for KA*

There is something in this for both of us. We have chemistry, let's be lab partners. Help me with problems like which would make a better poem: a pandemic, a wolverine, or a broken heart? You know I only chose you because you enjoy my fondling your blond *** as you lean over the Bunsen burner, because we have flammable *** on the periodic table, but this is more serious than calculations or *******. As a poet, I need to access the deeper moaning of reality, but you are a screamer, not a moaner. Let's experiment anyhow. Lift that skirt and let's explore something elemental, make a new molecule, feel the reaction. Help me probe the fundamentals of creation and I may love you, though surely not enough, as we are both non-valent. Even though we may never bond, we are in this together, partner. Lift your beaker to my lips. Outcomes are never certain.

Foot tapping on waiting room
Linoleum with the pace of test
Result nervousness.

Scent of mostly bad news
Layered on walls in dire need
Of paint and less tasteless

Decor.
Her name is a shot fired at
The shield surrounding her

Continous playback of worst
Case scenarios as her hand meets
That of the doctor

Whose eyes give less than
Nothing away.
Please sit down.

Sink like shards of shattered
Hearts, or float for decades in
Love with the worried man

Awaiting the same news with
Unsteady workman's hands
Around a ***** phone.

It vibrates, and the Doomsday
Clock in his chest skips ticks
And tocks, approaching a

Schrödinger's midnight or noon.
I'm in remission, she whispers.
Then nothing.

Nothing but two unison breaths
Carried across an umbilical
Cord connecting souls that just

Lost their full
Amount of
Weight.

This is Relief.
This is Sunrise;
Spring.

Nine years and still
we cradle our grief
carefully close,
like groceries
in paper bags.

Eventually the milk
will make its way
into the refrigerator;
the canned goods
will find their home
on pantry shelves.

Most things find
their proper place.

Eventually the hummingbirds
will ricochet against scorched air,
their delicate beaks stabbing
like needles into the feeder filled
with red nectar on the back porch.

Eventually our child
will make her way
back to us. Perhaps.

But I’ve heard
that shooting
****** feels
like being
buried under
an avalanche
of cotton *****.

For now it’s another
week, another month,
another trip to Safeway.

We drive home and wonder
why it is always snowing.
Behind a curtain of snow,
brake lights pulse, turning
the color of cotton candy,
dissolving into ghosts.

And with each turn,
the groceries shift
in the seat behind us.
From the spot where
our daughter used to sit,
there is a rustling sound—

a murmur of words
crossed off yet another list,
a language we’ve budgeted
for but cannot afford to hear.

We never cracked the mysteries of Pittsburgh,
and Baltimore bled out inconveniently before

our eyes, another nervous snitch knifed outside
the corner convenience store in broad daylight.

Salt Lake City was too pure, too white,
theocracy carved into a wafer of snow.

We grew tired of watching Los Angeles
pleasure itself in the sun like a **** star,
interminably tan and vacuous.

And Chicago was too ******* cold.

So we settled here, where streets turn
the soles of our shoes to palimpsests

where every apartment elevator
offers a wall of infinite buttons

where grocery stores stock their shelves
with bottles and bottles of octopus ink

where neighbors open their curtains
and stand shimmering in moonlight

where weather mixes with nostalgia,
creating immutable, poetic forecasts

where water tastes like redemption
and the skyline rises like a chorus,

so much taller than the cities
we inhabited when we were

alive.

She wore a windbreaker as red
as her parents voting habits,
and smoked American Spirits
as rough as the next-door
skateboarder's hands.

At 18, she was bored by
teen-aged touch,
and looked towards the
thirty-five year-old avant-garde
painter, who meandered in his
sun room, like a soul
pretending to be lost.

At 20, her parents told her
to go to college, to go to
'some place other than here'.
So, she went and had skinny,
Greek fingers with chipped nail-polish,
dip down and inside of her, without
judgement, without thought, and,
with this touch, she felt free.

At 24, she was an undergrad with
an apartment and a guy named 'Blake',
and Blake said Brown and she said State.
And when Blake left, she felt complete
despite losing something meaningful.

And when her story started to go on forever,
her body spread across the pavement like
seeded jam on burnt toast, scraped thin,
without image and without future, lost
inside crevices and cracks, a memory
or thought, wandering nothingness.

You breathe, then I.

Every crack in the pavement
Is a chasm dividing myself
From the loveless life I
Cherished.

Facebook relationship status
It's uncomplicated.
It still is, but the butterflies in
My stomach have

Butterflies in theirs, and I
Carry flowers like a grave
Hiding the remains of my
Plans to see the year through as

A single man.
You breathe, then I.
You touch my face, then I
Yours.

My hands hold your scents
For hours.
You breathe.
I breathe.

You sleep, then I.

Eyes like two suns I stare
Directly into without blinking.
A TV I sit too close to while
Watching myself fall and fall and

Fall.
I drop to the ground. Then you,
And my arms are jungles, my arms
Are oceans, my arms are a

Bed or a bouncing castle beneath
You.
We don't fall in love.
We fly.