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Sep 2016 · 347
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coyote Sep 2016
phase one:
the crowds part for him, and something
inside you does too; followed by your lips,
followed by your thighs. you utter his name
in your empty apartment just to feel its
weight on your tongue. he scares you.

phase two:
he still scares you but you've moved things
around to make room for the fear. you give
it a bed. you give it his name. you feed it.
you realize all at once that you could love
him, and you are breathless with relief that
you don't. but you could, just like you could
hit the gas instead of the brakes and plunge
into a ravine. on the road and then in the
river just that fast.

phase three:
you're in the river. you wonder if you were
ever really on the road. you think maybe you
can live like this, just like you thought you could
breathe underwater when you were four or so.
exhaling is fine, it's easy, but on inhale you flood
your lungs. he isn't what you needed, he is the
water choking you, but it's not his fault you don't
have gills. it isn't his fault you hit the gas instead
of the brakes.
Sep 2016 · 527
//
coyote Sep 2016
//
i know how this will end.
i will sneak into your apartment
before the cops arrive. i will take
one of your shirts from the hamper,
your blanket off the bed, and sleep
wrapped up in both every night
until i remember how to
dream without you.
Aug 2016 · 388
angela
coyote Aug 2016
i have your sticky fingerprints all over my face:
laying on the carpet, drawing with crayons, waiting
out the storm. i've loved you since we were nine or
so, making plans to start a rock band but never learning
to play. we just wanted to end up together, just didn't
have the language to say so in so many words. i still don't.
Aug 2016 · 266
coyote Aug 2016
first: the i’ll-follow-you-anywhere kind of new love. the swell of promise, of possibility; the beginning of a long walk through a dark town that you've never visited, the moment of accepting all you don't know, disregarding the unknown variables, and wanting to give it a shot anyway.  

compare to: i’ve followed you everywhere, and now i know how you sleep and what your blood looks like; i know you and i love you anyway.
Jul 2016 · 275
coyote Jul 2016
flies in my honey,
ants in my bed.
the crucifix is crying:
jesus wants down.
Jun 2016 · 222
coyote Jun 2016
my first clear conviction
since i found jesus in louisiana:
i will not die. i will not let you **** me.
Jun 2016 · 241
coyote Jun 2016
to apologize would be a bruise to your
pride, but  i love you emerges from a
tangle of teeth and wire, and for another
night i stay.
Jun 2016 · 905
coyote Jun 2016
i have watched the tectonic plates of your
personality shake and shift under the shadows
of your eyes for seven years now.

you are the child in a perpetual state of rebirth,
and i am the mother who weeps and mourns
and breaks dishes like a poltergeist.
Jun 2016 · 204
coyote Jun 2016
i want to drink a bottle of cough syrup,
i want to chase spirits into traffic,
i want to throw myself to the wolves.
May 2016 · 566
coyote May 2016
i can't shake the feeling
of being watched, even
in the dark lonely space
of my kitchen.

i've taken to wedging a
knife between my
mattress and box-spring.
May 2016 · 219
coyote May 2016
keep me suspended in that dark water fear:
that moment before assessing an injury,
where everything is unknown and dire
and hopeful all at once.
May 2016 · 437
coyote May 2016
i've spent many nights
waiting out storms, folded
away in my bathtub—

on the night that bullets
shredded through our
drywall, we held each
other there.

it reminded me of wind
and summer sirens and
the arms of my mother.
May 2016 · 199
coyote May 2016
floods dredge up old
bodies from the brazos.

spring is the season that
gives the river gentle
permission to release
its dead.

they found a human
torso in a garbage bag.
they found a father and
son washed up on the
banks.
May 2016 · 202
coyote May 2016
you opened me up
like a cold case file: hoping to find
something that all the guys before
you missed; hoping to make connections
with fingers following color coded string,
tracing who i've become back to who
i used to be.

you made our bed an
interrogation room, took notes in the
hollow of my throat, the crease of my
thigh, the underside of my wrist.

