For centuries
my weary soul's
been swallowin' grey-faced spirits whole.

But the porcelain broke
between the lips
I feel dusky fingertips.

I have short moments,
one brief farewell
before I place my sins in hell.

Stranger please--
lend me your ear,
I've become what I most fear.

I know there's no
such thing as ghosts
but I have seen the demon host.

Can we speak of these certain vacant spaces
in my abandoned bedroom where the moon dwells
and shuttered creatures search their teeth
for a bloom of flavor and sun.

I'm surrounded by prosaic twilights--tenantless places--
where plaster perfumed by dormant fire
gapes with cavities and empty mouths
that seek him with their tongues.

Where darkness crawls on poppy seeds
on moths and reeds and shoes
to reach me in my consternation
now that his name has fled my lungs.


Today I sewed his note to my breast pocket
but it grew crescent roots like fingernails
and murmured that we were too young.

I am stranger to the taste
of candor, honor, or courage

a bland and simple fruit.

Exceptional at nothing,
I am exceptionally nothing--

withered from the stem,
the whole way through.

However I have seen
the pallor in your cheek:
a tempting succulence.

Salvation rests beneath
your ripened skin.

I will break the unmarked flesh

I will learn

to be
honorable too,

once I have had

the whole of you.

well I thought of you in summer
but you did not suit the season--

a pale and solemn human,
your fingers stark and slim.

what was it like to shelter,
in the ring of salt and stone?

you thought that demons could not watch you,
when they've always found their home.

I saw you climb inside your skin, thinking
you'd be safer from within

but his fingertips
poked through

and he was the end of you.

I admit I am a dark, exhausted beast--
a memory no one summons.


But you rise at dawn with raven hair--
a child of soldier and sun.


Although you've gone,
I covet your crescent grin.


and the sun

within the lining

of your skin.

little fawn with two bowed knee
do not allow
the boy with crooked mouth
so near your porous flesh

little girl with freckled limb
there are too few fibers
on his winter pelt
to shield your ivory skin

little fawn
let him flush the marrow through
till he has ate
the whole of you

little girl
your flesh is clear

but he does not hate you less

although you've disappeared

i dreamt of you

you warmed me in
your callused hands

and sighed as if
i were a hummingbird
out your gran'pa's cabin

lovely                                                    ­an'                                                     quick

but i wailed until
my throat was grit
your eyes had turnt'
to green

and the hummingbirds
flew south

to be warmed by
more faithful things

than the rasp of your callused flesh