******* of suckling cheeks
taste of wine gone vinegar
left out too long exposed
to sunlight

twice ways between nowhere
we drank a bottle or four
before resigning ourselves
to defeat

we woke so many mornings
in drawn shade sunlight
with our heads split twain
by buzzing

we'd never known what it
was to taste hurt or defeat
until we likened our arguments
to chemistry

esther She says
she's it and
double that
she Says all
doubt you'd held
in the chest
dormant like
some sort of
bomb

was just
prison

*******
you're more
of yourself
than you'd
wish to
admit

At which point in vivisect ​
of the physical body
do we parse in twine
the real and the imagined
self? Some point soon
muscle must cede to
hedged bets in extraspace,
wish upon itself mercy.

—and in that moment
I was immovably still;
stone, impassable—

there's no advance
to this thing
i'm writing

i've heard tons on
tons of the palisades
and i've never lived
west of the
missouri and
where are the palisades
define it
geographically
a minimal

comprehension or-
some other thing-
of the perception
of how people
talk
here
in
missouri

would go a far long
ways in the palisades
somewhere in
flor'da                              or
califor'nia
god i wish i'd known
the weight-per-
pound a baton
centered on a
human forehead

but you had

i hadn't

saw a video
other day
sheep bleating
foggy
scotch air
expelled at her
lips

it looked like
outside

imagine i'd kissed
you in public at
the gas
station the
grocery
store

imagine our
tongues made
kind in
church on
sacred ground

In another life
we'd have been pinky-sworn to
some ******* promise