to your credit,
you never quit. but in the end you
had to be taken off the case; all your
hard work reduced to footnotes for
the next fresh set of eyes.
May 2016 · 186
coyote May 2016
thinking that an
i love you
after hurting me
is the same as an
apology is abusive
husband logic.
May 2016 · 381
coyote May 2016
i will never close my mouth
to your table scrap i love you's.

you only keep me around for
that leashed dog loyalty:

like a mutt at your feet, all that
matters is that you don't kick me.
May 2016 · 179
coyote May 2016
you taught me that
there is more than one way
to apologize in spanish, and
that meaning is often lost in
translation.

it sets my mind to wonder
which parts of you have been
willfully tucked away, like money
in our mattress, and what is
just lost in translation.
May 2016 · 1.9k
coyote May 2016
bipolar, brass knuckle baby,
pretty eyed prince of el paso:
i've listened to you weep in
spanglish

and i would wade through that
river of dead women just to feel
closer your grandmother, that
oval faced polaroid girl who knew
her birthright and had the grip
strength to take it.
May 2016 · 561
coyote May 2016
fresh faced, seventeen year old wonder.

pull me under the waters of the country in
which you were born: render me asunder with
the hands your mother gave you.

drive that brand new, older-than-me car across the
ocean straight to me
clearing out drafts
May 2016 · 332
coyote May 2016
i've wrestled
with this burning
coin for a decade
now;

held over candlelight
by grandmothers and
teenage charlatans alike,
****** into the soft tissue
of my naive mouth.

find someone who adores you,
[OR]
find someone you adore.

such irony and tragedy
in the context of love:
the age old lament of one
without the other.

your logic is that of which
elegies are written from.

i'm spitting it out, but let
the scar tissue remain.
clearing out drafts.
May 2016 · 288
tone deaf
coyote May 2016
your song gave
my life some
meaning
but took away
the sharpness of
my hearing.
May 2016 · 715
839
coyote May 2016
839
your chest was heavy with the need to leave;
your head sick with the things you hadn't seen.

but you're glad you stayed, even if it was just to see
everything that you've ever loved laid to waste,
slow and ugly.

no city can unravel you like that population sign
of eight hundred and thirty-nine.
clearing out drafts.
May 2016 · 353
coyote May 2016
SCARY SOUTHSIDE
SWEETHEART.

LAZY SPLIT
LIPPED KISSES OVER A
MOUNTAIN DEW AND
A POWDERED DONUT
DINNER FOR TWO.
clearing out drafts
May 2016 · 222
domingo
coyote May 2016
he will never not enjoy this:
dark eyes that feel as though they can lance through skin and blood and bone, all the way down into the cancers of his thoughts; warm breath on his cheek; fingertips scrabbling over his collarbone to bunch his shirt into a tight fist; the dizzying crack of his skull on drywall.
coyote May 2016
it's been said that a goldfish will never outgrow its bowl.

in reality, that's kid glove understanding. what happens is the buildup of hormones and other toxic secretions in the water first stunts the fish, then eventually kills it.

see, i could have started this off with: it's been said that a goldfish will never outgrow its bowl. maybe that's what happens to people in small towns— and that might have been a good hook, but it would have also been intellectually dishonest.

and i've always valued honesty—in theory, anyway. it's in practice when things start to tangle, but i suppose that's how it tends to go for everybody else too.
May 2016 · 320
m'ija
coyote May 2016
she has a way of making small things feel significant:

the way she taped her moving boxes together,
double stripped: she doesn't know if the first one
will hold; her white lighter superstition; the way her
skin was quick to bruise, even when you were gentle;
her broken teeth, the lost fillings you ran your tongue
over like your tires on her pockmarked street the first
and last times (and all the times in between) that you
drove to that bad side of town, where shoes swung
from power lines and women wept over the sticky red
bodies of sons and husbands and fathers but only spoke
in hushed, shamed spanish about their own blood loss.

in the end, there's nothing too significant about it: she has
trust issues that extend to duct tape and lighters; she bruises
like a peach; she has bad teeth because she was too poor to fix
them; her love dried up like the brazos in the texas summer.
coyote Oct 2015
it's a bottomless pit of both
pride and tiresome duty,
knowing that you are the
glue keeping a family together.
Sep 2015 · 991
02
coyote Sep 2015
02
[WENDIGO]**

SHE WILL KISS THE MONSTER YOU HAVE BECOME— SLIDE HER TONGUE INTO THE THICKETS OF YOUR MOUTH, HEEDLESS TO THE INEVITABILITY OF CUTTING HER STRAWBERRY LIPS ON THE SERRATED BLADES OF YOU TEETH. SHE IS SUMMER AND YOU ARE THE SNOWCONE SHE ***** DRY.

