Grandmothers hanging, trembling hands watered the tomatoes with red wine
I watched her fill the can, which never truly emptied, and helped feed the garden bed wine.
Seven years old in a barn house there was dancing. I kissed her hands
which stained them blue, she tasted sweet,

The blinds were shut, but the moon
still shined through the thin cracks, falling
on the rising dust,
dancing like blue smoke, in the distance
of two clumsy, sleeping lovers.

It took him three hours
to finally shut up and fall asleep.

his breath, warm, hitting against my neck
I can still taste the wine in his exhales
It stings just a little.

after I kissed him he told me I had turned him to stone
I wish I could say I know every beat his heart
makes, I dont.
but I know that it does

When I kiss him, I swear I can hear the clocks stop
their ticking hands and then slowly turn
backwards until suddenly I'll find myself standing
at earth's edge. My feet bear and now hardened stone,
and my clenched hands
hold teeth from grey wolves.

his lips, stutter. in slow
motion. forwards to
under these nervous skies
The rocks in the water burn darker
like his eyes. They watch me while I sleep,
while I dream.
Even the sirens cannot ****** me so gravely.

Please

Fill my lungs with his exhales
My veins with the waters
he swims in. Clench
his breath tight in my hands
do not let it spill out like the grains of sand

How could I have written 332 poems,
filed away in a little cigar box
and only two are remotely, slightly good enough?
and they all say the same thing that has haunted
me for the last two thousand years,
the way his fingers haunt my thighs
the way his lips tell clocks to rewind.

On the darkest nights you can find the moon
hiding in her right eye. The wolves will cry still
The iron ocean tides will fall and rise
and fall again- against opals and faint oyster pearls.

On most mornings her voice sounds
like water drifting
between the black stones.
Her oak palms, open and raw. Still, her fingertips
touch like the way raindrops drip
onto the smoked, burning ground.

And if you dare to love the way she loves
the trees will grab to the end of your sleeves
until they uproot. The sky painted in lilac
and copper evening clouds, spins until
your feet cannot help but lift
to the burning Aspyn skye.  

On your loneliest nights she will empty
herself, carve a hole in her chest and rock
your abandoned heart gently to sleep
and in the morning when you wake
you will wake with peace,
The moon wrapped around you,
the world spinning,
hearing nothing but the soft,
soothing, sound of water
drifting.

The last time we talked I laughed so hard I spilled
Raspberry Jam all over my white dress shirt.
Now, dry cleaned and pressed, hangs
In the darkest corner of my wardrobe.

The third button down, missing.
Her poppy red lipstick stained on the left collar,
and my heart still, untouched and silently
left at the end of my sleeves, it hangs abandoned
in my dark chest
filled of old and worn rags.


the same color that she painted her nails
at 3 am one autumn morning.
Drinking Plum wine
and singing Kurt Cobain.
On the second verse she pulled me close and kissed me,
The taste of wine on her stained my teeth blue.

He could feel the way water moved
when it stuck to the windows, how it slipped
and dripped off the poppies
onto his cigar box filled with ******
escapees. Even its softness can drown,
He was drowning.

Inside the greenhouse the found
him already emptied, lying
on the ground with the white hospital
wristband tied, shotgun resting
beside. His face missing.

I understand
why he did it, “It is better to burn
Out than to fade away.”
He wanted to stop the sinking.
He wanted to burn.

No one saw the water tangled in his teeth,
pressed up against his lips, consuming.
Or heard the drenching within his voice
as he sang. If I had known he had a gun,
even when he swore he didn’t.

Now all I can hear are pulsating echoes
Of strings that no longer sound like waves crashing,
and his raw, gunge screams now mute  
And rippling away.

Our legs knotted together, hers to mine.
Bare in her blue sheets, finger-painting
her finger tips. I inhaled all I could.
and then she kissed

me for the first time after we tangled
together. I tasked her love, burning,
traveling down my throat.
Right then I remembered

when I was nine year old, holding the gun
my father gave me. His eyes watching.
I pointed its nose toward the mother doe
and pulled. My heart beating

heavily as it is now. Her raspberry
wine lips, tasting like the pain
of many men, still burning
in my throat. Knowing if I stay

my heart would burn too. I gathered
my clothes from the ground. Looking
back only once, leaving
out the door. I held my mother’s

hanging face eight years after I shot the gun
my father gave me. I kissed her eyebrow
and she told me, People are selfish. They take
and they take until nothing

is there and then they leave. In the morning
I woke in my bed. Alone. Feeling
hollow and sunken as the lying, dead doe. I exhaled
everything out and tasted

nothing.