We're all parched.

In a circle we sip
from the watering hole,
all sides, another animal
most of them pay me no mind

but the lion stares at me
from across the rain,

his whiskers brush
the surface —
I respect you.

He laps up his drink,
and with a flick of his tail,
bids farewell to good company.

I look down into the ripples,
formed from the mouths of
many thirsty beasts,
and I look up into my weary eyes.

I am grateful to be alive.

Kissed by rippling lips,
myself I drink deeply

Because this
may be the last time
I return to quench my thirst.

I wipe the drips from my lips,
and look down where they rippled

Lion smiles up.

withered eyes a
crescent moon of
dusk under the
pupils red lightning
cracking across
blank pages born
from some unseen
space beyond the
corners

when the head lolls
back the neck snaps
to refocusing on the
unseen nothing in
the physical to grasp
at looking through
all layers of deceit
at an inside a
center that cannot
exist but is always
there

motion is the mirror
the frame the negatives
rolling seamlessly teeth
and sprockets a perpetual
rotation immune to friction
faction and conflation

singular in its mindlessness
just an eye bloodshot with
nebulae as everything
collapses in on itself at the
speed of light passing
through the central retinal
vein feeding information
into the unseen center of all

I wonder if my skeletons in the closet miss me.
I used to keep them company all the time.
I hope they're still playing nice.

They wouldn't make for the most comfortable of cuddles,
but at least we had a lot in common.
We could talk all night until the sun rose,
and it wouldn't even matter as long as we had the door shut.
We'd talk until I was deliriously hallucinating faces on their skulls.
We'd talk until I'd melt into their rib cages.
My pupils were as wide as eye sockets,
and I could see myself in their skin.
They'd smile at me, warmly,
and make me feel at home.

I wasn't afraid of the dark,
I was afraid of the light.

in a room,
brimming
with people,
I am alone —

sitting at an
empty table,

sometimes, I wish
someone would fill
the seat across from me,
and by sometimes, I mean
that I come here every single day
hoping with all of my heart that it will happen.

but I'm a bride and groom
in black and white. —
I'm an empty beige room with
a spider in the corner. —
I'm a glance with
a deadpan nod. —
I'm a dance where
you shift your weight
without moving your hips...

—

dribdrab fantasy,
peripheral face

I was trying.
I was just trying to think...
I was trying to think of something.
I was trying to think of something to write about...
, but whenever I try to think of something to write about,
I can never think of what to write.
and whenever I try to think of something,
I can never think of it.
and whenever I try to think,
I can never.

atop of your mirror
the sinister sound
of crystalline powder,
whispers maniacal cackles
as it's crushed, crackled beneath
the apathetic plastic card,
somehow sensual

your identity, face down -
grinning

rub it in soft circles
on your favorite reflection

'Which one of your nostrils
is more open to this
sort of thing?'

the frightened boy fumbles
for his devil's dollar bill,
it's a fascist nose-nozzle
vice-vacuum,
poison-sourdough
death-demon

breathe in your
shattered fiberglass fix,
****'s as cool as ice-cold *****,
stings like a frost-bitten *****

snort, shiver -
twitch!

YOU HAVE
TO WANT IT



MAN
“go outside,” the doctor says,
“stand on the grass for fifteen minutes a day.”
you’re here because today you want to get better.
“tell me how you’re feeling.”
“I’m scared.”

“I mean physically.”
“so do I.”




ANGEL
an angel can come in a burst of a blister,
on the tip of a finger.
he always starts small
with the whispers,
         “i know about love,”
   like you asked for it.

he prefers to come at the end of the month,
            amid deadlines, another set of blood-soaked, ruined *******,
some traces
     of the relationship with your father and failure.
but you like that: having an excuse that sends you
   scrambling for car keys.

    at first it’s forests, their fires,
the flowers that follow once the ash and skin and soil
are mixed. at first it’s earth and rubbing it in,
     seeing god behind your eyelids.

so you clean the pipes, keep washing sheets.
      the voices they stop coming; once in a while you
      read online how many kids this week have overdosed
    on ****** and it’s foreign. kids with dirt
under their fingernails, kids in basements, kids
with ***** canvas shoes and overgrown cuticles.
           they don’t look like you. you still look like
you.




MAN
                   mike sparks a j in the basement.
        we chew on xanax and no one’s paying attention to the TV.
some white static and early afternoon rain. it’s made me gone
ghost, sitting on a leather recliner, silent with a cigarette.
              it’s a right of initation to carve your name in mike’s
coffee table and sign on the back wall. this summer I added
   mine alongside the kids I used to get nervous around in high school.
                       his mom comes downstairs with a joint of her own rolled
and a French manicure. her lip liner is too dark for her
lipstick, and phil’s warmly lit and ivan leans so far into the
couch he isn’t human.

mike sits up, “ma,
you know you owe me some money?” he changes the channel.
she laughs throaty, her insides a swamp. she’s
prettier when she’s high like this.
                       “I got your money,” she promises. it gets soft
from there and phil smiles over his body and ivan moves
further into the couch. she touches mike’s hair.

