*** a couple times with your hand that
    has one vein popped up over the knuckle. sheets crinkle
    laundry sits in the small humid room.
    smells like roadkill and peppermint,
    like christmas eve with dinner down the toilet.

you've *** four times in an hour,
rubbing at yourself through your underwear.
don't touch skin. it's off limits today.

getting raw means you can feel
how it stings when you cross your legs.
it's not about pleasure. it's the reminder:
   you want to know what you look like,
   what you feel like.

next time you're ******* down some boy you ask him
"how does that feel?" he says "good."
            quick kiss, his ****** is archaic and copper.
            you like how it tastes. now it's your turn:
but of course he won't make you *** unless
you take your hand and rub while he *****,
your hand a barrier between his body and yours.

          "please be quiet," you say out loud
the boy furrows his eyebrows, "i didn't say anything."
you laugh, "no, my stomach."

pretend to *** for a faster exit.
give him a tiny maternal kiss.
let it linger out the room where it's cold but he's still warm.
you don't want a warmth you have to love because it's too much.

the scab on your neck is now a scar
       and you have no make-up for the ones on your forearms, but
       really, most of you by now is star dust and tobacco leaves.

               the sun is in our eyes. i want to know
               what makes a circle go on forever.
i think about ****** a lot.
dreamt two nights ago chris sold me some,
it was in that tiny wax bag with a "king ******" stamp .
when i texted him the next day said "i dreamt
we did some together," he said
                 "that's funny. i've been doing some definitely
                  but not really selling."

     the Chicago cold does something odd enough to you.
it always seemed like you were alive as a kid. well,
were you?

               where is your body? out in the storm.
                are you a ghost? no, it would be nice though:
                    the lack of responsibility of life,
                                    a state of impermanence.
    it would be nice.

YOU HAVE
TO WANT IT



MAN
“go outside,” the doctor says,
“stand on the grass for fifteen minutes a day.”
you’re here because today you want to get better.
“tell me how you’re feeling.”
“I’m scared.”

“I mean physically.”
“so do I.”




ANGEL
an angel can come in a burst of a blister,
on the tip of a finger.
he always starts small
with the whispers,
         “i know about love,”
   like you asked for it.

he prefers to come at the end of the month,
            amid deadlines, another set of blood-soaked, ruined *******,
some traces
     of the relationship with your father and failure.
but you like that: having an excuse that sends you
   scrambling for car keys.

    at first it’s forests, their fires,
the flowers that follow once the ash and skin and soil
are mixed. at first it’s earth and rubbing it in,
     seeing god behind your eyelids.

so you clean the pipes, keep washing sheets.
      the voices they stop coming; once in a while you
      read online how many kids this week have overdosed
    on ****** and it’s foreign. kids with dirt
under their fingernails, kids in basements, kids
with ***** canvas shoes and overgrown cuticles.
           they don’t look like you. you still look like
you.




MAN
                   mike sparks a j in the basement.
        we chew on xanax and no one’s paying attention to the TV.
some white static and early afternoon rain. it’s made me gone
ghost, sitting on a leather recliner, silent with a cigarette.
              it’s a right of initation to carve your name in mike’s
coffee table and sign on the back wall. this summer I added
   mine alongside the kids I used to get nervous around in high school.
                       his mom comes downstairs with a joint of her own rolled
and a French manicure. her lip liner is too dark for her
lipstick, and phil’s warmly lit and ivan leans so far into the
couch he isn’t human.

mike sits up, “ma,
you know you owe me some money?” he changes the channel.
she laughs throaty, her insides a swamp. she’s
prettier when she’s high like this.
                       “I got your money,” she promises. it gets soft
from there and phil smiles over his body and ivan moves
further into the couch. she touches mike’s hair.

“good kid,” she tells me and I smile up at her. I wish I had
a body but I left it wandering through
the thunderstorm outside. ivan nods his hazy head.
          mike hands her a diet coke and she hands him a fifty and she goes—through the walls—
       phil digs his hand into the couch cushions to find papers. I go
ghost in the seconds it takes him to spark his lighter.

the ghost lights herself a cigarette.
   the ghost lights herself another cigarette.
               the ghost lights herself a cigarette. “are you chain
smoking now,” phil slurs playfully. “yes,” the ghost agrees.
     “are you having fun,” ivan turns to her.
                “yes.”

