it's strange
where I stored away
all my loyalties, you
think you can bring
someone back with
courage or bravery
but you're only being
a child, really,

i threaded them
through each vertebrae
and stained every moment
with ink, every truck-ride
soaked in an alan jackson
song

I don't want to haunt you,
but at night if you are alone
or with a dead arm beneath
a pretty girl, deeply introspective
with the moon on your face
and you begin to tear into
yourself as if something
is lost or fading

all you'll find is a rung
of brass keys where I
told myself i could
where no other woman
has been, and she certainly
won't,

if storms are named after people
and every place is a concentrate
of you and me then
i have saturated the walls
in your peace and strength
with all my keys and loyalties
hung in the places you go
to find yourself.

oh, but it's alright, matthew.

I have seen small flowers go
through concrete and morning
glories uproot trees,
I have wasted so much
time being angry and I am
done,

buried myself
beneath the aspens and
hunkered down for
a while,

i won't haunt you
because only ghosts with
ill wills linger and

I am softening myself
like warm butter or
sun-tea, melting down
into sugar or caramel

I have a few mean bones
but they won't
be around for
long.

so it is alright,
to do that, or be that
if they bring you peace or strength
then so be
it.

this is how it will go.

I will go home and take off my makeup,
cleanser,
exfoliant
moisturizer.

I go to chiles to meet alyssa
and talk to the nice waitresses
she sits down and starts talking to
me about her boyfriend,
you know who you would look cute with?
she asks me, I entertain her.

triple digits.  four consonants. She says your name.
I hooked up with him in april, but i think you guys would look good.

This is how it will go.
I will go  home and take off my makeup.

in april? i say.  She scrolls through her phone
I think about how I flipped your indian calendar from March.
yeah, got pretty drunk. Played pool. It just sort of happens.

this Is how it will Go.
cleanser.

I smile and tell her I know you.
we probably would look good together
and the rest that follows is irrelevant,
I think I already knew, I wrote a poem
about your bedspread months ago
but I am not sure how i will go
home tonight with her on my lips
and whoever else, I am not sure
how to trade one person for
another, how that is done
or if it is done if it is
really accomplished


this is how it will go.
exfoliant

so this must be where i am in
the dirt, where everything you
said finally makes sense,
you didn't want to feel
ashamed, guilty or sad
and this is why,
the other girls
you held
all the ones
with fair hair
and soft skin
that you didn't have to
feel ashamed of anyway
because I was just
the background noise
a skin you were desperately
trying to shed or forget
you said you gave me
everything but so did

i

everything that was mine to give
dispersed into other
women.

this is how it will go.

I will go home.
I will not call.

pink moscato from
bottle shoppe liquor
the man at the counter
said is that all sweetie?
no, it isn't.

I pulled these thin blonde hairs
from his bedspread this morning
not even really thinking about it
just about how fair she must be
to have such delicate strands
and how mine somehow always
seem so coarse, like wire or cord
perpetuating the notion that I am
too dark, too brown, too much dirt
too much sweat, how do people
replace others or use them to
mask pain, lord, someone tell
me, is it a trade secret? someone
fill me in, let me know what it's
like to let someone else slip into
the role I was supposed to have
as she slides into my skin, shoulders
gliding through the air,
he looks past me at the ceiling
and I wonder about her blonde hair
throw mine over my shoulders
curls damp and black
damp and black
damp and black

no, just a little lost.
a call for attention
helter-skelter,
off the boat

no, you don't get better in a day.
but you do see a little clearer,
as much as i hoped loyalty
to a thought or idea would
change something crucial,

I thought this,
i thought that,
i thought wrong

i was never the opposite
no, not a day, but minute by minute
and I am sorry that I never made
that clear, that I have the tiniest
amount of faith but enough to
know that i can be healed
and have no scars


not a day. minute by minute.
I was never the opposite, just
reaching through the brambles
of something much
larger than this.

here's what you do
he has the silliest, most
western grin,
you grab a good branch
everything is this nice
before-autumn green
and i'm watching him
plod ahead in his old
levis, copenhagen ring
a frayed outline
it's a good gun, is what I mean

you gotta get a good gun.*

he turns around and shoots.