to rub my numb face
awake.
I am alive in this moment.

I was born on this
back porch
I was born
with a lion in my
brain
I was born with
you, dear sister
300 years ago
in a little town
on the Italian
coast
we played
in the arms of
the Mediterranean
reaching to the light
we saw in each other
never clawing
sometimes crying
always found in the eyes
it was called
a miracle
it was called
unusual
it was thrown into
the fountain
like a rusted penny
dormant joy
buried in a wish
to find you again
and now
here we are
the breeze that died
300 years ago
warm
calm
and smelling of lilacs

quartered darkness drapes
and so the blue painters cry to
fainted and promised womb—

the belly of beast
cut and bled the breast,
coined the moon—
so said its rusty peaks
as they were sticks for legs
and grains of sand

womb held a note
womb hold me close
womb—the breeze
sufficed in c-note string,
the blood dripped and cooled
with pin-tipped vibrato
and so you would
sleep too—

dear one
and progression of static
where the real and unreal
meet

fall hoppers kick to grass
as I walk down
sun-bleach lane

the anhedonia I felt yesterday
is pelted by the wind
away
away
to the breeze beyond
trash-bin creek

I walk past
a meddled roadside lover
kissing her own bloodied hand

must have been
bitten by the white-thing
panting at her feet

the image comes
and passes
with the balanced
autumn sunshine

I touch the twist of barbed wire
that guards a
re-habitated pond

a drop of blood
wells and surfaces
a moon-blazed penny

the dulled copper sting
of flesh and money
merges in the glory
of shortened days

all is accorded to the fleeting
nature of my heartbeat

that which comes and passes

a parhelion forms with
the sun’s peaking out,
irradiating your eye
in crown.

there is a sanguine wonder
to your cigarette as
you drag your lungs
across the floor.

citrine is your smoke
crawling across
the bed.

light moves.

a nanosecond passes by.

you
modified magic lantern
incarnadine
soul
puppet show
short dresses
free
cocktails
little swords
and
big drama
where we
make love
in the
dressing
room

I watch you
don
the sheets
and cut
eye holes
while I grab
the light
and radiate
your
behind
the audience
better not
see
that
***
I’m
protective of
my baking
flour
*****

I’m sorry
I was devouring you
with my eyes
your liturgical eighty-eight
your curves and robes
raising my alter
to this pinnacle of
worship
something holy
to take slowly
into my body
love, I wished
sibling love
not to be mistaken
for religion
for surgical jazz
for something else
love, sister
and my promise—
I won’t go to the pyre
without
you

rest, girl
rest, mother
rest, red disco queen

rest, white willow singing
rest, wind chimes
rest, redbone dog

rest, black sky
rest, yellow moon
rest, opaque stars

rest, *** on stovetop
rest, toes cracking
rest, boy typing

rest, sister
rest, child
rest, soul

rest

the sun machine
is coming down

rest

the children are
watching fire

rest

the thunder is born
with the night

rest

you too will know me,
sister
you will catch my wind
it smells of

tea tree oil

there you stand
on the bridge above rio grande—
miles of rock hungry and unfulfilled,
the spring snow chasing your name
into my mouth,
the synth of sunrise tucked
behind moon-cut mountains.
I pull off on the side and see
this is how I will be without you,
my bright girl

Only the strongest dark lines
cut the vision of your
profile. Your visage—a blazing ball
of gas—atoms emitting light in
every version day.

