I can taste her scent, riding on the morning breeze. It is of empty swing sets; dead Autumn leaves.
It is unnaturally cold. She is waiting for me, but I cannot find her.
Summer has fled my skin.
I sink with each step. I cry out, but my mouth stays closed.
I cannot find her. I cannot find her. I cannot—

I am staring into a convenience store. Gaudy labels, bright neon.
The air smells of soy sauce and sweat. A foreign sun blinds me.
Lucy’s father is waiting for his receipt, hand stretched for eternity.
I want to scream out. I want to run up to him and shake him loose of the death that will consume him and his family.
But all I can do is sink; hand stretched for eternity.

I am crying. There is a luggage bag in the hallway, clothes strewn to its side.
Mother is shouting, but she does not know it.
‘Ten more years’, she says, ‘ten more years’. I have never seen father so angry.
I don’t want to watch. I want to disappear. I want to sink into the walls.
My existence has led to this moment; this moment that I will not understand for another eight years.
‘Ten more years.’ Mother slams the door. An engine starts, but I am gone.

Perhaps, I never resurface.

bottlerocket,
ski click &
shoot.

         [empress impressed.]

petrol souls drift the skin & aetherous
of our holy mother lake midday.
by alpine,
lymph node,
spine of glimmering fish;
i never truly thought that love could destroy.

       [to display the paradise boon and boom salute.]

her knife atop the stump.

*

yon machines construct art-form of reservoir (yon being short for yonder),
knee-boarder-boy wake to wake, he wags his tail when he dreams.

        [lakeside.]

tribal the beach: a family drunk on juiceboxes.
rolling rocks. tall boys
& boulders/ bountiful canyon kids
with their beautiful gasping dogs.
****** knee **** and gallop at the foot of a mountain/mound &
sugar ants stomped, longing to empire.

mom bunches her fists into sand
of stolen crag, listening closely for her childhood in the whistle
of a casio conch.
margaritaville will do.

          [to **** or kiss beetles.]

kiss;
the bitty prince.
maintain a steady alliance with all lifeforms and flora.
life is programmed as thus;
algorithm of love.

bright honeydew soaked slabs of wood,
or plank, tabletop treatise.
wet pile of seeds.

young small birds hoard seeds for winter;
teeter into spring;
& upon summer find solace in swift slip-n-slide daylights.

There's something about the time of year when the leaves start to fall that makes my eyes go from clear blue to stained glass. Something about morning breath that makes me wish I could stop breathing until I remember that no one will love me even if I'm under a headstone. There's something about the wind, something about a whisper that sounds like it's begging me to leave; but when I fear the power of gravity after I tie the rope, I feel like death is trying to tell me I'm not ready yet. There's something about the frost bite on my hands that has me wishing there was something more for my empty palms to grab hold onto. Something about the way the cold makes my lips tremble and my voice crack, but no one hears a **** thing. Something about the way I'm looking for eyes to melt in and restore the life in mine. There's something about the way the doormat makes me feel anything but welcome and how the slammed door yells at me that I should of never come in. Something about winter and the absence of you, makes me feel like I wasn't meant to see December.

Today the museum held clay books
Pages flying from bindings
To represent
That feeling when you reunite with your siblings after a parent dies
I stole a beer from a boy named after the West
and of course, I think of my friends
As i always do
The pages that flew from our chests
When she died
The siren screamed
And we sat in silence
Photo books mostly just break my heart
I will be angry for the rest of my life
Because she doesn't deserve her pain
Because our year together ended
Because high school is over
And no one in this campus cove
Will ever believe our stories
I need your faces back in my line of vision
Glowing orange over flames

But his eyes, his mouth - they look like a stranger's

Copper shines, reflecting images of refugees floating through mud waters on glass shards
Fire feels dull blood aches of healing ivory gun shot wounds
Professor locked himself inside his head after the fourth born had been buried

Headlines make my knees shake
There was a UFO sighting at the Dome of the Rock, but you were slap drunk in a tin foil book case
There was a UFO sighting at the Dome of the Rock, but you were crying salt for departed birds and card stock fingernails

Brush burns and bottle caps
Speak new words to the old pools
Carry on, carrion
Decay or flee the scene
Gasoline drinkers unite
And **** ourselves with
Cotton blend bed sheets
New born stitches
On the blood bridge of my nose
Glass breaks in the oven
Literary Societies keep the secrets
Of children grown
Of ice cube foreheads
Of drywall dinner parties
Coffee grounds on branches
God dammnit God dammnit

Cemetaries with graves more comforting than my own bed and bottles of wine in Parkinson's palms
Industrial factory lights at night that bewilder and leave wandering wants and wondering won'ts and wanderlust
Abandoned rodeos with the perfect pair of longitude and latitudinal lines for a sunset view and dance floors of dirt and footprints in spirals and you
And bowling alley parking lots and songs from my adolescence and secrets spilling from our mouths
And the fairground park swingset and sparklers and nostalgia looming just above the grassy horizon
The 10th floor of the casino parking garage and the water looks curious and inviting,
and it's a long way down.

And I'm a long way from home,
Until I'm in your arms.

you are eighteen and you're in love
with a boy who hates his birthday.
you don't know it yet,
but the world gets so much bigger than the back of his car.
you think he needs you to be happy and so does he
but both of you are wrong.
it'll take you almost a year to stop crying.
and then you don't talk for another three
and when you finally do,
he thinks he still knows you,
but your heart is heavier than it was then.
and you **** him because you're lonely
but it isn't the same.
neither of you can fake love.
at least he still makes you laugh.
you'll pretend it's enough
because at least he's a body.
at least you're not by yourself.
at least you're alive
and you're good at *******.
because bodies are distractions
from the things we hide inside them.
you have him inside you
and he wants to gut you of your ugly, your sad.
he scrambles for an excuse not to stay the night
and you laugh.
you know what this is and how it goes
and you both love someone else.
you swear you won't **** him again
but you do anyway because you're still lonely
and you like the way his hands fit around your neck.
you **** him because it's good for your art
and you get bored of your own hands on your body
and you're fine with letting him feel useful.
and you think about when you were sixteen
and how *** was supposed to be special
and it makes you cry
because you're not who you wanted to be.
it makes you cry, because the world got so much bigger
after you left the backseat of his car.
the world is so big and you don't know
how it ended up on your shoulders.
you would have died for him.
you have been ready to die for every person you have ever loved.
you have dreams where he dies
and you can't save him.
you have dreams where people die
and you can't save them
and you're the one who tied your hands.
your mangled heart and all its bleeding.
nobody asked you to die.
what good is all the love in your chest
if you don't leave any for yourself?

- m.f.

i mine as well be wearing flip-flops forever
in this godforsaken century.

lonely man/me/or him sits at the edge of a river.
at the edge of a town,
on the edge of a rock round and called mama
/earth.
he is contemplating jazz,
no,
madness/women/& spontaneous combustion.
he leans the sun forward to touch his forehead/combust.
the man is homeless,
  or this is his home,
  or that van parked over there and smiling.

he balances boulders in the water,
peaked on schlitz,
contemplating birds,
no,
the blood of old age and some sort of ex-girlfriend/witch’s brew.
a malt-gut sediment.
chikee hut nap
& dreams.

this is how it is for the man/me/or him raised-up
in a single-wide or on the riverside,
with the ghost of grandaddy
& his theories on complex-costume-parties.