The boy you love says, I’m going to **** you.
                  So you let him.
You let him take you home and
          you sit in his room while
                          the heat from his fingertips lingers on the doorknob.
         The steam from the shower
                         curls like smoke into the room
and he wants to swallow you whole,
         so you jump right into his mouth.
                       It’s wet.
                                It’s hot.
                                          You can’t breathe.

                      This is Unbearable.

But you get to be with him
           —in a corner of him—
                       lying on his balcony.
This is what you wanted.
           So these rusty bars that crisscross over his heart,
                      this forgotten half of an apple,
the rawness of your body—
                      you asked for it.

You had booked a ticket to this ****** cave—
                     to breathe in him, with him,
                                 exhale him.
            And now you get to taste him,
                     drink of him, drown in him,
                                die from him.

But you’re waiting for him to turn the shower off,
        turn the sky on,
                  nick away the black and paint it blue again,
        blow a few white clouds into the emptiness.

And you hear him—hands on your handle—turn it off.
                 But the water keeps running.
                                This doesn’t make sense, you say.

The water gushes down the glass pane,
        wets your pain.  
                 Your arteries pump this water.
                        I’m not thirsty, you say.

But the water is still running and
        his chest is thunder, his mouth is granite.
There’s no lightening to light your way out,
                   no way to see the clock.
        This never-ending minute,
                   this hour of forever,
                            the ocean that flows back up into the river.
This is all wrong, you say.
       But he doesn’t hear you
                  because his body is covering yours,
                             crushing yours.
A cracked sternum,
       some water in your lungs,
a little blood in your tears
                 —but it’s okay, because he gave it to you.

And you deserve this, you do…
        to remain here in static acid forever
                       so you don’t forget.

The boy bit my thigh,
              sharpened the left blade of my shoulder,
couldn’t remember my name
             or the warmth of my blood.
But he memorized the place in the river
            where my body was thrown
                      —a stone, some silt,
                                 the scales of a trout.

But even with these, he’s still left

            drenched in his own body.

Let us pretend, beloved, that
this is the skin you wore yesterday.
Allow me to lick the salt from your
lips and I’ll ignore the black dog
who at night, stalks my fire escape
and feasts upon the lull of a sleepless—sleep.
The dog who drags me back from
the cliffs of a steady breath
and bites salt from my lips.

I want to take this dog.
I want to see her —your her—
knot her fingers in its shabby fur,
and flail beneath its jaw.
So I can see the inside of her body—
all thinness—a red delicacy.
I want to see which vein you loved,
so I can know for sure
that you have been there:
the muscle —a tendon— the tightening
of how you were inside her.

But I feel the bloom of your iris
steal into the pound of my chest,
so I forgive how these
hands —broken hands—
never tore through my hair.

My pupils just fill with bowed heads
and pleading wrists
while the dog gnaws
at the break of my ankles.

And in this little moan of bloodied floor
and sodden wood,
the kiss of your mouth
grazes my neck’s snap—
your fingers trickle up my thigh

into a little pool of Never Enough.

You had tried to warn me about the time
the power line snapped
while all the birds were asleep—

but the dog had torn my ears from me by then.

Knowing you, I am like a girl
                                  who willfully touches hemlock to her tongue.
For among the boney noose of pearls
                   strung up my spine,
                                 you, with hands that can hold
        both knives and violin bows
                                                leak a piece of air into the streams of my back
And I let you—I
                      let it fever its way around stringy tethers,
       up to the oven of blood in my head
                                                        whil­e you lick your lips (the moon pours out)
and I do not watch this
                                 because now I cannot even trample
         across floors of lemongrass  
                                or brace the line of my jaw for a tender fist.
The earth simply throws a plump tomato at my chest
                                               smirks simmering in its oceans  
                           but all I can do is fall there
                                                lay near  
                                                         ­   lose years
                                                                ­      expire here—
(the sodden match)
(the hot scoop of iced cream)
                               while the froth of my heart grows cold and colder.

So I can’t even smash your head                   (a skull I love)
                        into the wooden wall until it is as  
                                                            ­   soft as a boiled pomegranate.
          For my own flesh is a puddle of sputters on the kitchen table
                                                 ready for you to eat *(dine, my darling, dine!)

Knees quake, stagnant faces caressed
smearing red, smearing salt across painted dress.
Some eyes barren, some eyes gone,
stomachs lurched and stomachs drawn.
Mountains with their moss play bed to fallen boys,
to their wasted lungs powder does still cloy.
Rivers play mother’s cool arms
washing way the mess of harm.
Within in the field are stepping stones of flesh,
made colored canvas with wounds still fresh.

These boys have died a thousand deaths
a thousand different ways
sometimes several thousand a day
losing each and every choke of air.
All morning rebirth is an unlucky fate,
for fellow friend’s faces freeze
mid-word
mid-breath
mid-life.
Their warm splatter upon your skin,
a hole in their head you were yours.  