rain
mud and grass
common prayer
good weather
good people
art
and umbrella bags
because who wants to
get wet?
unless it’s with you
I could
I would
jump into the lake
for that rock
sew
cleanse
initials made in sharpie
and unclamp
we run
around the park
the afternoon surrounds us
the woman in the bikini
passes
and we laugh
iced tea
decaf coffee
cake without teeth
and that airstream camper
you always wanted
I could live in your
backyard
I could live somewhere
not here
in silver
prostrated
with my back to the
moon
like dead
like a mummy
like a mirror
and life would make sense
life would be beautiful
like this run
with perfect amounts of sweat
and conversation that runs
waves in the sand
and tells the squirrels
goodnight, tractor
see you tomorrow
and the land that billows
is dug up
and chewed
like a goodnight poem
this run with you
takes rest
on my soul
and I crack my ribs
to take the spring’s
twilight
aroma

to reach the inside the chest
I must pass each echo of your footfall
in sound, a flowering ice
sterling in black cavity

this is not a misguided note,
nothing that was already written and recycled.
I came here on time
tickled by the frost’s silence

as the birds sing
from the right ear to the left: synchronicity/
something stuck in my gills

who is this effigy?
on my knees is how I asked
let me show you what I mean:

I loved how our days thrived
folding the static rain to air
and the giggles of buggied children
nothing in this nocturnal kit
can clothe us from the light—
god always penetrates

my insides house
the four-year-old me
he digs in the backyard
while we both hold him
in day-lit love
in us, in god, he is never lost

[exoskeleton, exhale]

we judge the railway tonight
the taste of our open sores
we tongue in Ever Day
the things without an answer
sleep together with us
their scales, slivered
and silken with our breath

I open your chest
as I take the red sack off my face
I don’t stop the car
as I bend at the neck
and see my own reflection

even in this cold, this sacred pain
love builds the dawn
paints it in goldisect

even when we lose our way
the generous
bind with us
to the depth of this universe until
the smidge is gone

to reach the inside the chest
I take your hand
and pull through the hindering splinters


is anybody there?
is anybody there?

the silence shapes this boy, unheard
in the sanctuary of dead flies
in the clip-side of the brown, microscopic eye
these words ribbled out my chin:

I’m lost, midnightlove.
Now, I’m lost.

I infra-read you again
now that I told the cold to stop
now that I found the breathing tube/
the muck of black lung
and saw the Ferris Wheel tickets inside;
I drank in that night until a glorious emptiness
housed us, until you couldn’t pinpoint my name. somehow
in this veined river, in the lake filled with echoes, you found me
nameless—perfect. and I realized that all my life, I had been sowing my soul
on your tongue.

I get off my feet,
replace the devils that owned me,
find these hexes in rogue. I am detained no more.
the quieted and shielded
boy finds the fence as I fall, empty,
splitting my lip on your knee.

with these shreds, I count
the particles of light in the darkness.
enter the state of dawn.

as hafiz said,
we are two fat men sitting in a boat. when the boat is rocked,
we bump into each other’s bellies and laugh.

this is how I will remember us:
love filling our bellies to laugh
as we sail away in the little boat
to the cottage on the smooth-stone shore

I hear your name through the pistons
the howl of ruined trees
the dust of colored healing
now dark
circled on the center of my pillow
tail curled under the body
a camel-**** rise and fall of breath
barren as an un-sprouted cherry pit
and my scream was far away
when I heard about you
*dead

Before I lit a match,
I turned on your light.

Before I bought a book,
I took you into my arms.

Before I had her printed
on my skin,

I knew she was you.*

It was night. There was
nothing in the sky—not

even black. The world
was a pale gray, and the

bats—the color of smoke.
Then you came—a woman

from space, dusk
with yellow armor. The

moon resting on ocean. Your
halo, a burning wreath of

gold. You, finally. You who
I’d been waiting for—the girl

who sneezed the black, the one
who said, “goodnight.” You,

my moon and stars.

a haw and saw.
a thorn.

fruit: it is ecstasy
never bit and
undeniable.

you slurp—a cat licking
its paws
ruby and clear.
moth and cloud
drape over fruit,
make up sparkling nectar.

love is sickening.
you spend five dollars on
a rose at a bar for
a girl you will never see
again.

she will take the flower and
throw it in the trash
outside with the hundreds of
other roses.

no matter.
they have fruit, and fruit
concludes. it is life
cut with claws.
their beauty, seemingly to
be always in the clusters above.

