i was half asleep on a kitchen counter
curled up around the steak knives and
soup ladles, threaded through thick duvets

when you came and tucked yourself into me
with your burlap jacket, but I let you under the
covers--and I distinctly remember pressing my fingers
under your shirt only to feel how deathly cold you were
as if you had just come from the outside, or had risen up
from the snow drifts, opened your ribcage and let the cold
seawater fill the cab

but you were whispering something, a secret I couldn't make out
an undiscovered motive, slight of hand, slight of breath
you were lieing and I was letting you in, letting you in
beneath the weapons, beneath my skin, into my body
and you reached in for a handful of grain but I was a
barrel of cords and twine

meshed and tamped, you found the soft damp earth where
I grow and we somehow managed to make it seem ok
make it seem ok
you're out there ok
crimped and furious
a mean cuss on your lips



touching still means too
much to        me

this message has
been on my lips
a train of thought
stuck to the tracks
woven between teeth
a mesh of necklace
lodged behind my ramus
a chain of words working
into my tongue
i am convinced there is
less light than I thought
that i have never smoked
a cigarette in my life but
i am blacker and deeper
than any ravaged lungs
made of  about as much water
that sees Atacama
on a good day
and I am

raging.

i am your

                                                  arrow


r­elease me where
you
will

there is more to it all
than running away,
which i have always
and never done

i used to cap my
bones in steel
wash them over with
milk, stand at the river's
edge and feel myself sink
in the pierce,
without ever wading
out,
you could call it a somatic
symptom, as if blowing away
were a disorder--
and yet feeling heavy
enough to sink a thousand
ships but they
should know i'm
no Helen.

He said I was an
Arnold Palmer
but there is too
much lemonade
in my bones.

we were out on the porch
on an abnormally warm december night
with little glow florence off to the west
and he hadn't said much of what was there
because when he says nothing he is, with
his words laid out beneath pearl snaps
scrawled down his stomach--I would know,
i've seen his the tyrades plow, resentment
run thick, angry words rampant in his veins--

so he says nothing, and I know.

often times he is an open door and
i am the wind, in billows or gasps, rattling
hinges, finding holes, peeling paint or gathering dust
a spool of thread wrapped around stonehenge to remember
curls of foilage, svelte figureheads on galleons, I tell him

that I want to be with him and he says nothing. won't even look at me,
he's somewhere far away, drawn into penrose like a soul sunk in the
dirt, I say it again, and he tells me we should go inside


so i want to ask if that is all i am,
if that is what this is, if i am only good
for one night or two hours, in bits and pieces
limbs and moisture, if as a whole i am too much
but still lacking, if the warmth of my hips is
all that's needed but the grand luminance of a soul is out of the question?


But I say none of that, just follow him inside.
A hundred questions trickling down my spine, gathering in my femur, my calves, gusting into my lungs, I don't know how to be more than this and less, I'm opening up the cavity of my chest and pleading this

this is all there is.
I am all that I can be

I'm only made of silk and sometimes I tear easily

It might be beautiful when I do, when I break

Elegantly, in private

Wake in the morning, half swept in fantasies

where my fingers have only touched those in dreams

the faces I could never kiss outside

I might even fall in love with you

no one taught me to read before I read.

I've always held the propensity for
unbridled curiosity, i'd have thought
that was obvious--
how many questions have I asked you
in such a short time?
and I saw the things she said about you
and broke into a dozen white-hot pieces
against your skin, probably sunk through
your spine and landed in the bed of your truck
burned a hole through the casing and smoldered
into the dirt--
I didn't quite understand the hurt, I guess,
but i imagined your name leaving her lips
like a scowl, so few syllables wrapped in
an unwarranted viciousness, there is still so much
i don't understand, so many things I want to ask but--

your name could never be so wrong
if only defamed by such a girl
and I realized I couldn't make
that better as soon as you
said I'd dug up the past
but matthew I just want
you to know that

you're too beautiful for these things
too good for these people,
i've seen your heart, you
can lie, you can lie, you can
lie, you could never speak to
me again but i'd still know
the truth--
tougher than the rest
come out swingin'
bare your teeth
hold your breath
you're still
softer than them.

