Our first kiss tasted like bad days, and so did our last:
we are moon flowers. We bloom when the sky becomes a
big tentacle, my lips strawberry pillows speckled
by dead flakes red skin you chapped with your tongue.

Everyone is in bed and we are in each other,
everyone is awake and we are swallowing more pills.

We walk, we blink, but we just think, think, think
of whatever dream we had last night when it all wore off
our lovely bones sounding like mouths bleeding love
                    or your train arriving at a station of sunflowers.

pregnant bellies, love bellies, I love my round stomach
but wish there were an adorable parasite inside

I would never be lonely
if I had stretch marks and soccer practice in my gut
even if she keeps me awake at least
I feel something inside, love bellies or an empty belly

I need to be full, not just round

I used to fall asleep at night
thinking about your hair
how it looked like
trees, chestnuts, branches
allocated enough so that I
could loop them into braids

wide enough to drape
like a curtain for eyelids as
eyelids are for sockets
when thin skin does not hide
sun from my pupil’s range.

I used to believe I could kiss
the very lip of it, smooth
and forgiving when I
palm some locks out of place:

I used to believe no one
would bury it with you when
you follow your grandfather
onto the meniscus of
afterlife

and I used to believe I’d
receive a phone call
then a paper bag on our
balcony with a note that says:

she loved you
keep her hair in a vase by the
bed so you can sleep again.

I used to believe that your
roots and leaves could never
discover death, rather
would twirl and twirl and twirl
around tear-ducts like a hedge

to disappear the darkness
and sponge midsummer’s rain
with a honey-colored braid.

When this building stopped existing as a merry-go-round
and the patients came to and from another abode,
someone planted daisies in the hallways
where, in slumber, brothers thought of their sisters or
shared their blanket with the more sad person next door.

Some of the daisies have their axis half-picked
like mooncrests and all appear like brides in a snow white
too pure for this place where no love was made –
rather a home for bad loves to be pulled out, taken away.

But before the doors were locked and sealed
some alumni snuck in to lace between a blooming layer:
I dipped in a toe, you dove headfirst, she used hands
to strain uncontaminated soil upon a paisley pattern
and said a novena for where we became blank slates, too.

this is a love poem
for the parts of yourself you despise.

how I believe you are a man
more so than any other man I have seen

because you do not bribe wasps
into not giving you a sting:
because you do not touch fragile things
rather lend little strengths and
because your sweat smells like incense
or raspberries on trees who breathe.

god, nature opens the
whole wide world but keeps me from
you

but you did not complain when
I appeared,
this red-shouldered placenta globe girl.

I love your inward feet
because you can walk faster to me
I love your pleated hips
because they have handlebars for me
I love your thunder laugh
because it means summer to me.

me, me, me

I love how you love me
and do not care when I cannot seem to
remember or believe.

this is a love poem I will never
finish writing.

wavelengths, not centered
must have taken a wrong turn or otherwise
built a bridge where school girls
sleep on their backs, spread their legs in grass

he sings so close
the lullaby becomes my earring

it hangs, it hangs, it hangs
drip drip and drip going into the latrine
I am a sea

I am wet and wide and opening
to a grey by breeze and through age
he has as much youth as a leaf still on the tree
we are farther from

each other than we are from the sun
but honey does not spoil
so neither will we

yes, yes, please do not leave

this skin? it is rosy, not bloodied
when you spiral it between your fingers
the pores become *****
though they are not gunshot holes  

this mouth? has more to say than
just whimpers and whines
more than just wounded cries
I am a woman not just someone’s wife

these limbs? their shift without strings
what controls my legs is not seen
there is not a trigger to mash
when you feel entitled to **** me

my body is not a battlefield
my body is my shell, my body is alive

my body is mine.

Love on my toes, love in the cabinet, love jumps off balconies
it is an eighteen year old succubus offering spinal taps.
Bring the gentlemen their evening numbness before next
morning’s nightmare and ******* are scheduled on God’s map –
he just steps out for a moment, settles his sleeping mask on.

God is so unhappy: he understands nothing of love.
Get this recipe recited so we shall feed them pink and blue pills
which knobs can sting boys in the ***, a fleabite or bow
soon our leather heels chime through their ears like hooves.

The master may question their nutrition so hold out a paper cup
sloshing in female nectar, our vaguely cerise saliva
sustenance that comes from between slits carved for such –
these acids are love, love, love. Love from cavities, love pearls
knotted in the roots of a mother clam, fallopian love tubes.

Every shoebox offers warmth, complementary wakeup calls
a petite blonde to peel him out of his pajamas, too –
lay your husbands down into the doll-case if he has no love
as God is not watching here. Oh, how happy our gentlemen are.

Ugh, you boys. You marry,
you take the wife that is given to you –
she gets married and is your gift.

Well, I think your breath tastes like brass
and was embalmed by a penny.
I think you like your greed.

You think the woman, like coins,
should be aplenty.

Perhaps you could tie me
in a big old rubber band but in any case,
I will not happily give you my hand.

Ugh, you boys.
Why couldn’t you be granted to me?

I deserve an object, too.

How many times have you shot this rifle?
It rests on you like a young lady asleep on your lap.
Occasionally, she hops in her slumber
and you think (hope) maybe she is dreaming of me.

This pretty pretty thing, her barrel spread like a
dress upon the petticoat’s pillow:
so tempting and so prepared for your touch.

You think of her so much
and spill your own blood just to have her bullet hid

                     where she could see your love.