*******, rose. **** your dew.

they seem to say. that’s when
the light hits and microbial
bleeds to miss ruby.

JAZZ!

at night retrains
beauty, makes it edible.
the rose, changing the color
of its dew—black pearl in
this drape of mystery-shaped
night.

a little boy sits on
the top of a staircase

his laden, waterlogged
eyelashes droop

his vision fogs
with salt

his heart pulses hot/cool
snowmelt

throughout the body

there are missing
people

no mother
no father

no brother
only boy

locked in house
too scared to sleep

while snowflakes
fall in unfettered

air
there is joy in storm

if one can see it
through the tears

there is comfort
to be had once

the emotion cools
and tree branches are

unburdened from the
weight of ice

movement happens
up the stairs

dear sister
who the boy forgot

was there
places her hand

upon the boy’s
quivering back

"We call it snow
when the parts of God,

too small to bear, contest our bodies"

and angels tell us
to taste the tears

before they freeze
on our red-rubbed

noses
here, taste your tears

says sister.
*they’re salty, aren’t they?

Words long as
The sea
You are above
Every
Articulate
Aspect

girl smudged with
full-zinc expression
and paper feathers—
I wonder what
you think about

your gaze
bathes hot in mind’s basin
as a pink rose skips
the wind across
your clothed table

the trees laurelled above—
so indistinct and stamped
with war-zone bleakness

so painful, your expression
as you take your cup and sip
the daytime-soothe

I look at you one last time—
squint my eyes
and put my thumb over your tiny face
to mark you as my own

I have a 6th sense for
broken people
when I look at them and say
thank you
I can feel what they
feel and it *******
hurts
maybe I’m just projecting
my own pain
but you were always
there to be my
whipping post and
I’m not putting you
through that ****
again
I’m sorry
these words
don’t mean
anything

—helium
along the tracks
squished and turned copper
sounding space scratch—
a record when listened
through some great machine where
James Taylor always hits the
high notes and matter explodes
forming the heaviest gold—us always
singing pennies.
us, remnants
kissing the core
of aging stars.

god meets
mystic: the
swing of winter
and lakes frozen
over.

god meets
Judeo-Christian sinner
whose eyes sought
lead along the lake’s
shore.

heavy.
heavy.

god meets sin:
a welding of
metallic vines and
out of tune music.

god meets underwater
Vulcan as he swallows
a laugh. gasoline
tops the lid
of the lake.

god meets the
fire that wicks the surface
until the body bubbles.

**** you, little
snake!
you beat me at my
own game!
but somehow I know
we’ll start again
and that time
I’ll win
and you’ll look
to the clouds
shake your fist
and declare
**** you,
Dewy!
you beat me at
your own game!
and you’ll meet
me at the finish line
and we’ll drink
lemonade
but until then
I’ll come in second
until then
I’ll look at the clouds
and think
of you
floating
with the sun
in your hands

I shaped you like a door handle,
washed you out with cerulean trees,
I took the clippers to my head
to make myself clean

I stared in your sigh as I
I grabbed your waist and swung you in
rope coo-coo,
eyes you described as muddy pools
turned lime-green cats in bathroom light
there,

you had blond hair,
barely-visible eyelashes,
tall, norwegian beauty,
outer-universe olympian

I was not right within and
you saw, unphased moon again
for the billionth time,
you rolled at my tiny bubbles
and I
waited, baitable breath

every clock was digital 80’s
and you, polite queen,
were tired of holding your spoon—
candy bride

with this candy man,
little bride, little
my worms festered
as I pulled the hair from your neck
and saw my own eye on your spine’s skin—
frail, too deep, and shy/additives to pain

I heard the big crunch
in that mental hospital bathroom,
my universe went back to no-space,
so far from you as we danced
and you looked somewhere else—
much

smaller than an atom’s nucleus
we were everything
but neither of us knew
the gift of dying
to be born again—

You scrape my chin
to my profile—your teeth,
the source of gamma ray burst.
Everything massive,
collapsing. Events on the horizon
eating light, getting us out
of the boon. The small things
of us reduced to a
pinprick at the center—a singularity
of gas and cloud.

