it's not as easy to imagine
your fingers as they used
to be, all these men have
had the same scars--

sometimes I see myself
here or there in a smaller body
from months ago, i wonder
about how i fell for you,
the night i was supposed to
go to Salida, up on Bellino
land before the drop off,
not leaving a single poem
out, because I wanted to be
heard and you heard

a grainy memory backlit
in your headlights, all just
crumpled tin cans and
riddled pigeon casings

i have never been good
             at
remembering the bad,
i have taken many deep
breaths, scraped and pulled
the threads from my steering
wheel, rubbed fingernail fissures
from my palms

i hope you come upon
true happiness, revelations
that clear barrel and hit the mark
i hope you find truth in all your anger
that one day you see me and
say
hello.

when love comes,
i hope he waits.

(in that spacce)

that by then my door
will be open, and the
house will be clean,

that he will wander
through the living room
for the first time since I
had been broken, when
he couldn't even find his
way through the mess--

a walking phenomenon
gliding through the kitchen
and out the backdoor,
when you come, love,
and the backdoor slams
i am knee deep in dried
leaves and ****,
wielding nothing but
yard tools and not
my heart chained to
the end of a virge
nothing but the
elegant vengance
towards wasps and
gardner snakes

both briefly carrying
heiligenschein against
the grass but

you will find i am
made of sweat and
warm lemonade
a pair of knees
embedded with
pebbles and clover
leaves,

love, bring your tools,
bring your faith,
the flint only i can
knap and I,
only you can
spark.

he kept asking why i was
making the face

what, you don't believe me?
no, I don't.

in fact everything he said had
a metallic ring, everything slid
too easily out of his mouth,
workin his tongue like it
had a slit or flossed his
teeth with thin fibs
don't take off their
boots 'cause they
know they gonna run

and it's funny 'cause
that's what I'm trying
not to do,

well if you have
to write a song about it
is it lifted from your heart?
did you press yourself
between the pages like a
daisy?

I did,





I did.

he* brought me out to the
                                     woodshed

gently opens the back door
but it slams behind us, pneumatic
cylinder busted so it catches my heels
and i slide off the last step
into the gravel and his steel-toes--

he silently brushes through the
prairie drop seed and mexican
feathergrass, nothing but an oil
stained back lumbering amidst the switch
eventide shivelight striking through
the creases in his ears

full of his old tools, horses,
hidden shelves--
and i've gone cold since
we left the house, a
**** frost set out
on my limbs 'cause
i know i done wrong
all the blessed evidence
up and down and that's
before he starts to turn--

ungive.

ungive.

did you think i was a dream?


oh, how I tried to be.


thin and watery, made to


fit around you so that you


might say I were the crepuscular rays


sheafs of sunlight held up like


taut ropes tied to the ledge


of heaven.

I will rewrite history.



will decoupage the walls and lay
today's newspapers across our scripts
notated phone calls between
you                  and                 i

will let the past be the past  but
i will scumble it over in red alkyd flat
line the hairlines with vicuna threads
and  braided burlap

will let the sink run till it
lifts edges of the counter,
soapstone memorials we
built to emphasize our
bitter weaknesses for
eachother to live up to
till everything runs between
the floorboards
everything about you             and                 i
will bubble up and release
gently snap and move apart
we were no mettalurgists
but we tried--
to be as hard as all get up
iconel hearts stripping
eachother and you
bought out, you win
you're the alloy
and I am
raw skin and soul


but  I willl not be
bothered by the upheaval
as much as i break apart
(because I have been)
making a fool of myself
but i have hope that something
new will crack the casing
i am leaving in the quietest
way possible
relocating
he left months ago
and i am just starting to pack
my things but i wouldn't have
it any other way--
have you ever tried to force a
purge?

here i am,
here it is

the runoff.

it has been storming so often

in the evenings he rolls over the city

so come down and meet me;
in the rain if you must--

I am too raw to do much else

most things ***** and push

but if this is the dust of your feet
then I'd lie in your wake