after the storm there was nothing;
like he knew he someday would,
he returned to the second day of creation

sky and ocean

a black cloud crept in from the endless horizon
only bringing lightning
and it was too late to cry out -
all that was left
was to turn his face to the sky and wait for rain.

a dime,
a piece from my mouth

ask him to sit
he stands
I sweat

buck, gut, gralloch
send him off his balance
send him off with a ballad
a song of hands disappearing
up to the wrist, inside him

become a thick-skinned
being
or
shed it completely

fold me in two

I swallow, I spit
I learn to drink and laugh again

he
sticks a hand into the border fires
stokes that fray of running wires with his tongue and I warn him "it'll burn you up,"

sweet love of my life

living like
the moon pulls not just the tide,
but all manner of things

I pick every seed off the bun–get em all off,
every one

sesame
sesame
sesame

his shoulders slump,
eyes roll
nostrils flare
its barbed wire
another bucket
another drum on my already pounding heart I can't take it I can't take it I can't—

sesame
sesame
sesame

I'll forget
what I've been, I'll forget what—
I don't remember, but
I only want to stretch toward the sun

sores and aches decorate her body like
christmas lights and tinsel and mistletoe

a red light on her shoulder
green lighting up her stomach
and rudolf has no red nose
but red eyes

and rudolf hates himself
a lot

she is rudolf
the red eyed
reindeer

she cries snowflakes
and blankets the land
with pillars of ice and snow
made of tears

merry christmas

a songless bird

that would be the nicest
name she’d been
called

the others,
far more common,
being
that little *****
your ******* kid
the little rat
useless ******* that came outta you
and others

She liked the term
songless bird
It was a title worthy of her in
all the good and the
bad ways

The songless bird stands
locked in her room
and knocks and waves in
the window
for she has no voice to sing

She gives silent cries to the
neighbors and
the passersby when the noises
from the other side of
her door
get too violent

or when it smells
of smoke

Which happens
every now
and then

he would start whistling
Very random
and very loud

even at night in bed

and stopping him was
very much a
gamble

The caterpillar-like
stitches on
his wife’s arm were a testimony
to that

He’s never been the same
since his head injury
Poor fellow just had the terrible,
terrible luck to
walk underneath an overpass while
some teenagers were throwing
big rocks for fun

Now he kept calling the emergency
number and crying that
his wife had
gone missing when she’d be just
in the other room or at work

The neighbors filed
noise complaints
because of
his nightly whistling
and apparently he no longer knew
how to use the
toilet paper. He always smelled
and it was worse when
he climbed in bed
besides his wife

It was hell
and hell broke people
and tonight again he started whistling
and woke her up
and as a response
she started whistling as well

They whistled together
in the dark
under the covers
and held hands and smiled
after so long

It was a strange day

He still remembered it years
after it happened

Usually when he got
drunk

It didn’t take much for him
to get drunk
Sometimes two beers
were more than enough

He was perhaps
five or six
and big sister was in her early
teens
She was a rebel

Wore thick makeup
and revealing clothes
and fake piercings
and argued with mom and dad
about tattoos
and boyfriends

But on that day mom and dad
weren’t home
and there wasn’t much to do
in those times. There was
nothing interesting on TV
and the internet wasn’t a thing

But big sister had an idea

That morning they found the cat
dead in the basement. It was
old enough to die. Big sister
went there and retrieved it
and brought it upstairs
and placed it on the window sill
and they watched as birds
came to eat the maggots from
its rotting flesh

Big sister seemed to really
enjoy the show
and he didn’t want to upset her
so he pretended he
enjoyed too

These days
the drunker he’d get, the more
vivid the memory
would play in his head

He had three beers
now

he was a doctor

*******, they were looking at
a doctor
He came into the casino in a suit,
the same suit every day and night
dark gray
shiny with grease around the
elbows and lower back
smelly
patched up in places

he kinda forgot what it was like to be
sober

and lately he kinda forgot what
it was like to win at the slot machines

he forgot how to perform surgery
how to diagnose a patient

forgot what the company of a woman felt like

forgot what love was

he was a machine that consumed cheap
but strong alcohol
Rubbing alcohol filtered through bread
That stuff was 70% alcohol
his liver knew it

"Ah, pleaseeee, for the love of God, don't
make me work with this
stuff again," he would scream while
playing at the slot machine

and the bouncer would walk up to him
and say, "Hey, hey, doc. Everything all right, man?"

"Oh, sorry. That was my liver shouting
through my mouth. He's a *****."

They say companies that deliver food
get very suspicious when their
regular customers,
the people who order every day,
stop ordering all of a sudden
They even check on them

Well, we don't deliver food
but we got really concerned when
our favorite doctor stopped
showing up
all of a sudden

Maybe our managers would've checked
up on him but
there was no phone to call
and no door to knock on

Still, one of our boys went to the nearby
park and asked the homeless men around
for our favorite doctor
and the man handed him a
newspaper

****,
it wasn't even on the front page
there was some political **** on the
front page
Nobody gave a **** about that article

The real thing was a few pages
after, not even colored
HOMELESS MAN DIES AFTER TRYING TO
PERFORM SURGERY ON HIMSELF
IN PUBLIC RESTROOM

That was a doctor with guts
Guts pouring out of him
straight into the sink
and another cluster found in the toilet

We framed the article and pasted
it on a board in the back room
of the casino

our very own patron saint

poem
i speak in butterflies
a chrysalis wrapped around my tongue
caterpillars make their homes in
the caverns of my lungs.

poem
two snakes intertwined in my intestines
the hiss of hunger curls out of my ears
yellow eyes behind a yellow smile
i sleep beside the fire for the year.

poem
my blood runs thin through
burrowed veins, the ants crawl slowly,
my arteries cave, the ants crawl slowly,
i know their names.