my sister is picking fruit, tummy aching
with the weight of a second basket;

my mind three steps to the left
of my skull,
i ask for pomegranates

(the sun is dead that watched me
last time i ate.)

my sister says:
"there are no strawberries"

my sister says:
"there are too many raspberries"

i need something
the size of
my fist, bursting
with red cells and life
to swell my chest, ground me
here

like a phonebox, my heart
can barely hold one person
before we start to bruise each other,
peach soft, blushing
dark and aching,
as each mistake rots through
to the pit of my stomach

juice runs down her
fingers like old blood

plasma gilded, scabbed
and spilled, please
give me thicker skin,
cake me in rind and membrane
to hold the magma in.

Petrified for the last time,
I cut my brittle heart out
with a pair of nail scissors,
clipping through the keratin
down to the quick —
the sharp, thick, constant sting
of raw flesh, ribs spread
to see the moist, shady maw,
the red, white, and blue
empty ring box of my lungs,
a “yes”
like soft velour, all
tumescent and convex, pressed
out with the fragments
of vitreous gifts
you poured down my windpipe
(unintentionally vitriolic),
gem shards, cold and hard,
and I am scarified inside out.

My heart, airlifted
from its zone of alienation,
wails and trails lank Titian locks,
a red forest, scorched and floored.
Still, the dead marble lump glows red
and ***** like blood under nails.
You are subdermal —
eternally, infernally so.
Put apples in my cheeks, speak
but do not
listen, I glisten —
first with sweat, then tears,
then soap suds. I shed
my skin, touch fresh markings,
milk patterns. Half blossomed
rose bud,
dismantled, curling
up on myself,

you’re out of the woods.
I pull up my hood, drag my feet
out of the mud, bind
my open chest with the rest
of my ruddy cloak and,
sanguine, let drop my spleen
into the puddle I leave
behind, all dark
with blood and bark. Your bite
is not so bad
but, oh darling,
what big teeth you have.

Sometimes your mother will look at you
like a dead language, some untranslatable
character. Speak anyway.

Sometimes your burning heart’s smoke signals
will make her weep and splutter,
or pass over her like incense, slightly
too sweet, and thick with silence.

Hand her an apple.
Know she might choke before she sees
the core.
Feed her anyway.

Sing your hymns with windows open
when the house is ablaze, do not
suffocate. Gasp through carbon,
remember who gave you your
stardust: you are
heavenly. Burning bibles
purges nothing, and screaming
into pillows
is not a prayer, precious girl.

Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and
choose the sign of your day
The day’s divinity
First thing you see.
A vast radiant beach
in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it’s quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the woolly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.
Choose, they croon, the Ancient Ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon,
Beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dances.

warm maple
syrup y sweet
sugar cane sap
tobogganing down your barbed white
rib cage d
birds croon no sweeter a
tune d
up broke down jalopy such as i to make sweet
cream between your wet
heat ed discussion of
how much is too much?
after all, diabetes is a reality for many.

Sometimes a man can't say
What he . . . A wind comes
And his doors don't rattle. Rain
Comes and his hair is dry.

There's a lot to keep inside
And a lot to . . . Sometimes shame
Means we. . . Children are cruel,
He's six and his hands. . .

Even Hamlet kept passing
The king praying
And the king said,
"There was something. . . ."

winch sinched grimmace
hung at half mast
in an attempt to hold rebelious bicusbids in their place
     but they still wiggle like a bobble-head jesus glued to the dash
     every time that you laugh
so i guess that's why you're giving it up

your arms look like a road map
     riddled with pin-***** ***-holes
and with routes to hell and back marked
by distressed vasculatory flares
     so you ask to borrow my sweater
     and another fourty bucks
with no explanation why

for once
     you didn't lie to me