before the maroon 5 concert
chaz said his mom wasn't home
she had stripped his mattress and
put everything in the wash
and I only remember wondering
why it hurt so much
and the silk threads of the seams
catching on my bra straps--
I had thought it was
supposed to be so much more
than pumping and churning
like pistons in a truck,

the difference was you
stopped when I asked
shiverin' above me in
a warm sweat
and all i could do was
run my fingers through
your hair over and over
stay silent and move slowly
because no one has ever seen
me like that, wavering
and rocking, working my
way up, using your hips
like training blocks, stretching
my thighs out over your bed--
lord I ain't ever asked for more
never bruised nobody 'cause
I wasn't thinkin', he's got
these welts i don't even
remember, he sayin he let me
in like he left the door's open
during the storm and I was
rain, hail or wind, a noise,
a knock, just me.
but I opened the windows,
the basement, the attic
pulled out the chairs in
expectation, I have nothin'
to say for my fears, they're
there and sometimes they
shift gears and gun it
but that don't mean
i didn't look at you
and wonder about
things I shouldn't
or replace my daddy's
name with yours just
to
see.

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.

Travis stands outside the grounds
with me and listens while I recount
the past two months, several times he
sighs and knocks his ball cap up, takes
a rough palm and wipes it down his face,
holding his jaw briefly,

he's smaller in frame, my height, makes eye contact
and holds it, takes you in when he speaks. He's been
treated pretty rough from what i hear but still keeps the
back porch open for visitors and I guess I am one--
twisting the cap on and off a tube of lip gloss, we
talk quietly about his brother who is in and out of
the swinging doors, there are so many men with
blue plaid shirts in here and I can hardly keep track--

and when we head for the Dome, I maneuver through the
old carousers and dark drunks who lurk in plain view, men who
murmur of course, hermosa when I gingerly place my hands
on their shoulders and inch past the doorway, I am searching for
you, for your blue sleeve,
but instead find Travis' and we dance a slow song--

I think he understands how I'm feeling, might be the lack of a poker face, we two-step and I trip over his boots, and when we're done he
kisses my shoulder lightly.

If I wasn't so affected by the warmheartedness I'd tell you I'd barely
noticed, but I am, when people are good, they are much softer. Their
intentions are palpable and tender--
and maybe I find comfort in touching people which i don't do too
often--and for a moment that was all i needed was a hint of
kindness after being handed off
from man to man, from feeling
intensely right with your arms
looped around my waist
with my fingers loosely settled
in your palm--to stranded with a memory
too many times where
you walked off and
i still had so much
more to say, like,
I truly love you,
maybe.

All drafts
too many

edits

Do you remember the splinters
from the tanbark, your whole
body burned

I keep having
these dreams about
you, (I keep having
these dreams about you)
i have nothing to say
a lot of redundancy, mom, why
is it taking me so long?
was it because of the
night in the barn?
I dunno, I tell myself.
I can put on a pretty good show,
i guess, I'll sit at work and
reprimand myself behind the
fax machine, you told him you were done
but that was really for the greater good,
and I think about how to him, everything
has the potential to be fixed--
like people are brick buildings or
wooden shelves or long pipelines,
he's been fixing everything for a while
welding all his wounds shut and shootin'
the rats that find their ways into his room--
that doesn't change the things he said--
that I won't bother repeatin'

redundancy, like i was saying earlier.



that doesn't fix the dreams
how I changed a little with him
that I feel a little warmer with
sweet tea, with milk, with the
old men that walk into the bank
all watery eyed and spotted,
who I have to yell at so they
can hear me past half a century
of haulin' hay, i dunno,


i dunno. Dakota brought
out something good in me
the way streams wash out
little flecks of gold


i'm okay


I think.

More than less I
am sick. Of writing.
things about love.
when I know nothing about it.

we are much different now, aren't we?

I am hasty to assume
that everyone is
uninterested

Have you ever been
afraid
to
talk about
your life
as if
if you did
people might
use it
against you?

How could she
Have been more
In all her sordidness
Was it the way her
Body bucked and
Lifted?

I have fled from this profound
sense of loneliness my entire life—

Nothing has ever felt right, good or
Safe. I have hardly found another person
that seems to speak the same language,
Am I to be a single aldis lamp in the night
flashing across the great sea with
nothing but the stars to

twinkle back at

Me.