also, why is this so usual for me
i’d like to say that now is when
i think about everything
monumental, like the economy
or my parents hurling pebbles at
each other’s backs or watching
“iron man” with my cousin on christmas,
feeling like some kind of tourist in my cousin’s bed,
i.e., is this what christmas is supposed to feel like?
i don’t know, i celebrate chanukah, please let me know.
sometimes i think about my brother
in the woods,
is there smoke lingering on his palm?
i don’t realize how much i care about him until i do, until
my eyes are dark out, until my eyes match
the insides of my stomach.
but usually i am thinking about you, or us, or we, last year, sitting
together like static tucked softly into our houses. you were
always digging graves inside of my neck because,
we’ll die soon but before that we’ll get married,
except wait i’m 18. my stomach still lines my throat
when i swallow pills and i don’t know how to cradle
anything else other than my knuckles and there are plants
in the windowsill and i water them, sometimes, when i feel
like it. when i was 13 i saw blood streaming my underwear
and i told myself, this is it, i’m with death, i knew the doctor
was lying when he said i was so healthy.
when i was 13 my mother came into my room
and said, “look, now you can have children.” i was 13, now i am five years
older, i still cry when i think about mothers. how easy it is for them
to lose their children. like once i watched “boy in the striped pajamas”
(on my birthday) (how stupid) and i cried for three hours afterwards because
i felt like the mother, or just a mother, or my mother and her mother
and her mother and how we could all easily pull away from each other like thread.
once a boy from my school died and another time a girl from my
camp hung herself and i cried for their parents, mostly. i didn’t
know how to cry for myself yet and i still don’t. i’m tangling
other people’s emotions around my throat, i’m still trying
to find mine. mother tells me, you’ll find them if you clean your room.
mother says, look at how much you’ve grown. i am churches of guilt
when i don’t believe her. there are always people praying
inside of me. nobody should ever pray inside of me, least
of all you. if anything my hands are two skyscrapers
but that’s the only kind of building i know how to be.
i’m sorry, i’m in bed googling ways to leave somebody
without hurting them and also without being selfish. i am so
selfish, like leaves covering sidewalks, i am so selfish and i am
so sorry and i am crumpled but also i think i’ll be okay and
maybe one day i’ll think of you without feeling so sorry for myself.

I’m holding my father’s baby teeth in my hands. They’re pressing into my palms the way I wish your nails could. My mother through walls thin as her body is using the bathroom again. My mother has eyes like the antlers of a buck. When it snows my mother is outside with her fingers encircling a purple plant and the plant is now dead. When it snows my mother’s mouth can be seen disappearing into flesh, her face disappearing because it has no flesh. She is standing on the porch again watching you drive. “I Need My Girl” is a loud song and it is playing softly from your speakers.

The last time I held your hand in a car we drove for two hours like Magellan in circles around the outskirts of the town. The river coursing like the chest of a swan just about to take flight. The river coarse as childhood hair, hair without showering. I hadn’t showered in two days. This town would be better with large fields, more cows, some highway and cliffs. As it was: it felt too much like we were driving somewhere; it always does when you are in a small town. We drank from wine bottles shaped like our father’s heads and sat on straw chairs underneath strung-up white lights. The lights were there all year hanging from a tree that in that muddy heat should have been palm.

What it was: this summer your body reminded me of somebody else’s body all lanky, the one difference was that you were there and he wasn’t and now it is winter and neither of you are here and my body is in bed moored by hives the size of your large pale feet.

Falling for you is like
Falling to the bathroom floor
Foolish and clumsy I was
Slippery and painful it was
But I learned my lesson
And won't fall for you again

how do i always manage to end up with my gloves up?

imagine this:
unbroken eye contact leads to an exchange of numbers that are now part of the modern identity
you think i can't tell how fearful and intrigued you are of my sharp tongue
intrigue leads to lust
rolling around flannel sheets at 2 am after hours of ****** bliss
then we sleep for hours and hours
swimming through each other's dreams like mermaids in the sea
repeat
repeat
your laugh begins to annoy me
repeat
my unwavering adoration is beginning to make you feel trapped
repeat
egos bruised and words that can't be taken back are thrown against the wall
repeat
i've been pushed over the edge
repeat
sleep alone
repeat
want you back
repeat





it's over.



start from the top again.

