The ride from Starbucks was too quiet.
We sit crossed on adjacent couches.
All six feet of him cornering into my couch.
He sweating in his black ninja shirt and jeans
because my house is always 10 degrees too hot for him.
His half-smile retreats behind your tongue.
I am too bright for him in my pink T-shirt.
The couch I lie on barely runs the length of my legs.
My hands fiddle with my blue wristband,
snap it across the room. I lock my fingers together.
The clock coughs loudly with each tick.
He was suppose to be home four hours ago.
The pillows and I lean in. This conversation
starts as a reflection. He wants to know
why people are friends with him. Why I keep
claiming him as my best friend. I admit
it is because I want him to be mine.
He saved me from the black undertow.
Threw me a fishing hook. Reeled me into his boat.
His phone rings. His mom and dad are furious
that he has ignored dinner. Slowly, he drags
himself across my carpet. He wraps his palm
around the door handle. His shoulders roll back-
this has never happened before- he say stiffly,
I've been dating another man for two months now,
I didn't tell you because I didn't want to lose your
friendship. You are the best friend I have ever had.
He slumps through my door,
face too blue and low to say good-bye.
He didn't expect me to cry.
I sit here jarred as we once were.
Trace the tears on the floor.
I can't find it in me to pelt him against my wall
like ******. There is only He is still my best friend.
The whole house shakes with me.
My lungs are jellied.

[a modified sestina]


My sister and I watched grandpa and grandma.
She has trained him into a service dog,
Sister has never been so marveled.
Grandma clears her throat and grandpa
clears her plate into the garbage.
My sister giggles. She has a thirst to learn.

My sister is ten when she rings in her first boyfriend.
Grandma crows that it’s lovely. I can see her mentally
checking off the list grandma made for her, thinks she's
taken the right step into womanhood. I can see it
in grandpa's trained face. He knows as I do that this
is only the beginning of her rise to the twisted Aphrodite.  

My sister is fifteen when she realizes she can puppet men
with the clink of her hips. She strolls with a boy lapping
at her heels, the next day she is with a new chump.
I ask of the boy, she snides that he is just a dip,
thing on the side, a mister, for when she is bored.
What god, do you think you've become? I spit.

She does not give me a second glance.
She nods his way and he dashes to the car door,
He doesn't dare let it brush against her arm.
She has mastered it, no need for lessons anymore.
She has achieved what grandma wouldn't dare touch.
I do not think she will stop here.

She is sixteen when I find her pooling
her eyes out on our father's front porch.
She spills They are gone.
The chump, the boyfriend, the dip, the mister,
all shelved her like a forgotten doll.
I bet they realize there is no love in puppetry.

I face her with no sympathy.
Can't expect men to tap dance on your string.
You can't bask in the burlesque of Aphrodite.
You wanted to be like grandma.
Grandma was noosed by the strings
she sowed onto grandpa before he left her.

No man will bow under a self-acclaimed god.
So, study this fall from Olympus.  
Understand, you are as human as we are.

Before
I was stage-sweat, nerve-bit,
palms too slick to be skin.
My clarinet, all black and rumble,
she begs me to play her like I'm dying.
She wants to pedestal me in front of my rhythm-throated family.


I remember how we got here.
She howled to me through her black shell,
as if I were a moon full enough to tide her.
I was new to this. She didn’t tell me
I would be plunging into her abyss
of crystal sound.
Daddy told me to take it slow,
but when I blew her first note
when I heard her first e,
sweeter than a priest's whisper
more natural than anything holy.

After*
We stripped that stage raw.
Shredded the floorboards with the treble in her flats
Her g's and c's were sharp and clear as gasps.
We howled in our black suits.
We sounded like we'd been there for 30 years.
Like we belonged in the 30s,
kicking up smiles in the dust of those years.
We were that jazz that makes you sweat.
I was a man up there.
And she gave me this.
A rite of passage that only she can give.
Nothing can feel as good as this.

Me

You find me, your eyes knockout-black.
I am heavy, swerving through the door.
You do not speak. You lift me by the slop
of my neck, drop me in front of the toilet.
You flip the lights, hook me to the bowl. Wait.
I can't feel the porcelain fangs.
The toilet taunts me, smiles
like it has been waiting.
I know you must be swirling red,
you raised me to not fall like this.
Your down-stare and strict chin bites
more than any hangover, rocks me like a ritual.  
I see no up from here. I cannot face you. I know
I have failed. I have not yet earned the dark mark of man.

Him**

Boy, you used to be rainbow-young,
rosed cheek,  yellow life, too eager
to grow up. Baby, now you are whisking
in the husk of a bottle, slosh and off-tilt.
I am grateful you made your way
home. I was like this once. My father
turned a blind body to me. Left me
swollen and ripe for the bathroom.
I will be there for your initiation.
Silent as I hunch you off the toilet bowl,
watch you atone for your regrets.
The toilet beckons you. It wants to lick
you with the same crystallize bite
it gave me. This is how it's always been.
You have passed the test I've raised you to fail.
I know you will not face me, curl to the waist
of the toilet. This is the dark way to manhood.

My mother always reminded me of a great white swan.   It's because she has a sense of direction air-locked between her feathers of silky iron.  I've never felt scared nuzzling under her as she flies.  

I am sitting in the kitchen.
She is filling a *** with water.  
She is using two hands.
Her back stiff.
I watch her try to shift the *** to stove,
sweat drips off her nose.
Her back quivers.  
The *** crashes to ground
dragging my mother with it.
The water ripples on the floor.
Mom's hand is shaking, her face doesn't rise to mine. Just coast over her fingers . She mumbles, I'm fine, it's been hurting all day.  She slumps.

