maybe we are a sinking thing
some white cliff eats itself until
we stand at its edge where it
kisses our feet good morning
and i open under you, another
young rose you’re gentle with
in bed we confuse tomorrow
with heaven sometimes you
ask me about the beginning
of the world when there was
nothing and i tell you what i
know, what i sometimes dream
about: you came from my
left lung. you grew out of the
mud and you kissed me as
soon as you could. we named
each other and the inside of
you always tasted like wine. we
slept every night in star shatter
we were alone in a world that
loved us.

the last blue summer i dripped
               sulfur from a bottom lip
               you found an eyelash
                in your cheerios
and we danced
all winter
                into the next blue summer
                  then it was rhubarb and honey
      The First Man came to stab
           his tongue in my mouth
             i,
the very silk sheet of femininity
         let him puncture inside with the chewed
            embittered nails
this is a girl in holy conversion
           she convulses at the right times
           for dramatic effect
                     the blood on the bed is as christ
                      a symbol of sacrifice
         back when men played gods
and i let them

The Second Men
            are numerous skin lesions
             diseases from stepping in the wrong
                 swamplands
         they smell always of
            peppercorn or gin&tonic;
                     their ***** sense a tenderness inside
                      like dogs they sniff it out
                to bury it with the one large hand
       that wraps around the throat every
       time
       that same ******* line
                  you like it rough you little **** like it rough
    i am on my back on the bed
           that rocks from him ******* into
           my girlhood
                            i think of what my mother said when she found
                     the box of condoms i keep with me
                     "i would just hope these men care about you."
she doesn't understand
          these delicate men look for women to care
           about them
in the lily morning
          they want to get breakfast
                             text me their problems
                i'm the man on the sidewalk
              curling my lips into each other at their texts
"what are you doing tonight?"
           "hey haven't heard from you for a while"
   "hi :)"

I am on my back in bed
              wondering if I can hail a cab from delancey St
               while he licks and ***** at my **** and I feel nothing
               but I play the parts
I know my lines
                and the Second Men could have done well in the spotlight
                only they wanted a girl and by then I was decidely
       not human

The Men
                     can smell it
                      when you've been taken before
           a goodbye kiss on the cheek i grant
             in a moment of kindness
             and it becomes his tongue in my mouth
i am paralyzed in honesty
in the remaining threads of the docile sweetness
                mom says it is feminine to be kind
              that it is not a weakness
I think of this again when I am on all fours
                        hair pulled back by his hands
                  I think of it when the door closes and the other he
              wouldn't take no for an answer
how many times did I tell myself
I wanted this?
                              every time

The Dream Men
                   take me in my bed
                   in the house with grapevines and white shutters
         they stuff their hands down my throat
          they **** me from all sides
I spend the dream trying to scream
                and when I wake it is always sunny outside so I never feel
                 good about crying

Moms at the foot of my sadness
                              brush my hair braid it
                        we are in flower fields with magnets
             painted lilac and baby pink
                              im stomping around in the garden they hush me
              quiet
                              we are born into these love traps
                     these delicate sentiments
                     tricked to think we are heiress to sloppy emotion
        but the women ring the rags
     pluck the tomatos off the plants
                        the men see ghosts and weep
                          into their coffee
                  weep on the shoulders of their women
         who lie on their backs in bed
                         wait for it to be over

It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts
I don't like it I don't like this
Did you come? Yes I came
Yes it's all taken care of
Is that blood? Are you okay?
Sorry I forgot I'm on the last day
You sure? Yeah It was great
I want to go again
Ok Baby


The Women
                 taste different
                   feel safer
                              their histories and mine are reflective
          they know what it means to be taken
         but their hands
                       do not hurt enough
                        don't leave behind blisters
                        i begin to come into someone else
                 never satisfied enough
                  to settle
                  to build a home



            
          Men and their history of abusing women
          Me and my history of being abused
We'll never understand each other
We'll never love each other either




The Men have taken
                everything from my Women
                my Grandmother barren
                 my Mother so close to death
             I was born into the locked
             door
             The history of Women who stayed
                   tender and delicate


I am tired of being taken

Here we are, now, who are we this time?
The sentiments are still the same, aren't
they always? We listen to the radio top
20 and we sing along, brazen like the
best of them. Today I'll be Achilles and
you can be Odysseus. No, not Patroclus,
this isn't like that and neither are we,
there's no room for speculation on what
we could be because that was last time,
last time I sat on your white bed and
you pinned my wrists down, I was ten
and you were twenty and god told you
to **** me and it ate you alive, when I
left you to go to the countryside, pregnant
with someone else's baby, was I ever your
baby? Maybe a few other, separate, parallel
lifetimes ago. If I'm Achilles then you have
to tell me when to go to war, you'll know
that I'll fight you every step of the way and
no, we don't love each other, but this is the
role you play this time and you'll do it for
me, won't you? Yes, and the next life, I'll be
a nice jazz tune that you turn on the radio
to and find yourself crying and aren't sure
why. we're still connected, even metal covered
in copper covered in your skin and sweat.
The next I can taste it, because you'll be the
****** drip as soon as it kicks in, but you have
to be the one that gets me dead at twenty-five,
so make sure you wait for my signal, my white
flag, like before when you watched me in the
garden, like before when you dragged me off
the dead body of my wartime lover, or when
we met in the rain in the romance novel yet
to be written and kissed and kissed and kissed
and, kissed. you are my friend. we will never
be separate. you are the love of all my lifetimes,
even the ones where we will never touch or
laugh or look each other in the eye, and even
especially then, because I'll still feel your atoms
and my atoms, the only home that can ever have
a name: the touch of something familiar. Siken
was right, I won't be waiting forever, there are
a hundred other me's to match you's and if this
ends all bright-white nuclear i'll still be standing
with the skin melted all off, poised and ready to
receive the next generation, and that's what i
thought of when you asked me if we were ever
sky giants, if we ever met before this moment,
and you thought because i was silent that i didn't
feel the same but baby, i do, and here is all of it,
our mythology, don't you feel it? the constant
reaching of me to you? the small hands covering
every inch of our mouths even when we don't
touch? Next time, I'll be a small hand and you'll
be a small hand, maybe then we can love properly.

