as if reduction doesn’t matter, lately i’ve
felt that this loneliness has become a curse.
2. sometimes, home feels like a fragmented
halfway home and your personal cell is your
bedroom. the bedroom walls are the only
comfort you get anymore and that’s okay.
3. untangle yourself from them. the vital stitches
does get worn and die like the very veins resting
beneath the ghostly white skin you reside in.
unhealthy habits turn into acute prisons.
4. family rests where your heart rests. remember
that adam and eve developed every single person
you met over the long course of time.
5. don’t dare to be anything but happy.  
6. when your parents eyes glaze over when you
are uncertain, don’t think you are at fault. life
did not hand you a manual stating you need to
follow the advice given to you.
7. someone who reads between the lines of
your words and knows the moment your life
is hanging on a balance is true family.
8. i'm being reduced, from my name being used
frequently in conversations down to once in a
blue moon. i'm starting to be okay with it.

- kra

long breath raked out, length of
day. thought pattern diffusing;
shadows cast on a broadening strip,
wallpaper hung close. stolen breath,
an orbit about you. consistent
glow. hinging on ripples, cut around
this field by clear breeze. branches
stretch, churning in the swept
air. held aloft, in their self-arrest.

i do not echo. this frictionless glimmer.
the vanishing extent to which i
can stop falling.

oh, but i do not want to. not
this time, sweet. each day reaches
out with tender hands, to pull
me up& out of this cavernous maze;
undoing meaningless shovelwork.

i find myself, under boughs, amidst
flowers. it's only slightly difficult to admit
this smile was smeared over
my freckling jaw, for nothing,
save for you.

even birdsong seems pale in comparison,
distant bells, ocean mist; undertow
beneath soft waves rolling
from your lungs to lips.

I've dated an artist for over two years
of headaches and yeast infections.
He's skinny, hairy, and the pointdexter I never knew I wanted.
I never wanted a man
to pin me to his wall as some temporary masterpiece.
But life comes and
kills us into what it wants us to be.
Every time I say “Let's stop”—
I shake my mind like empty soda cans
and roll over and take him again.

My trouble is
I love getting ******.

Though we call it something else, truth is
I am his *****. It's an artistic statement
that's been done a million times over. But he needs me
to tell him he's brilliant.
And so, I bury my cheeks into his chest fur.
Feeling its scratches like a returning stray at the door,
As he twirls his finger around in my mouth
romancing me into
something lovely and agreeable as Zooey Deschanel.

I hope one day I can break away and
just be

my own ***** again. But for now, I walk on all-fours
bent over in sharp-submission
and it's

delicious.
For we are nothing more
than two hungry dogs, running back to each other
panting and stinking
through the pouring rain.

A book,
just pages
on leaves, whitened-
river washed,
dried then wettened again;
tears of words
torn from a heart-
his then mine, and mine again.

A book
of poems, written verse,
la poema-
the saddest lines of all,
but not all, no,
not all; not always.

Pages of Odes;
oh, the odes
to fruit,
to wine
and song
of the sea and mermaids;
the pages sing his songs.

A book
of heights
and stone,
he took us there-
a shovel in the sand;
of monuments
and ships
of drunken men and love
once loved,
and loved again.

Words
on silken thighs,
*******
and a red dress-
on a dark night
the stars and moon did shine.

A garden-
he planted a *****
into our hearts;
his dog,
it died
simply
loved too much-
Ai.

A book,
just a book
of pages,
of poems
by my bed-
dog-eared,
much read and loved;
his words ending
the saddest lines of all.

r ~ 8/15/14

how  of,

              
       U wen

've               been

wine amongst such dower trees as Spring:

a perched upon
a string of suddenly
cool night has


           alighted

with weft of surging flower
a stumbling drunkness of **** infinite self

(a parting of easy fragrance   )                  soft

at the hinges

and wet between

the peels of rough human knees:


                                                           (some hand; some soft
                                                            
                                                             At play

                                                             at hurtfully
                                                             entering eager pain    .)


                                                                             t
                                                                             h
                                                                             e
                                                                         sound
                                                                             o
                                                                             f
                                                                         fingers;

            
                                                                 the sound of love.

The schoolteacher had an affair in Santa Fe.
She was a schoolteacher and a tourist.
And an affair adds dimension.
It makes a place more than memory.
The notion of it inverts.
Santa Fe now resided inside of the schoolteacher.
The city had a cracked voice and blonde hair
and a slightly sagging belly and pictures
of a New York niece on its phone and
an ambivalent relationship with combing its hair
and an irrational fear of left turns.
She expected young artists with vague academic worldviews,
chainsmokers talking loudly about point of view and Heidegger.
Instead the artists were retirees, painting nothing but landscapes
of red earth, attempting to improve on the natural world.
The schoolteacher did not like this kind of art.
It was trivial.
Wholly unnecessary.
Then the blonde artist walked up behind her
in a stucco gallery. He said, "You hate it don't you?"

"Yes."

She turned. He appeared to be in his early forties.

"Tourists never understand it."

"I'm not a tourist."

"You are. You've never been within the land."

"Don't talk to me like this."

"This is how women prefer to be talked to."

"Not this woman."

"Even you. You want to be told you're wrong.
'I look fat' No. 'Everybody hates me.' That's not true.
I'm skipping the stage where we agree. I'm going
straight to the stage where we are opposites.
Plus and minus."

"The part where we *****."

"Or connect or lose ourselves."

"I bet you live in a loft. Dozens of half-finished
canvases strewn about. Dabs of dried paint on
newspapers."

"I live in my big sister's basement. She isn't home."

"There's not enough wine in the world."

"That's where you're wrong," he said.