I imagine
myself being crushed and
strung backwards.

I try to
loose the knot
tied to the dark

canvas of sky’s skin.
I confide to the rain
my wet lies of

noose,
trigger,
falling gun
taught against each bat
that swings and flutters.

what can I do but stand in the rain
and feel the hail melt in my hand?

I am of little
faith no longer than
a fingernail and proof
of OG goodness
this night of

re- and un-
tying ribbons

I broke up with you last night
because it is my duty to
go lana del rey ghost hunting
in the target parking lot
please
don’t take this personally

this is a medical emergency ossified
in utero part the hair to cover
pink earwax scar innervated this
cochlea this ******* that steals
the spotlight and rooster’s comb
braised sockets for teeth wired through
the rafters kissing corner braces
shallow chromium double-eye poke
like a pile of face bones stacked
paul bunyan forest slide and jump from
the peak to the pool shallow and
undisturbed to dunk your face and
see future pure voodoo spirit board
and voice box locked with tongue-ectomy
removal of cough through neck hole
cardboard cut stickers in half to
write ******, I’m done.

bat-tastic lung
collapse
fragrant raspberry
leaves
gas exchange gone
wrong
little sailor
slivered ocean
reverse gravitational
sinking into
blackened angler doom
new age
humanitarian
loves others
loves discovering
new
truths
loves
plummeting through spaded
blinds
insanely unappreciative
red
the new harvest
the magician blinking
the the sky
imagination finally
makes
sense

I.

and I galumphed
to the rock salt
shore and
collapsed
waiting for
you
to run over
the dune’s
*****

II.

it had only been
a few minutes
but I could see
the rhino cloud
coming
full
steam
and spitting
fire
if only I had
the strength
but you stole that
from me
too

III.

the steam was
fresh against
my cracked
skin
I could feel the
salt melt off
into the
sand
crane swinging
jaws engulfing
my twisted
body

IV.

I did not find you
inside
only an
unbreakable bottle
with an
unreachable
note and a skeleton
with rings
on its
fingers

V.

my last dreams
were ones
of us
on a mountain
hot air balloon
shadow
specked against
the sunset
everything was so
big
the wind blew
your hair
everywhere
as I drank
in the
storm
this was the last
time I remembered
smiling

VI.

black expanse
with a little
white dot
popping from
corner to
corner
life always played games
with me
death was no
different

VII.

this creature
feared you
this creature
was a long visit
with fire burning
and love notes
this creature was
spit out by
your mouth
this creature
was loud by
your breath
this creature
spackled and
magnetized
never reborn
boat stench and
teeth
mashed
and mashed
again
raining on
your body as
the desert breaks from
its last
drought

VIII.

we will meet
again
I’m sure of
it.

sheen spreads from
light blue paranoia—a rainbow,
tough magical, slippery, and krilled

to enter all but my mouth would seem ungrateful

rain, lighthouse, big money,
and the shade of fish approaching

the rope
now shredded, wet braids
to loosen and snap swatched opal
peeping, peering, ripping larger
with the rifted water

and so goes slicing red

who knew you were filled
with gold!
when I stuffed the dynamite down
your throat and ran you
through the casino I wasn’t
expecting a jackpot
maybe a princess piñata or a
party popper
but a corner leather and a
fresh haircut?

no, we’re not
in the 50’s anymore
but your vault was guarded
like mob headquarters when you head
started sputtering
quarters

you the
light-skinned pin action
movie star
looking highly alien
you
my diamond studded
chain

I ****** the blood
off your cranberry hide and
I wiped my mouth
with the wail
of passing stars—
"twang" (a broken guitar)…

you’ve been the prize all along.

your fabric—torn and bent
into antlers as you
breathe in the chimed field
now, caught in fire
now, diseased
now, a hatchet peeling the rotting apple

this is the paradigm of my sadness

You—extragalactic sources
bound into a bouquet of
lilac—your colors used, not actually
seen, invisible but still true.

