Must I admit: that
being with you was like
pulling out a single
strand of hair, daily.
Look—-
this fleshy white
button ferally crowning
To begin: with the scraping
of my own scalp off
lining brainwashed
finger nails as a reminder
to my heart still beating
upon this earth
so that you may take
the bottom piece to split
my split ends in half
leaving broken off
eyelashes underneath
the talons. Were they your
keepsake to search a shine
when combing foreign
locks? Your reminder
in the strangeness of
other bloodstained
women?

In midday I watched the children play
on the west side of town
outside my classroom window.
I thought how bright the paper is inside
with blues and limes and how proud
the colors stand within the skin to be
a pioneer for the small and tender.

With the last of the spiders wiped
with pencil textiles I could hear
these tiny howls, a gathering of five boys
throwing around a football remaining invisible
behind thumb greased glass.
Surely children’s beady-eyes bright in hopes
for resulted gutting knees and grass filled mouths
is a life lesson of it’s own.
But, outside is a war and I am watching
against a patchy globe rondure the blur
of a boy beaten down around the ball;
the white lace shinning off
a sunlit fire pit of loss.

It was like watching nerves of growth
as an oceans current; the ripples
carrying them along onto an islands sand.
The red shirted boy holding onto himself,
clenching for breathe while the others like flies
when surrounding the pig; hovering over meat
raw and stiff.

for Megan*

You do not know me
but i want to tell you,
always, how you are mine.

Though I may be trapped
between the toxins of the
mountains; the smoke

may it cloud my vision.
I would scream from the roof
of my neighbors home,

or on the top of my mothers,
or on the top of any house
that may never feel

like my own. I suffice.
I dream of cutting out
images of your knuckle

sized socks, a knitted shield
from the sun your small black
thickness covering dents.

You would hold onto it
until you’ve grown in size
when you begin to learn

meals on the granite, your feet
stretching on the maplewood,
the smell of cinnamon you

light to unravel my knotted
spine. Yes, I would still
be married to the man I love

and we would blow bubbles
against the railings of our balcony.
The messages filled with humility,

and how to be fair with the weather,
and to the young woman
who fills your heart to the brim

in a small distant room with two or three
strange beds and books that I have
managed to scrape together loosely

when you grow old and put them
on a white shelf with child
embracing the new curves she bore.

Oh, there is lavender shining off
the bounce, circular and traveling
away from me. I am lonely

in every language but our own
these little notes I wish
to send to you, wherever

you really are, no, not
even the deepest ocean
could writhe in me only

the distance of water is already
in my morning tears and the chills
that never leave my bedside

of the day when I put you
in a boat and sailed you off.
Could there have been

any other way? I beg you,
please come back.

Tell me again of the body culled
from the creek; your calves how
they stiffened in its heavy red flow.
Remind me of her neck porcelain
plum scent, rosewater cheeks, and how
you watched their color fade between
the light of weeping bottlebrushes.
Tell me that you’ve known her.
That the bellies water was an act
of song; this poor swallowed ballad.
Or say that this is only the beginning.
How you still believe we will meet
on the other side—-
this brook carrying Spring then to it’s
sides and you and I are not mournful,
but as one as much as the apple rock moss.
The one holding her back before raising her out.
Hair half in air, hair half spread underneath.

Myth says when one cupped hand whispers of a name
is when you feel the wind breathe out the same
from where you stand—brushing chimes—together as one.

I am writing this in a white broken lawn chair
watching the leaves die each way and still I think of you.
Cousin and I shared your secrets. I wondered, if that wind

wrestled you the same as my branches from wherever
you may float. Did they pick up and take off little by little—
showing bones beetling from dirt off your chest?

Did you death rattle over once more when hearing
of your daughters ache in the surrender of knowing
where she truly comes from, at all?

There are little wars inside my head. One particular scene
playing again after the ink has spread across like widescreen
wild fires and begin over your own spanish revival inside a boat.

Different men after men, different bags with different hair,
different waves and different birds. Different guns and
different embers. Different scars, even different ends.

And all of your many lost, different, children.

in traveling letters from you I feel that we too
could visit Barcelona, or a far off European museum
filled with righteous Athenian romances layered
with Greek sculptures. In lieu of studying
the curves of their form we’d rather find ourselves
taking in our bodies, yours being far more interesting,
forever, than those all beautiful, ivory, and headless.

When I receive Frank O’ Hara in mornings over coffee
rolling off your tongue and into a black roasted cloud;
I smell even the greyest of overcasts—- our bodies
pressing against solemn and still in some bright yellow
cab wedged between the bustling bikes and buses
of New York City. It is only appropriate because you are
as aesthetically striking as a skyscraper, because your mind
is as vibrant as every neon light guiding me like a
moth straight back into your shape.

When I receive Frank O’ Hara in our first apartment,
may it be ideal or busted, begin with one block of prose
framed against the entrance wall as the eggs cook
contrarily, its yoke the orange color of evening light.
Warm near the ashtrays centered for our guests filtering
to and fro. Small in pacts and lovely like neighborhood flowers.
We’ll press our bellies side by side, the corners of our bed
holding and map Madrid, or even further to Japan, with our
fingers tracing like constellations upon the rest of the empty
spatial plaster. Left that way for only his words and the rest
that is left between us; all that is naked and unspoken.

Do you remember how thin the light was
in December?
Creeping in a shade of honey
gloss across our faces as we laid upon
the hardwood floor?
Yes, didn’t it box us in so closely?
That night when the world granted us awareness
of each others presence
in this life?
Like shaking minors who know not how
to use their bodies
for fear of ruining a moment preserved
from the gazes of their tiny eyes.
And didn’t we speak of all those characters
with bowler hats?
Or our zeal for crooked heros, or how ******* right
Bukowski always is?

No, I did not go,
but listened to the pressing of our ribcages;
the soft crackle of our bones against the wood.
No, I did not leave—
ever from these ideas met in novels
of what love could really be
if ever we tried to apply it.
No, I am here and you are here
and together we knew that a night
when the light encompasses and stands
upright like fire is a time to say
yes.

And won’t it be funny?
In times passing and every December after
the next, the wooden floors
will show their age and the light
may it be a different shade of color
afterwards.
But, won’t there always be
a story on our table?
And a mug for me
waiting near the french press
when I wake up
after you?

antidepressants, that I am not
some war that bereaves you
of your fix, your stark face blots
purpling stains under eyes glued
  
to the buzzing of insects by your lamp—
a light that catches a reflection of
their veined wings clear; like veins tamped
in brown, the black tar shoved

into your limbs, into my heart
the idleness in your eyes and pace
of your feet dragging, they impart
me of your glass maze chase

of mirrors cracking like teeth, a scrape
against each other, shattering to escape.

We did not have a connection
so much as a small room full
of scattered electricity.

(After reading Dorothy Allison’s “To The Bone”)

That winter I did go crazy:
like a growing tire tear,
like naked sacked scrappers,
like the water waning sand
in the desert of your bones.

I know when it is winter.
      When the books begin to show
               their thinner side of verity

and the pages not the color butter,
      but a rusted wheel blend
               with words wheedling away
from memory as the crisp night settles
       into bed. Too dark to retain our
               archives; too withdrawn

from this warm tragedy tale
       turned from mine.

There is no confusion
in the ways we hold
our bodies in sleep.
Only unconscious order
upon each others
skin.