I've been stabbing at
the promised land until
my veins collapsed
because drugs make the sun
shine harder than its ever shimmered
in all my life & sometimes
I hear the stars cry
as they fall

because I've fallen too
& my blue eyes have
cried harder this year
than they've ever shimmered
in all my life

but I'll never sleep
in the gutter again

I won't bury
my head
underground

& I'll never hang
by a thread instead

I'll build up a mountain with my life
until I feel the throat of the world
swallow me whole

& when it does one day
maybe you won't
remember my name
but please don't forget
the things we laughed at together
or the sound of my voice saying yours

I swear to God I'll remember
your fingers forever & I'll never
forget the secrets
you whispered about your scars
or the time we threw the lock
on your aunt's bedroom door
while you were babysitting
your youngest niece

i long to live quietly inside a hurricane
whirring thru a dingy tralier park in
an alternate world where my young pink
heart hasn't been reduced to live
under the floor pedal of your mother's
foot powered sewing machine
in the forgotten attic -- a surrogate
universe in which my name
became more than
a delicate vocabulary
flicked easily away
from your tongue

didn't sleep. instead I found
a wall in a cave & grabbed a
chipping hammer & tore it down.
finally broke thru to starlight
at 4:12 this morning.
***** bruised fingernails.
discarded piles of red clay pain
swept into outside corners.
spelunking ever inward. steve knows.
shed some tears, dave, he says.
shed your fears.
warmer in the new cave.
less damp.
room for a rug.
room enough to grow a plant.
room enough to grow.
self-perpetuating seeds.
dawn was a stranger I welcomed inside.
sleeping stalactite makes back tight.
I will wake & stretch when the sun is high
overhead like a cat in a woven basket.
mountain water trickles underground.
do yr homework.
yr body is yr home. put in work.
my body is my home. work is work.
yr body is my home. input work.

I still don't know if
I've ever "made love"
but if I have
the first time
was definitely with you:

******* on the ***** carpet floor
of your best friend's house
in Tallahassee. we knocked
tattoos against the coffee table
both our knees red
rugburnt from scooting the length
of the living room + hallway.

we moaned into each other's mouths
as our friends passed out drunk
not seven feet away
we tried three positions & your
body told me the last one was your
favorite so we bumped bellies
pulled each other's hair
your chest on my chest
your shoulder blades
drenched in moonlight
small in my careful hands
stars camped in our eyes
you bit my
lip too hard.

I'll never forget the wet way you kissed
my salty forehead as we
climbed connected onto
the couch, but the most vivid
memories from that night
are your legs
still quivering but clenched
ankle locked together at the
***** of my back, & falling asleep
inside you because it
felt like the right thing to do.

she calls me
she calls me & I don't answer
she calls to say her grandma
is failing fast & the twins
aren't sleeping & they're angry

come on over I say
I only have two calloused hands
& a sixty hour work week
bony feet & a bottle of
chocolate wine & I ask if she's ever
slept four on a full sized mattress

the boys will be fine I say
bring both elmos
a set of pastel paints
& you can run your fuzzy-sock feet
up my legs & warm your small hands
on my space heater heartbeat

grandma will see good Friday
& easter sunday I say
& probably even her own
late April birthday
barely audible as the boys snore
like miniature sawmills
through peppermint toothpaste
ringed open mouths

the last thing I feel before sleep
is her smile stretching across my
bare chest & her hands catch fire
& wander toward a cooler spot of skin

it's Friday morning &
we're up early sitting at
the windowsill after
shuffling as one self
down the carpeted hallway
toward the miraculous
coffee kitchenette with her
knuckles belt-buckled around
my hip bones & her head
tucked into my breastplate/armpit

still in our peejays
shirtless in sweatpants
rolled to my knees &
she's wrapped in the sheets
but still vulnerable with one
bare tattooed ankle living
in my lap

we're waiting for the sun
to sing an orchard symphony
to our skin & burn last night's
clear coat off the pane
so we can laugh & pull weeds
in the garden & share a
bath bomb afternoon or maybe just
jump in the river holding hands

just as I began to wonder
about the green/white/striped
thong she let me ****** off
last night & if she replaced it
she stood up
arched her back to
stretch out the dimples there

winked at me

& then she dropped the sheet

lately i've been having these good days
i don't have sad wet cigarette saxophone nights anymore
i watched the sun wake up six times last week
i found a blue bucket of tulips &
gave them to a bald-headed krishna girl when
she sang to me on the sidewalk

i hired a boy to hide in the foyer
& peel a fiddle if i rouse from sleep during the night
or whistle through a harmonica
if i'm wet-eyed during breakfast
i finally got rid of all the pictures you stuck
to your side of the dusty bathroom mirror
except the blissed-out polaroid of us
perched on an old oak tree limb
like a couple of soft doves versus the turreted sunset

i deleted your number because you don't call me back anyway
i stopped mailing letters to your father's house
i haven't listened to the Plantasia record
you bought me since you left
i never feel the gray heat from your
staticky hand warming my shoulder
i forgave you for the blood in my kidneys
& old smog in my mildewed vinyl lungs

i sleep under the running green vapor light
of the moon & stars instead of the frothiest pillows
rippling on an ocean of sheets & project quilts
i finally scoured the lipstick stain from my collarbone
after what seemed like two years
i forgot how your armpits smelled
i sewed all your sundresses into a shower curtain
& i never see your delicate ribcage
peaking through the streams of hot water



i hardly ever notice the noose
you left hanging in our apartment