you remember his lips on
yours, how they felt like tar and you knew he was something
you did not want to stick to. the aftermath was like climbing out of a
net while covered in honey, he told you, smiling, how sweet you
were but you’re clenching your fists waiting for the
bees. sting me here and here and here and
here, cut off my hands so i never have to know what
losing your child before it’s fourth
birthday feels like.

when you were little, your
mother used to read you bedtime
stories about princes and dragons and lots of happy ever
afters. but where is the ‘after’ when your best friend
hates you? where is the
‘before?’

your therapist is reading you an
eliot poem in hopes it’ll calm you
down, in hopes you’ll replace memories of that
boy with bob
dylan and that couch with thoughts of empty
fields. every time it comes into your
head, bob won’t write songs about
you and the field screams ‘i am not
empty, i am
open.’

call you Vada, accuse you of being in
love with your teacher and killing your
mother; the first thing you ever ruined on
accident. you wish you were thomas
j, you wish you were genetically pre
dispositioned to crumble like a heart made of
sand when a bee sticks himself
into you.

your best friend won’t be your
best friend anymore and you’re ripping pages out of the
calendar and swallowing january
whole, there’s more ways to die than to stay
alive. suicides are their own
language, the suicidal are like
carpenters, they always ask ‘what
tools’ instead of
‘why build’.

you’re begging to the god your best
friend believes in to let you die
young. every minute of the
afterward feels like one more
tally on his list of worst
betrayals. satan is
smiling because you’re playing the game he
invented.

but what if the devil
doesn’t know he’s the devil?

it started out with a crash and a
blast and it ended in a mouthful of
bees.

Murdered by the sky.
Among the forms that move toward the snake
and the forms searching for crystal
I will let my hair grow.

With the limbless tree that cannot sing
and the boy with the white egg face.

With the broken-headed animals
and the ragged water of dry feet.

With all that is tired, deaf-mute,
and a butterfly drowned in an inkwell.

Stubmling onto my face, different every day.
Murdered by the sky!

A leaf fell
on a leaf

that had fallen
on a leaf

-they stand there-

like a circus act
of acrobats

balanced one
upon the other

& blocking my
way with their: “Hey...
look at us! ”

And: “Look at us! ”
is just
what I did!

(instead of going to school)  

ignoring the bell’s
incessant clamouring.

Telling it in my mind:
“Go to hell! ”

and striking up a conversation
in the foreign language of leaf.

fragile aren't you
no more running
no more walking
your bones have lost their strength
your mind has wondered off
will it return?
do you remember the simple things
like names
and numbers
or the color of his eyes

there were nights when you'd turn
away and you'd refuse to let me
touch you. if you want to know what a broken
bone feels like put your hand right
here.

when I heard of
Katrina I had no one to hold my hair
back, I had no one to tell me that hansel and gretel don't end up
eating each other.

lately I've been cutting up
bibles and bleeding with the
moon, there's things we know how to
fix and things we
don't.

if church was your
bedroom I ****** the sixth
genesis out of you, I pulled adam's second
son from your hair while you moaned the fall of jerusalem into my
mouth.

when we were good god considered shutting down
heaven but when we were bad, when we were
bad satan cried himself to
sleep.

After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played at the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out,
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me.  I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
    As far as Cho-fu-sa.