Her wings slouch and give as they float on the water. I've seen her fall, tumble, and crash with enough force to spring back up, but there is something about slumping that’s too soft.  

Swans are suppose to be able to fly as high as
28,000 ft and as fast as 80mph, but mom looks like she has been dipping into telephone poles, sliding down, her feathers are splintering. She can't even float on the water.  Swans' necks always have an arc, but mom's face droops to her chest. Her body crimples.
Only her hand shakes. It's the only part of her that remembers how much she hates breaking.
Her life spent running from this moment, and it still has managed to catch her.

I'm standing here.
Wanting to do so many things, but don't know how because I don’t understand why this is happening so early . She always told me I would never need to worry about her because she was never going to drown, but by the way she slumps on the floor, I think she understand she can't soar anymore.



Her hand is rattling a tune that beats a new meaning of melody, but this is the first time I've heard it. I'm use to her bellowing from her throat as she trucks through clouds, I place my
head on her shoulder, listening as her wings begin to sink under.  I've been told that there is beauty in hearing a swan before it dies.

The Hunt


The walls convulse,
under her thighs, his mouth, their friction.                            
Her hisses hammer the door,                                                
stretches into a crouch.                                              
Her legs quiver with the rush.                                                
She is all copper and scales,                                                  
hair black and thirsty.
It shimmers like the fury of his cheating hands,                    
it chokes him,
drops him to his knees.
Her eyes snake-bright and wild,
springs clean as arrows.
Twirl around his throat.
She plucks heart and liver first,
peels them to bits.
She rules by the ****** of her hips
leaves him empty as lust.
Her rampant thighs jolt,
force him to beg for more
of this succulent venom.
He slings his insides over his shoulder
lets them drip over himself,
he doesn't flinch at the sticky drizzle.
Her stilettos scrape his bones.
She snags the shavings,
they are her trophies
the thrill of the hunt,
proof of her savage prowess.
This medusa-violence,
breaks rooms, love, him,
drapes them down her back
like bed sheets.
She is that myth ,
husbands try their hardest to hide.  
They wash the sheets, flip the bed,
wipe the sweat off the kitchen counter,
take two showers,
and too many deep breaths.
The door snaps shut behind her.
Dad tells me,
he didn’t sleep
with that copperhead.
I nod.

[In response to Hannah Srajer's poem: Trial of Eve]

Woman, I've hated you for so long.
I've spoke ill of you.
Thought you were all breast, thighs, and stupid.
I wished you were something He could be proud of
but you brought us damnedness
the kind that boots people from their gardens,
that bars us from Him,
that leaves me with you.
As of late, I've wondered why you let us all fall.
What could have been so sweet in that snake
that you would take from the cursed tree?
bark up the wrong trunk?
I know He made you better than this.
He cut your from me and there is no way I would have condemned us.
So I came to the conclusion, you did not do this on your own will.

The other day, I trekked to tree,
greeted by a smooth slither of a smile
He trailed from the limb, broad scaled and couth
told me he knew I'd come.    

What devil silk did you spit at her to make her eat from you?
Nothing. There wasn't any black in the words I sold her.
She did this on her own will.
She understood sacrifice.
You must of use your tongue to whip her with that sweet tempt.
She was my wife, my sister, every idea of a woman.
No way she'd turn south and let us all plummet.
I will tell you what you are too blind to see.
Why she realized this was all necessary.
Growth occurs after tasting wrong.

I made a mistake somewhere.
Like seeing your own nakedness for the first time
It burns that to know you were so oblivious.
All this time, I swore Eve was rotten to the heart,
That she was born into deviltry and only wanted
to smite what He broke backwards give rise to.
But maybe we were too quick to judge.
She did something He and I never could do.
There wasn't every any tempt, no slick words
just understanding.
She was the only one brave enough to take a risk
and have faith in something she didn’t know.
She realized that humanity will never know
light unless they crawl through fire.

Eve, I have been too near sided to see what you do
but now I no longer blame you for taking the fruit.
I apologize on behalf of all my sons who will sin
your daughters and blame you for it.
I will stand next you to you in the dark.
Shoulder to shoulder like men.
We will face Him together.
I will be with you when your trial comes.

I.
Whenever someone says "Zoro", I think of you.
Your holy smile, every tooth sings golden
like it's been washed with gospel-water.  
Your arrow-lean body, that shoots
as wide as your smile does.
I think of your presence.
How it's all shadow-kissed and marveled
like the dust of a gypsy.
I think of your personality.
How at midnight it clicks from fish wire tight to limber lax.
No one knows it as well as I do.

II.
It is at midnight when I begin to shed.
Me, skinning off my thick gauze
my stories grating into hands .
I want you to see the Quasimodo in me,
how hunch-backed I am,
how your palms will peel until they're red
if you keep trying to string me into a human.

III.
I have deemed you my Esmeralda.
The one who sees what even I cannot see in me.
The one who believes that there is no monster.
Show me what you see in your hand of gypsy magic
trick me into believing your too good to be true words.
You have been there, every time I messed up,
every time I cried, every time I've been too frighten
to go to sleep, and too scared to leave my bed.
You are the only reason why I haven't been ****** sound.
I wish I could have the white-lighter heart you do.




IV.
I do not know what good deed I've done
to be blessed with your best friendship.
But, there is a scream in my bones
it tell me to give you something back
that is as magical as you are.
Maybe a phone charm,
it's as pure as understanding someone.
it's something that will always remind
you of what you saw in me.

V.
I know now that this is what friends are for.
They shoulder you when your knees
are too busted and done.
They see the pure in you until
you start seeing it yourself.
They are the lift in all of our smiles.
The ones who do not care how ******
their chests becomes from trying to hug you.