HUMAN
i don't want to know what love is like i want
                                       air that
                     tastes like apples and
       i want real raw
         brown sugar
       i want to shoot up every
grey second for two weeks— get frantic then
       take benzodiazepine until i shred my
stomach lining, singing
                                                    
            i want bud light and
a backyard. bed time stories and
            white furniture and ritz crackers
             with fancy party cheeses
                              i want to complain about the drinking age,
                              new york’s black-dusty wind charm. complain like the
                              moon is still lonely and not a destination
                                          i want to wake up in the sun spot
                                          i want to wake up to a baby crying
                          soft like mothers do, going to
                                     that dear one to quiet them down,
                                        i can be here to kiss you calm
                                                              i want to get out of bed
                                                              i want to call friends back
so winter can come and i can still
                              go home.



       WANT
         throwing on the rag&bon;; jeans,
         neither rag nor bone more milky skeleton-ized, eyes
         pin headed. faces struck yellow all tops of the heads
         with umbrellas and sorry throats. "here take mine" no
         "you'll get sick" it's fine
                                                        the gothic church with social strangers
                                                       ­ tweakers and nodders all smiley side-
                                                        eye­-Y
                        i know the gimme gimme
                        i know the routine
         and blondie (they think) here she comin she twenty years clean
         blondies a baby she weak as **** she dont know what she got
but i know the "i want" "i want"
         and the ok baby,
         Got U




HUMAN
i dont want to know what love is like,
                  i want to walk the manhattan bridge at sunrise
                  i want
                       grass wisps and capers
                       chicken noodle soup
                       a night at the new york city ballet
                       and pauses in sentences, in breath
                       the breath before a kiss or the breath
                       after it. i want instant hot chocolate
                       and reality television, ugg slippers with
                       faux trim. a bicycle painted lilac with a
                       basket, and clear skin. i want pier 63 on
                       a 70 degree day, the weepies playing
i want to be a ghost
            where ghosts are white sheets with two button eyes
             and make jokes about halloween and their past lives
i want to go there
to street fairs
and watch fireworks and write out names
in fresh concrete patches
                                                     i want to eat blackberries in the bathtub
                                                     i want skin to make me feel safe again
                                   i want to want to live
                                   but i know the "i want" "i want" and the ok baby,
Got U




WANT

they were right,
                               they were all
              going (right
they were righjt
they were right

air hanging eyes to dry
blood pull in push out brown golden push IN
  

they were right they were all right
nothing could ever make me as happy again



WANT

it’s a hold on something so quiet and soft in your hands and no one knows what it is and you dont know what it is. it’s the pin drop in a hospital room and so lemonade refreshing. im in a snowstorm and i cant see the city, cant see past my own two feet. im on a long highway drive and it’s rain that comes in sheets so hard i cant move. i walk and the world writhes underneath me and we put needles in our arms. and we wait for the blood push. and i watch my life go away in warm *******. and i watch it go this way like it’s not me. and i’m going home to ****** and i’m scared, i say outloud to maggie, “i’m scared i’m going to do something stupid,” and she is so quick to say “like what” that i know she knows what it is. and i’m so scared.





WANT

give up on me , I Know where im going. don’t follow. don’t even look for me. keep
Counting sugar cubes and stirring your coffee , it is my wish for you that it always tastes sweet.
I love you












WANT


i just wanted to be kept warm by something that looked like love



MAN
i walk slower on the streets of manhattan; stop at
   the strand, look for the man with eyebrow rings
asking "do you know where a girl in this city could get some relief?"
         he laughs, says he just looks like someone who would know
            that. he asks, "is that Monster Blood?”
                             &nbsp