“good kid,” she tells me and I smile up at her. I wish I had
a body but I left it wandering through
the thunderstorm outside. ivan nods his hazy head.
          mike hands her a diet coke and she hands him a fifty and she goes—through the walls—
       phil digs his hand into the couch cushions to find papers. I go
ghost in the seconds it takes him to spark his lighter.

the ghost lights herself a cigarette.
   the ghost lights herself another cigarette.
               the ghost lights herself a cigarette. “are you chain
smoking now,” phil slurs playfully. “yes,” the ghost agrees.
     “are you having fun,” ivan turns to her.
                “yes.”

HUMAN
i don't want to know what love is like i want
                                       air that
                     tastes like apples and
       i want real raw
         brown sugar
       i want to shoot up every
grey second for two weeks— get frantic then
       take benzodiazepine until i shred my
stomach lining, singing
                                                    
            i want bud light and
a backyard. bed time stories and
            white furniture and ritz crackers
             with fancy party cheeses
                              i want to complain about the drinking age,
                              new york’s black-dusty wind charm. complain like the
                              moon is still lonely and not a destination
                                          i want to wake up in the sun spot
                                          i want to wake up to a baby crying
                          soft like mothers do, going to
                                     that dear one to quiet them down,
                                        i can be here to kiss you calm
                                                              i want to get out of bed
                                                              i want to call friends back
so winter can come and i can still
                              go home.



       WANT
         throwing on the rag&bon;; jeans,
         neither rag nor bone more milky skeleton-ized, eyes
         pin headed. faces struck yellow all tops of the heads
         with umbrellas and sorry throats. "here take mine" no
         "you'll get sick" it's fine
                                                        the gothic church with social strangers
                                                       ­ tweakers and nodders all smiley side-
                                                        eye­-Y
                        i know the gimme gimme
                        i know the routine
         and blondie (they think) here she comin she twenty years clean
         blondies a baby she weak as **** she dont know what she got
but i know the "i want" "i want"
         and the ok baby,
         Got U




HUMAN
i dont want to know what love is like,
                  i want to walk the manhattan bridge at sunrise
                  i want
                       grass wisps and capers
                       chicken noodle soup
                       a night at the new york city ballet
                       and pauses in sentences, in breath
                       the breath before a kiss or the breath
                       after it. i want instant hot chocolate
                       and reality television, ugg slippers with
                       faux trim. a bicycle painted lilac with a
                       basket, and clear skin. i want pier 63 on
                       a 70 degree day, the weepies playing
i want to be a ghost
            where ghosts are white sheets with two button eyes
             and make jokes about halloween and their past lives
i want to go there
to street fairs
and watch fireworks and write out names
in fresh concrete patches
                                                     i want to eat blackberries in the bathtub
                                                     i want skin to make me feel safe again
                                   i want to want to live
                                   but i know the "i want" "i want" and the ok baby,
Got U




WANT

they were right,
                               they were all
              going (right
they were righjt
they were right

air hanging eyes to dry
blood pull in push out brown golden push IN
  

they were right they were all right
nothing could ever make me as happy again



WANT

it’s a hold on something so quiet and soft in your hands and no one knows what it is and you dont know what it is. it’s the pin drop in a hospital room and so lemonade refreshing. im in a snowstorm and i cant see the city, cant see past my own two feet. im on a long highway drive and it’s rain that comes in sheets so hard i cant move. i walk and the world writhes underneath me and we put needles in our arms. and we wait for the blood push. and i watch my life go away in warm *******. and i watch it go this way like it’s not me. and i’m going home to ****** and i’m scared, i say outloud to maggie, “i’m scared i’m going to do something stupid,” and she is so quick to say “like what” that i know she knows what it is. and i’m so scared.





WANT

give up on me , I Know where im going. don’t follow. don’t even look for me. keep
Counting sugar cubes and stirring your coffee , it is my wish for you that it always tastes sweet.
I love you












WANT


i just wanted to be kept warm by something that looked like love



MAN
i walk slower on the streets of manhattan; stop at
   the strand, look for the man with eyebrow rings
asking "do you know where a girl in this city could get some relief?"
         he laughs, says he just looks like someone who would know
            that. he asks, "is that Monster Blood?”
                             &nbsp