Because he gets to do whatever he wants! He gets
to go to cafes and draw dumb things and he probably
got drunk there too, with his stupid         sister. He even got
to get a tattoo and everyone loves him for it, everyone adores him for it.
But people hate us.
He's an attention grubbing idiot.
He has a job.
He can't fess up to anything, he just keeps lying to himself.

earlier today
i was alone up
on skyline reading
a book by haruki
murakami for
four hours and
the rain came and
went twice with
a rainbow that
would move paces
out against the town
and people moved up and
down the mountain
pausing for a smoke
and leaving with
their windows rolled
up, I cried a couple
times without knowing
why.

i finally told him
I want to try.
with you.
I want to try, with you.
I want to be with you.
I want to be with you.
because it's been there
at the forefront of everything
Waiting to be said
okay. okay.  like a sigh--
I had been trying all night
From the moment he threatened
To drive away, standing insolently
In front of his headlights--
but he was quiet and
all i could do was smile
and say, but that's not
enough anymore, is it?
no, it's not.
but I know why it isn't,
and why this poem is
short with so very
few
words.
because decisions are
yes or no, but some yes'
are too
late and
some no's
follow in suit.

i don't think i have ever
let myself heal in between
storms, i have shacked up
with missing roofs and
bullet holes in the trim
the rain soaked carpets
a mere nuisance like
creaky doors--
but lord would I love
to pop the seams on
every shoddy job i've
done, lie all the materials
out on the floor and accept
the work, look at what a mess
I am, people can love messes
but for their sake, I would
like them to love
a little more so--


don't mind the holes,
the haphazard strings
and leaflets--I am still
learning and moving,
sewing, accepting,
working.

I don't remember what
movie we watched that
night but it was before we
got those christmas lights
and there was an airport
( I think). Your room was
a plum house, your bed,
on the right side of the room
against the wall, Why do I
remember knives? Were we
eating? This is what I do daily,
pilfer my own caverns for memories
and try to piece them together
but for the life of me I can't
remember what we were
watching.

snagged on wheat stalks, no
shoes, a sheet of hair in the sun
everybody can hear me and no
one can hear me, crashing through
the tall grass on a wolf trail, slapped
by ears of corn, the tall grass relents
against me





shush, shush, shush,






but my feet
have never left the ground and the
durum sticks to my sweat, out here
in the wilderness.

And we meet outside the gate—

In the balmy evening with
the sonance of happy voices in the distance,
a dusky star softly gleaming through
The ever-open portcullis
casting damask
patterns upon us;

We there, barefoot, breathing.

A simple life, in cream linen
beneath the foliate ivy
in the brisk morning I am
out In The Garden—
Lying in the dewy grass
Perennial hymns on my lips
reaching into bee hives

Calling lord,

Lord.

i'm finally sleeping through the night--

and for a couple days I'll wake up and
not think of you at all--
people say your name and it sounds like an old prayer
each syllable a funny amen

I've been shadowboxing myself, my old friend
i've been been relearning to to be comfortable with silence in the end
neither of us kept our promises but that's no unforgivable sin

i've considered a hundred thank yous
all lined up  on the lawn, white pickets to make a nice fence
and sometimes I've stood in my kitchen and stared at the mugs
whispered i don't know myself but that's why
i left, wasn't it?

i'll admit to being jealous of your happiness,
i've only so many faces to keep, and i only want one

it's taken a while to own the fault,
i see  every shameful thing and dust off the
way i used to hold myself

I'm finally sleeping through the night
a little bit heavy, no less able to dream
and i hear part of you like i might
the soft hurt i left in your bed
so, please forgive me
when you get the chance.


please forgive me
when you get the chance.

i would have
withered away
the way insects
do at the bottom
of a local water tank

an old stray dog
panting between
street signs in the
boonies,

I have never fully
feared obscurity
but I would if I
slept like the dead
and found comfort
beneath a neon moon.

the next time you
go to the cabin
east of the fort
(my east, not your east)
(left, if facing the cabin)
(wrong)
look for the tree with the
white yarn wound
around the trunk with
a bunch of knots that
wouldn't hold,
where I
wished that no matter
what you
would be
here, that
i would last
past all my fears
and make it there again.