I am wayworn
run over
self-abused
caught in the length of
her skirt contorting my
body in hope
of releasing
the rabbit trap
videotaped
unresponsive
drugged like a
medication ****

so
please
leave me alone
officer I was stalking
myself in the park
not her
no
never her
because she is
me and I am
no one

Rodin: My love, I am on my knees facing your beautiful body. My mouth is drinking your fire. I ***** us in stone. We are indissoluble.

Camille: I am heaven and hell. I am goddess and fire. You are my chauvinistic art-boy concubine.

Rodin: My dear Camille, can you not see my love for you is rooted in passion not stone or clay or bronze? Can you not feel my tongue lapping at your feet?

Camille: Foolish man. My feet are broken. I walk over you on stumps.

Camille leaves for England. Rodin follows.

Camille: You are boring.

Rodin: My love, can you not see that I am in a depressed mood. Can you not see that your capriciousness plagues me?

Camille: I love another.

Rodin: How can you say these things to me? I give you my heart. I give you my soul. I give you my artistic genius!

Camille: You’re right. You are a genius.

Rodin: Shall I write us up a contract?

Camille: As long as you don’t touch me.

Camille and Rodin return to Paris separately.

Rodin: It has been written. I will mentor you, write you in newspapers, place you in museums, and find you buyers.

Camille: You will not love another? You will spurn all but my art?

Rodin: I will. And you will marry me in return.

Camille: …

Rodin: Is there something wrong, my love?

Camille: Can you not see I am being facetious?

Rodin: My dear, you are my flora and gaiety. You are my chisel and stone. You are my breath and lungs.

Camille: Learn how to breathe without me.

Camille exits. Rodin crumples at the feet of Eternelle Idole.

Rodin: What have I done wrong?

Camille re-enters, her hands caked in clay.

Camille: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Rodin: Shall I get the handcuffs?

Camille: No. The lion’s cage.

*Strong tides and wet fuchsias. Camille enters the cage forever.

spirit stone
the emotion caught
in your embrace
where my body
melts into yours
the perfect blend
of masculine
and feminine
bathing in a river
of marble
the waves are
disquieting
the ring is lost

spirit stone
don’t deceive me
with other women
don’t trick me with
the old man
at your feet
I do not give up
I slave away
I work morning
and night

spirit stone
everything has been
cut
hay, wheat, stone
the interlude in
the fields
the moment when
the ring is found
dawn and thought
watch me
dawn and thought
wear on my
countenance

spirit stone
the moving echo
of my own past
the waltz to come
the hidden
atelier
the moment when
the king falls in love
with his wife
with his child

spirit stone
I am muse
I am artist
I am caught like
a fly
an agnostic
queen who found
the ring
to fall in the arms
of man

spirit stone*
if you keep your
promise
we will grow
with the sky
if you keep your
promise
we will be in
paradise

my dear Cosette,
why did you fall?
why didn’t you pick
yourself back up?

I saw you
on the battle lines
red shemagh
tied about your neck
I saw the bayonet
pierce your
breast
to match your
red
your man’s
clothes

why do we
disguise ourselves,
Cosette?
why don’t women
make history?
why can’t a woman
take a bullet?

my dear Cosette,
we fall
on words
on chisels
on the battle lines
sometimes we don’t
get back up
sometimes we die
before we are dead

my dear Cosette,
I watched you
bleed
I heard you
scream blue
******
you were my sister
and I was the sculptor
to capture
the peace of death
on your face

my dear Cosette,
I watched you die
now rise
to the battle lines
rise
with your head high
let me resurrect you
with my hands

I have a painting of a purple-haired
kurt cobain hanging in
my bathroom so I can feel the
nostalgia of being a broken
head shadow
put in a
anechoic heart-shaped box
a dream split inside myself
halved and halved
again
like I’m living on a tiny
blue sun stuffed in a jar
filled with vinegar
shooting speedballs
in a lukewarm bubble
bath

you are my animal, and
I am your whip.
what exists between us
is only dust—a milky
center of blood
tessellating
with
heart cells.