BOY OF DRY LEAVES AND DEAD GIRLS: YOU STILL TASTE GOOD WITH HER BLOOD ON YOUR CHIN.
02/72
Sep 2015 · 376
01
coyote Sep 2015
01
SUMMER STRUGGLES TO
PULL IN ITS LAST DYING
BREATH WHILE THE TREES
SHED THEIR GREEN BIKINI
LEAVES. GOODBYE *****
PUBLIC SWIMMING POOLS;
YOU AND YOUR SUNSCREEN
SCENTED EAR INFECTIONS
WILL NOT BE MISSED. WE
HAVE HARVEST MOONS AND
PUMPKIN-SPICED-EVERYTHING
TO FILL THE HOLLOW CEMENT
GRAVES YOU LEAVE BEHIND.
Sep 2015 · 556
WARNING CALL
coyote Sep 2015
I WILL FIND THE MEN WHO HURT YOU AND I WILL TEAR THEM APART: I WILL SATE THE DEPTHS OF THE STILL SEA'S STARVING
BELLY WITH THEIR BROKEN BODIES.

**** WITH MY FAMILY AND YOU WILL
KNOW THE TASTE OF YOUR BLOOD.
IT WILL BE THE LAST THING YOU TASTE.
Sep 2015 · 263
LESSONS
coyote Sep 2015
ONE: STAY PRESENT

TWO: DON'T WASTE VALUABLE TIME BEING ANGRY

THREE: THE FEELING OF NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH IS HEAVIER THAN GRIEF
Aug 2015 · 531
HOMECOMING
coyote Aug 2015
I HEARD SOMEONE SAY
THAT BRUISED KNUCKLES
WILL ALWAYS LOOK BAD
WHILE HOLDING A
CHAMPAGNE FLUTE;

I WONDER THEN HOW YOURS
CAN LOOK THIS GOOD
WHILE HOLDING MY WAIST.
Aug 2015 · 309
match
coyote Aug 2015
their fair skin
and pale eyes
and dark hair
fate them to
the frequent
assumption of
close blood
relation.

but surely one
must wonder
why a sister looks
to her brother like
he is the harvest
moon: beautiful
and haunting and
much too far away.

their matching
eyes meet with
the impact of
car collisions.
his bruised
knuckles graze
the back of her
hand as they
walk through
southside.

she is much too
young to kiss
the seam of his
inner thigh, but
she does.
drunk poems.
Aug 2015 · 472
BLOODLOSS
coyote Aug 2015
THIS IS THE LAST
POEM I WILL WRITE
FOR YOU, OR ANYONE
WHO FEELS ENTITLED
TO AN APOLOGY FROM
ME FOR GETTING BLOOD
ON THEIR SHOES.

KEEP IN MIND, SELFISH
CHILD, THAT I HAVE WIPED
BLOOD FROM YOUR LIPS WITH
DELICATE HANDKERCHIEFS:
I NEVER BLAMED YOUR SKIN
FOR BEING TOO QUICK TO BREAK.