You stay
a stray, angel-whisper
in all my blackened
afternoons. I know
where your dead
laughter hides. I
know we love suicide
more than ourselves.
But we can still do
something for each
other, can’t we? If
I go without telling
you first, I’m
sorry, darling. I wanted
to. There’s a bitterness
to the in-between of my
legs. There’s a name
now for the thing under
our bed.

you won’t find me here. wrapped
in the wool of violent, *****-soaked

*******. we’ve made a mess on the
tables, with mulled red wine, beside

cockroaches. every inch of skin
pink and trembling beneath other skin.

you can expect this: one perfect little
throat sliced clean. cleaner than your

moans. for every finger pried inside
me, there are a hundred more

pushing up into you, until your moans
soften into screams.

the squelch of your **** as it pulls
apart, the pulp of your parts so

pleasant. we bathe in you. love, our
sequined slaughterhouse: we wanted it.

you can find me here: drawn up
tight in my taxidermy, among

ten dozen dead doves. their wire
bones crunch beneath your sneaker

when you approach the front of
that forest. the black iris of my sold

soul, now an eternity for us both;
you approach draped in morning

breath, content to bite the bugs
from my lips. we always kiss with

teeth, because we are always high.
here, where i live, you are shivering.

we are god’s golden children,
untouchable with fuzzy, white mouths

that click in hollowed-out howls,
imitating wolves, waiting for who falls

fast in love first. suspended there,
we sigh against the flies, how they

**** our skin with grease-slicked
tongues. our guts blackened by the

gun, shoved all the way inside, are
now dusted with sickness.

there is a smile against a smile. my
skin stretching as your skin. love

wrapped severe, twine around a finger,
where the blood swells and gathers.

there should be trumpets for our
sallow suicides. a banner in an office,

frosted chocolate cake. instead there
is a kindness: rain carves a ravine

out of the earth. we tumble down like
leaves into the cockroaches and left-

over wine. two black mouths in another
black mouth. nothing grows over where

we rot, but it doesn’t matter. they won’t
find us here. not a single foot will

fall into our worm-warped skulls. this
is, for you, some small comfort. but again,

it doesn’t matter. years will pass, and there
will never be enough teeth to claim for all

the small, mutual murders; nor for the way
we became our disease.

there has been enough capped blue pens, half-chewed/.then
parisian grey mists--open windows, & markets, have you come
along in the cufflinks to take my hands? no, it's nothing

some days,i;d like to be kissed lonely, to sit at the preening
jut of your hips and **** songbird sketches into your neck,
thick swells. as rain comes within, just a teaspoon of salt to the water
and i hope it boils over. because i want to be burned, now

i want to be loved,; like silver lipped queens dipping ring
fingers into cyanide;. like the tumbling of lucifer from heaven
where he was the first shooting star--remarkable, god's favorite

there have been so many coffee rings on paper place mats,
and chances to go dancing when instead i cut to see myself bleed--

i dont want to be the lonely wing that tears against the wind,
the pale, wailing woman waiting on the side of the highway
to be taken home and put to bed. just grant me the white lighter,
or else let me step into the warm marshes with the wheatgrass.

let me turn to hay in the wintertime; ill hold you when you come
inside to sleep here. we just keep corking the bottles and putting
them in the fridge;when's the last time you wove flowers inyour
hair?, were you just a boy then who could afford to make those

mistakes? i swear i'd like to know those ways the welts twisted
your gut hotly--because they did for mine too, only in the ways i'd
never been touched at all. they write books on the women who
refuse to be loved. we stand against walls with our champagne

throats curved back, waiting/for a man to get his hands on it
but it won;'t do, it won't do. if you come closer, see, i'll make you
laugh to that pretty throat-bobbing way, while you're looking at
the mouth that leans forward to **** a quiet songbird;then tear

up the flesh of your neck. i want to be blood-soaked like that, a
white boat, a marsh field with the blue herons, their lonely wings.
where is the legend of lilith on the bookshelves of the innocent?,

don't tell me you can't find her. she;s here--in my mouth, look inside
i bite down on the pen cap. the water moans and spills over. they want
to be loved where love is ****** & the crime scene is the first

sunday of forever: this death more beautiful than winter; my surrender
the smallest collapse of the star--in your arms,yes,that's an alright
place--the black hole love a blank space, a long sunday. now that's

what i want, with you: fold the blanket, let's take a drive, let's go
to the field where god kissed lucifer to the ground. i want to be loved
like you know how the story goes: we become who we always were,
and then it kills us both.