And these bullets, these bayonets
are bombarded on you,
on your boys
by your brothers.
Who you have loved.
Who you have touched.
With whom you have sung your song.

These boys
Are not fighting for cause or crime
or love
or what heats the mind.
You fight.
You die.
Your bodies are reborn.
You bleed
for those seeming Caesars
for those napping Napoleons
who dust powdered sugar off their
plump lips and
canter over each cobblestone as if it were a country.

Sorrow is a hot flush of prickle
salt filled pearls that spill over
the dry reds of your cheeks.
Sorrow is the swollen ache in your
throat that tugs down on the corners
of your mouth:
gravity that seeks to bring
nose to grass,
forehead to gravel:
the little razor
that dig into your blackened flesh.

Sorrow is the way your own arms
seize themselves:
freckle to freckle,
hand to hand,
all identical and opposite.
Sorrow is knowing that
all sounds coming out of your
own mouth and all self-caressing
comfort is utterly
and irrevocably
and inexplicably  
vain.

Sorrow is the cool glass
you smash your brow against
in reflective attempts to cool
poundings in your temple
and calm the only constant of life:
drumming, hot-blood pumping
four-chambers that will one day
Fail You.
Sorrow is dirt you inhale
into your starved lungs when
it buries your head in
earthy embrace
awaiting your thrashing to grow still
as you’re shushed like an animal
before butcher until
your hair blows gently
in the wind.

Sorrow is the way pain like fire
licks every crevice of your sweet skin
until molted scars like old corpses
swallow you whole
making you utterly
and irrevocably
and inexplicably
unrecognizable.

Sorrow is the eyes of your friends
refusing to meet your own
until the flicking of blues and greens
and browns and blacks
to any place besides
the empty whites of your own
is dizzying
is numbing:
an electric buzzing of static
in grey matter.

Sorrow is an invisible hand
wrapping gently around your neck
pushing you under the oceans
of your own briny making
until your foam kissed lips
are blue and cold—

parted slightly in a dead hope
that someone will revive them.

Sorrow is the vice clenching
bloodied tissue of
your battered
and bruised heart
tightly

and tighter still.

Until it is stagnant.
Until it is inconstant.

Until it’s too late to tell anyone


what

sorrow

is.

Black robes, white collars,
eyes black as night and fiery voices
that of pretense speak.
While threat of hell from a mouth
does leak.

“Your Tongues are Wicked.
Your Fight Against Flesh is Weak.
Your Bodies are Marred and Seek
to Commit Evils in Covert Speech.
Your Dress is Too Red,
Your Lips Too Sweet,
Your Skin Creamy Enough to Make
Man Weep.
From Their Wives They Will Stray.
for This, You are to Blame, My Daughter.
Repent.”

Cross myself, Father, I will.
Again and again.
Hail my Mary, Father, I will.
Again and again.
To stone saints I will kiss and pray
to intervene for my sin.
Flesh I will eat and blood I will drink
and pass to my kin.

“Come to Me Later Alone, My Daughter
and I Will Help You Kneel and Pray
to Cleanse Your Conscience
of the Things That Make You Stray.
I’ll Put Your Hand to Your Breast and
Your Mouth to My Feet So That Your
Soul Can Be at Rest.”

Father, you’re bleeding,
from your back, from your thigh.
What have you done to make yourself
in pain sigh?
I did not know that your God required
Blood and Hurt.
Is it mine that he seeks to reign?

“Daughter, If You Bow to Me
I Will Show You Why and How.
His Sword I Will Brandish
And His Armor I Will Myself Shield.
Here, Look Down and With
Your Collar Embrace and Yield.”

- blood stains the floor, another
lost and her soul takes flight to a place
of higher or lower cost –

Children, look at what religion has done.
Children, never know the meaning of Fear.

I trace my fingers along your smooth,
Porcelain hold
And I decide yes.
Yes, I want you tonight.
Because I am cold
And your heat is enticing.
I sink my body slowly  
Into your hot embrace,
A sigh passing my mouth,
While waves of warm relief
Cascade down my body and face.
I roll and writhe in your hard grasp;
It’s loud like a waterfall
So I try to speak to you, but you’re thunder
And I am pounded down until I gasp.
I’m clean, I’m new, I’m shiny, I’m wet.
My painted face is gone, so I look like a child
With the wide eyes, except for the *******,
And sensation that is nothing like regret.
But my time with you is spent:
It’s growing colder because heat doesn’t last.
And my skin is speckled with chill bumps
Because your skilled, cooled fingers are still bent
On coaxing sighs and smiles from my lips.
But you have to leave now:
Down the drain,
Like the wantonness from the dip of my hips.
I open my eyes and I’m alone.
I was always alone.
A red mouth from the glass of wine in my hand,
Burning candles that must be blown,
Tiled walls and tiled floors glazed with water,
And perfumed bubbles still
Hanging in the strands of my hair.
Because I’ve been in the bathtub with
Hints of steam still in the air.