I want a nobody.

A faceless commuter swearing as the machine ignores his credit card. Or the guy two tables to the left who isn’t checking his watch because he isn’t waiting on someone. Any hoodie-wearing, adidas-laced, prospective english major rambling along the sidewalk.

I want a nobody.

‘Cause there’s never a somebody that won’t say “I love you” because it’s numbed by too many mouths that don’t form their lips the right way. The somebodies slide it off their careless tongues—

because little words are pennies in tip jars.

But Nobody, he’ll say

I love the way you put on a jacket
like some kind of whip-snap in the lapels and collar
tipping your chin up and
hooking your silver-ringed thumbs in the pockets

and I love how you flip through books
eager to break the spine but not fold the pages
holding your breath to hold the focus
propping open a paperback between long tapered fingers

and how the barista at the coffeeshop knows your face!
and blush rises like foam on your cheeks

because it’s so ******* incredible how
when you drum your fingers
you don’t drum you press
into a phantom piano
the treble clef of Linus and Lucy
or The Entertainer
or, if your eyes have already gotten deeper
—in a mossy well of thought—
it’ll be Augustana’s Boston
dancing C-E-C-E-G-E-C-E
in the jumping tendons of your right hand.

                  *

oh darling, I’m in love with
your clumsy movements when you fall into bed
wrapping a thick comforter over your bare shoulders
curling your legs as you settle on your side
hair fanned out on the bedsheet because
the pillow’s too close to the wall


but lovely, I don’t love you
because I’m not real at all

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
    Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
    Black like me.

Note nothing of why or how, enquire
no deeper than you need
into what set these veins on fire,
note simply that they bleed.

Spain fought before and fights again,
better no question why;
note churches burned and popes in pain
but not the men who die.

It's been broken and repaired so much
My heart is mostly glue,
But it still beats and it still loves,
I think it's stuck on you.

The Black Birds baked them selves today
To miss their morning flights
They wished to keep the king away
They say he's scared of heights
The Queen she keeps their beeks at bay
A scraper when she fights
The maid nev'r saw it comin they say
It's just some black birds rights

the lilt of your
tongue
when you spoke
my name.

the smile
that slipped onto your lips,
like a knife into a sheath,
when your eyes
met mine.

your lips, the softest shade of sunset,
on a mountain range
I never grew tired of tracing.

how your eyes,
those soothing azure eyes,
looked into the unknown
with a youthful curiosity
I envied.

I slipped gently away
from the brink
of that secret
as you made it your own.

I remember the day
that you left.
But I do not,
for the life of me,
know why I did not follow.

Arching backs

In serene eve skies.

Aqua eyed

Pale flesh.

**** flaws

Scattered in patterns

Like starry skies.

The sun has
seeped, deep into my
skin
and I am a swollen fruit,
reddened and sweet and
full of sugar
hours after the moon shows her silver face
and starts to **** away the heat
from my olive oil skin
leaving just sand
and salt
in the curls
and waves
in my ears
and a comfortable pulse
in my fingernails.

There is a tree in my room.
It sheds leaves
that look like everything I have ever lost.
I put them in bags and
take them outside to burn,
as if it would stop the leaves
from falling all together,
but I know they’ll be back.

You are the ghost of all the people
I have loved
and been loved by,
that feeling I get when I remember
what it felt like to be touched by someone
who meant it.

You are the fear
when I realize I destroy
most things I touch
and am unworthy of ever
learning to say your name.

You are a poem that my weary hands
have yet to learn how to write.
They tremble with so many words
wanting to bleed out.

You are the empty spot
in my bed
when there is so much room
that it aches.

You are a planet full of
beautiful things
I have never seen,
so many light years away
that I could not possibly
scale or comprehend the distance.

I am tired.
My heart can’t trace your shadow
for much longer.

You must be near?

Women sit, or move to and fro—some old, some young;
The young are beautiful—but the old are more beautiful than the young.