I’d hide in your
briefcase and
be smuggled across
the boarder as
a cheese knife
if only you’d look
at me—your animal,
my whip sending
flakes of fresh flesh

midway
along
magnets…but

be careful.
once you catch
crack of my sting

there is no going back.

the tiles that encompass me
are falling like dominos
this is blackness at its zenith and
I have a coneful
lucky me
it’s like the summer of ‘96
all over again
and my friend’s dad jumped
in front of a coal train
we ate ice cream that day
in the dank Minnesotan heat
everyone was dripping
the mosquitoes were flocking in
green cloud
ignite
flame
ignite
and the crunch of bones
like this water falling on my shoulders
wash
wash
again
the sticky syrup from my chin and
poor Dane’s pants smell and there is
**** pooling at his ankles
enjoy this chocolate-dipped cone
or possibly this one with
patriotic sprinkles
no
I think I’ll pass
I’m watching my ten-year-old figure
you see this paunch?
it is my heart
it is so fat and ugly
take it from me, god
enjoy it on top of your
sundae
I always looked better red-chested
anyway

I dig into my pockets and find
lint
gum wrappers
the invisible switchblade
of mirror ride and wind’s roll—
the KABOOM!
of diluted catastrophe
or how your mother screams in her sleep

now I understand how seasons
faint from peppered emotion—
strong enough for teeth
to bite and rip the leather
or at least scratch patterns into
that old belt

smooth breeze down the throat
tastes as September dies down
at the alley cat’s feet—
dead prayer
and the leaves swoon to
twitching whiskers

I’ll have you know that this started out
as a love poem
but then I got lazy
and distracted when the dog started biting my leg
and I decided that this process wasn’t
worth it all together
and went outside for a smoke

that’s when I tried to call you
but you didn’t answer
I guess it’s Valentine’s Day
and you’re probably
with some other guy who’s more
sensitive than me
but can he smoke as **** as me?
or cough as loud?
or breathe as heavy?
well probably ******* not
and maybe that’s a good thing
that he’s healthy
and doesn’t smell like the inside of a Texas Roadhouse
before they decided that smoking killed everyone
and no one could do it there
no
not even the good looking people

you always said I was good looking
well
above average
and I cooked good too
and that one Valentine’s Day you said
If you asked me to marry you right now, I’d say yes
that was after I killed the bat in the attic
bought you a bouquet of bleeding hearts and
brought home the puppy
since then
my typewriter has busted
and you have left
P.S.
I still have the dog and
I renamed him Juniper
because that’s what happens when you’re
drunk
and sad
and alone

but now I’m happy
smoking a cigarette
listening to my neighbor’s massive wind chime
conk and sway in the crosswind
and I feel as alive as ever
knowing that you’re
wiping off that red lipstick with a poem I wrote you
because your date just got done
and he’s not sleeping over
and you’re just about to
walk to the back patio
and smoke a cigarette
because you want to die
just as bad as I do

sister
I have this glass in my
hand
ruminating
glass
glass
without
sparkle
I found it under
the park bench
where I lay
drooling on the
bricks
sister
this glass reminds me
of you
this glass reminds me
of earth
blood
the shade where
sand melted
love
sister
I cut so
smooth
so correct
is this blood
I spill
for
you

you in quail feathers means
that your red is my red
and the way that you taste pizza
is the way that I taste it

our
homogeneous brains
hard mother
hard father
the states we were raised in

melt running through
area 41 where the nefarious
Rolando implanted
our splitting
branches

qualia
what it means for you
to have mental states
pure consciousness
perceiving you there
in the corner

your toenails still painted
purple