did you ever want to shake out the skies
to watch the stars fall, catch one and fix
it on a ring with kudzu
did you ever think that fear
is just a gate without locks,
driven into the yard with father's strong arms--
so I dream about the day the man
died on highway 50, the road up to salida
away from Kansas City
saying thank you to the cadence of mississippi *******
star-watching till the early cold 1 am

i've been a little too ******* my soul
a vice on a child that don't know where else to go
and she ain't even physical, just an analogy for heart
but I whisper that, we can't keep holdin' on that way,
like there's no where else to hold,
cause that bridge has fingerprints set in stone
the places where god tried to take me home
and i dug in between the bricks to go no further.

but there's no difference in where I am,
runnin' up the sides of mosaic canyons
settin' fire to the brush, with matchstick palms
walking the line to hell on white hot sand,
widowbird feathers streamin' in my hair
drilling post holes with heels that can't stay above ground
on the backslide with promises hanging off my lips
gold drillbit tassels swinging against my hips
and he's close there behind me
waiting for the right misstep
'cause god don't catch but is one for reachin'
and i'm tired of tellin' him i'm ****** about his mercy
the way things are, the way i am, the things I can't
change without his help
anymore, the loneliness at local bars
when i'm sittin' by myself up
in the stands watchin' bulls
as honest as the colorado weather
throwin weak men off their backs
looking for the real challenge
prolly the way he seeks me out
to wear me down till all i can
do is stop and look back
away from the gates
kick off the mud
stop buckin', tossin'
sleepin' on the watch.

all weekend i fed cucumber skins
and apple chunks to Minokie
and several times i thought the old
corpses of tree trunks were fallen calves
leant to and packed with damp soil, white
roots stretched out under the overcast sky
peeking out of the natural mulch and fern
soft and raw

If I walked past the rocks quick like, they
looked like shoulders or kneecaps, angel heads
that the earth washed out, pines keeled over with
their innards exposed, the sound of veins being ripped
from the bedrock still audible

I started thinking of things based on where you
could have been or would have been
with me--sleeping patterns we might have
discovered, the narrow places we find we fit,
the hollows too cold and mountains just right--
how the night flashed behind my eyelids
like a buoy in tumult and the rain sounded like the footsteps
of someone stopping at the edge of my tent over and over

I keep casually mentioning your name because
it still sounds right, but i'm cautious around the syllables
as if i've taken clay to fold around the ends, spoken secrets
into sego lily petals,
I'm a little more down in the earth as if
i've been too high up in the clouds, i've picked up
this strange way of speaking that the old folks are
drawn to--they touch my wrists and pray with me
over their anemic daughters and passed sons--

they hear me.


I keep thinkin' maybe we're meant to be or maybe
you were the catalyst to an end of a softer life i'd been
living, one without the smell of cow pats baking, the dense
grass giving off steam, uncomfortably humid but it makes your
sweat kind of sweet, and the bees think we're honeysuckle, foxglove
jim hill mustard, soaked up in truck exhaust at 5 am,
a dry cold that advances on your lungs--
almost hurts the way it unabashedly fills you up,
doesn't feel sheltered, feels saturated and heavy with
possibility. Feels like the amber grass, newborns, cold tin roofs,
stars in the back of your throat.

tell me, was that in your blood? and when i dug splinters out of your
palm, when you were staring around my earlobes, did it spread? Did the birds pick you up and scatter you like wildflower seeds? it jumped river, through our mouths or elsewhere

we're not talkin but you're still here
we're not talking but I'm still there.

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

I bet you just want
to see your feet framed
against the mountains

but i'd be too worried
about ticks or where
I'm going to go ***--
I worry where my lack
of an adventurous
spirit will ever lead
me


(to)

This tree in our house
is from God, I see it
when I walk up the
stairs, he must be
telling me
something

Effortless between 6 and 7--
lavender and magenta,
moves a bit like grass
sounds like orange juice
in the morning, the sun
says a lot of things about

you

i still remember how
it felt to hold your temple
fine dark hair reaching past
my second knuckle
and now my fingers plug
into air, i still rememeber
just how much to spread
them apart to accommodate
the sharp shelf of your
forehead, how to trace
your brow bone without
waking you up and
brush your eyelashes
to show how careful
i really am, these details
scare
me.

.

can you save him?

Can you save him?

A few short weeks before he’d
tattooed Isaiah 40:31 on the
back of his tricep

I  missed all the signs—
his little sister is getting married in a week.

It’s been five years and
It’s been five years and—

It’s been five years


And.

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

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.

I see you blended
into my artwork, a
pencil smudge or
shape in the carpet
alight in yellow paint
dusted over in eraser
shavings, drawn out
in miscellaneous shapes
and misplaced lines, I
drew you out till the
last strings, the last
lead, the last words