I AM NOT THE PATRON SAINT
OF PATIENCE. MY FEET ARE
LIGHT WITH LEAVING. I DO
NOT WAIT OUT STORMS,
I OUTRUN THEM.
Aug 2015 · 556
World Weaver
coyote Aug 2015
I will romanticize,
and heathenize,
and fantasize the
murky mundane
waters of this life
pure. I will heed
no warning signs;
I will pencil dive
into depths
unknown.
Aug 2015 · 533
WOODBURNINGS
coyote Aug 2015
APPROACH     MY    ALTAR
WITH FEET    AND    HEART
LAID BARE:   I    AM    GOLD
CAST    ANTLER    CROWNS
AND    T HE     SMELL     OF
BURNING  IN  YOUR  HAIR.
I AM THE  ABRUPT  DECEIT
OF DARK WATER, I AM SON,
I AM DAUGHTER. I AM  THE
FOREST  MADE  HOLY, THE
BRANCHES  WHICH  HOLD
UP THE SKY. I AM MOTHER
OF    SHARP     TEETH    AND
FATHER OF NATURE'S LIE.
Aug 2015 · 646
B L O O M
coyote Aug 2015
DO        NOT        SEED
THE           BEAUTIFUL
PARTS  OF  YOURSELF
IN      PEOPLE     WHO
MAKE     YOU       FEEL
LIKE      ****.    THEIR
MICROAGGRESSIONS
ARE NOT  FERTILIZER
FROM    WHICH     TO
GROW, THEIR HANDS
DO        NOT       HOLD
WATERING   POTS  OF
SUSTENANCE       BUT
RUTHLESS     FINGERS
QUICK      TO       SNAP
THE   STEM  OF  YOUR
SPINE ONCE YOU ARE
DEEMED  TOO LOVELY.
Jul 2015 · 476
coyote Jul 2015
i didn't learn
the lessons you
taught me until
you were already
gone.
Jul 2015 · 304
coyote Jul 2015
i write more
about       boys   with
names      my      mind
scrabbles to remember
than   i  do  about  the
women    who    broke
their    backs   to   cast
my    bones   in   steel
and   teach   me    that
i  am  no  fragile thing

and i don't know what
that says about me.
Jul 2015 · 245
coyote Jul 2015
he is saltwater
breeze and blood
on your teeth:

he is the last word
spoken and the first
punch thrown.

he is the same tide
that would just as soon
kiss the shores of your back
as he would drag you
beneath the surface.

he is the no swimming
sign always ignored.
Jul 2015 · 338
coyote Jul 2015
simple touches
make my nerve
ends crackle like
fallen powerlines
and remind me
that my body is
a hazard sign.
Jun 2015 · 228
coyote Jun 2015

i think
you only loved me
◀ because you thought ▶
i'd never love you
back.

i'm sorry i didn't feed your inferiority complex.
Jun 2015 · 287
good
coyote Jun 2015
sometimes,
i think i could
be good for you:

press hot water bottles
to your aching jaw and
kiss the feeling back into
your sedated lips

pin myself beneath
the weight of your
medicated gaze and
tune my ears to
your slur.
Jun 2015 · 539
baby
coyote Jun 2015
he says
he doesn't know
who i am half the time,
but he calls me baby
like he's mine.
Jun 2015 · 732
song
coyote Jun 2015
i want to
tuck songs
behind your
ear like loose
hair because
it's the only
way i can
tell you
how i
feel.
May 2015 · 296
bottoms up
coyote May 2015
i can't have a drink just to relax:
not anymore, not after you.
when thoughts of
you take root,
i better be
door-frame
gripping
drunk,
even if
it's 10
in the afternoon.
it kinda looks like a wine or martini glass, right?
[more drunk poems]
May 2015 · 404
face
coyote May 2015
when they drilled
into bone and sutured
my gums shut, i didn't think
about how the antiseptic didn't go that deep:
all i thought about was that
my face is just blood,
tired muscle,
and bone.
they told me not to smoke after
but that thought made me
need one
coyote May 2015
in a real shy voice
that you never use
you asked me if i still
felt like i used to.

and i'm so sick
of all the ******* between us,
so i told you point blank, yes.
i'm not getting
any better.
May 2015 · 241
2 a day by mouth
coyote May 2015
doubling the dosage
of anxiety medication
that isn't prescribed to me:
but it doesn't bother me
because it should be.
May 2015 · 338
mixed up mixtape
coyote May 2015
i'm putting together a mixtape,
a lot like the ones you used to make for me.
and i'm working hard, choosing all the right songs:
ones that encompass our history, your leaving,
and every bitter thing we've been through.
as if it'll make a difference.
as if it'll bring you back.
as if i want you back
in the first place.
poems written to the tune of whiny punk songs
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