*** 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.