wondering about swallowing lysol in cute plastic shot
       this morning i saw a gum print handbag, finger ***** tease,
so those are the prayers you save for your knees.
i know, it's terrifying; and the thought of ******* makes
         you tired. it makes me tired.
we pretended to love
         for protection from this. head against the seat
closer next to kiss. you smiled but i thought about so much time
             les vacances and the dirtier brooklyn romps
    through teeth, "no, i don't know the nyc scene"
     and then, off! we were headed for each word of love.
  everything went out as day, we remained in there. the tall
     glasses of milk and the shaky hands. how nice the breeze
     to slap my cheek in a summer pop ****. the one where i'm
     already on fours while the elevator door, closing; down in his head as though walking on madison. i pick off the beauty marks from the
mouths of mean angels (/ the angle of your body makes me soaked through and warm.
        duck and stay with me, even if you promise to wait.
you were smiling at "sounds like you," the screen and the taxi horn
   scraping in the ****** of a thunderstorm. and me and you and jesus,
  all pries of lips and teeth.
solemnly striking mary as he pleased, crawling surprised through
the egyptian's dreams like he was made for it. like ancient honey centipedes. like you and like me
       god got sure he made you angry. moving about his eyes he wrapped you up in that redwood chest and you crawled right through
it. look at the hole you left! sound comes as well to thank you,
                in scopes of soft, strangled moans. the ones where i have
        my tiny hand around your throat, and god rings his hands
       in defeat because we ****** so ***** we made the world clean,
    the **** finds its home where bacteria grows.
bite 'til there's blood, if that's
              what you want. our friends always tried to make martyrs
     of us. "i want to know you," he says, but the mountains moan loud
    on the ear hairs, those baby ones, that get tickled in the chicago wind
or when you stick your tongue in and i like it.
                when a girl says get gone she means it; now rip off
            your pretty pink lips i want them to bruise my **** i want
         you to get off from it. but you want love
fifth and twenty-second, legs less fervent less eager to bend
        over the sink, in the shower, in your bed. so again with the play:
read something about warmth .some thing warm like a body
        like your body. some/thing like a brown powder
                              and now it’s warm all over
                        here i dip my pinky finger, here spread that on your
          gums. baby, you look so good with a finger in your mouth.
   i can take the coke drips and the starchy pain of paper cuts,
   the first taste of blood and missing the last step, "just dope sick,
   alright, *******/"
                 but the silence is so


                                                            ­it's so
                    
                       when i wild and bare teeth, it's dreaming
                                  because i can handle the coke drips, the softer butter
                       shards, real fine i can keep steady all handlebars
                                a little hype for ketamine like crazy eyes, hear you
                  repeat to me for two hours one night, "your face! your face!"
          and the men they apologize because "it's not mine" but the elbow
      won't tear from the socket i'm eating my eyeball i'm shooting the
  *** rockets all over manhattan. so what's it to hustle, when the
       scene can't even bump it. i'm waiting to nod out to miles davis'
           trumpet. tell me how the drug girl can find some one to keep
up/ can one-up the crazy and puff the exhaust. i'm only looking
for a partner in my disgust; so you and me and jesus should talk
                laugh over )a real one) "yes i love tequila,
                                             darling you're a *****, meet me at the
                                  bar, ill ******* at your own game ;)"
        "oh you'll **** me ? ;)"
                                            "yea i'd *******, so what, i'd **** a lot of
                                              people,"
                                              Read 2:43 am
        "..."        
                                             "what are you typing"
                                              Read 3:24 am

sunscreen , wet cement. i taste sweat
       at the collarbone crevice below yr neck. all of us
    hot spring eyes , pussing blisters bleeding down
naked heels. it's ******* hot here in the shade
          of heaven. i want off the ride

popping pimples at the bathroom sink
    yellowing from the blood , from the dirt we
      pick up by touching each other

                   but i run the tongue , baby, the whole
               apartment smells like a bath bomb. i need
            to burst open beneath your mouth, slice the grape fruit in
       thin pieces. imagine the day when my hair grows back:
            then we'll know suffering has learned to love the space
       under the bed
                           where our bodies used to be

                                                             ­                    so in this night terror
                                                        i play the fishnet stockings of a long
                                                            ­  legged woman. struggling against
                                                        t­hem, you drown between my thighs
        like this. we squirm in the humidity of the night
        like this.

then in the next,
        i go missing at a family party and you look for me,
    i'm waiting to surprise you in a childhood closet, i'm in
the kitchen washing dishes so you get to put yr hands
around me. the world knows i'm in love with you so no one
will complain.
                                 and every terror begins as gentle as this, when
                              you round the corner to the bathroom and i'm in
                               the tub. what are you doing
     i'm smiling
                                               what are you doing
     what does it look like i'm doing

                   that funny little animal , how badly you want it
          to be out loud. then we can't paint the goat blood on our
          door, we can't let god pass us over. yr knees are locked
       and my veins are loaded. here, you hold the gun. the lamb
is ready for slaughter.
                                               a bunch of empty guts, some tylenol buried        
                                          in clammy hands you come in an hour
                                     back to knock on the door: i told
                                  them you got sick
thank you
                            don't come home tonight
thank you
                    
                                        ­                 i powder my nose and the holiday
                                              lights are strung before thanksgiving. you
                                            will keep climbing mountains with the blonde
                                       arm hairs of the glad hearts. you are too good to
                                        go looking in lower places;
        you are too good to **** a hound of hell.