i set it all ablaze
and watched as the orange flames danced
it's embers brushing against my skin
the flames curled around the room
******* every last drop of air
i collapsed to the ground
and struggled to breath
but i welcomed the pain
the burning of my lungs
the heat of the blaze
it was then i realized
while watching
my surroundings slowly succumb to the fire
how beautiful
death could truly be

to the girl who looked like new confetti thrown into a vortex
who went streaking around christmas trees with me after
the 1st annual ugly sweater & cheap tequila extravaganza:

i live inside a piano unable to tell the difference between lust & love
the only way i'll get to heaven is with the sun & your eyes on me
fighting for supremacy to write a poem & shout it at strangers
bursting from the ground like a masculine transcendental cornstalk
or a thin-***** blond haired man smoking a cigarette
with my hair in a bun finding new secret ways to touch you
my eyes closed & mouth open & armpits smiling skyward

your sweater blossoms now the way it never did in highschool
because your ******* are beautiful tumors that you bought
eyebrows plucked into gentle brushstrokes sent me into a fever-dream
you say you have scars on your ******* & i want to kiss them
after i tasted your raspberry lipstick daiquiri on a shared cigarette

i forgot my middle name when you leaned in & whispered
pretty things in my ear & your long hair teased my shoulder
you said something about a giant rumored t-bone steak but
i asked you instead to sing to me in the dark through a
shining steel microphone wearing a snakeskin trumpet
with your giant-bulbed headlights shining over the
empty shot glasses and half-eaten slices of lime
your hands dancing over the triumphant big pink ****-head
under the neon table beside your bar-lit bestie
bumping & dipping & snapping your fingers but
before my ******* mutilated your ***** bone
                                wait you said
please keep
                               the tv & radio on softly
my face tender-lipped like a deer shivering in your high-beams &
the shadow of my ***** growing up under your skirt
like a black horse bending its head to the stubble underneath your
belly button & around the hollows of your quivering knees

finally squatting on throbbing meat in my
bed at midnight doused in oil & fully on fire
your tongue orbiting around a hard universe
your marvelous face pressed into the seismic mattress
golden buttocks arched toward the sky like a skillful camera
my fingers sweep like feathers down your spine to your waist
shimmering like a teloscope in the blue light of the television

in the morning we held a funeral & buried my lips between your thighs
you are a beautiful new skyscraper untouched by wrecking *****
stiff-necked & wearing loose boots & an italian style blouse backwards shivering in the glow of the fireplace beside a big tall rock in the desert
your scent is still in my bed-sheets & now you are howling eyes
bloodshot & nagging across the fresh dawn prairie of i-10
                        toward         the       endless       coast

my excuses breed like the mayflies of the bayou
when your legendary grandmother says
i remind her of cool-hand luke
actually blushing & looking
down at his knees

so i wrote this while i sat
rocking back & forth
on her kitchen counter alone
watching the tanned florida bodies
with muscled calves & stomachs
full of beer whistling songs:

here i am
a blond faced writer
turning to ash
on some radioactive night
gathering paper from living
tree roots & unconscious moss
hair parted in the middle
& slicked back by river water
a little schizoid with a typewriter
telling myself to forget
old feelings
old words
old bodies
an angel filled with my own strong
music & careful passion under
the purple-gray moon & sky
dark like chewed-up bubblegum

i realize i've
laid down my insecurities
like hilarious graffiti
on paper a thousand times
but no one believed a word of it
until i came out of the blackness
of this river with silver wings
growing taller & stronger
nourished by the mud
into smokestack manhood full
of furious breath mouth
searching for a thunderstorm
finally awake on the liquefied air

but this dream will not leave me
like the horizon lost in teardrops
hunkered down invisible
on the banks of this peaceful river
as stars streak like knives across the sky
& beard-faced frogs sing
about naked bellies marching
across a frontier i know
i'm a certain kind of handshake maniac
miserable with sensitive armpits
writing a personal story with
fanaticism about rubber shadows writhing
like fat-eyed snakes dancing between
bales of hay on a clear night
cranked out on a bone-shattering
bullet of burnt coffee
big wintertime sky the color of wet cement as
cumulonimbus gather directly overhead
i'm lying on my young sweaty back
concentrating on large drone-birds
through a tinfoil kaleidoscope
flying free in native space
faster than i can knock them down
with either comfort or refined guilt

& i'll probably die trembling
under fuzzy patches of starlight
ignorant & weeping of lust before i'm 30
after falling in love 3 times a week
because i'm more vulnerable
in a moment of boiling telepathy
than i should be at my age to
grapefruit ******* and
pretty girls in little underwear