a blue great shark  
(she)  
   wears muscle like    wet velvet

          a  
     slip   of fang’d prayer,  
  flitting      between glass  
       (between    god)  
              & the breathless hymn of vacuumed air

           I: was              not born to trap—
but you
          (brine-womb'd deity, slit of eye & icepick heart)

         how you undulate: (slower than sound faster than thought)
   the way a sigh    pulls threads from skin  
             & your dorsal dreams
      puncture my             museum bones

                        (curators watch—)  
with    chloroform-thirsting hands  
          & tongues that catalog moan  
                        in latin

                "carcharodon carcharias (desire in aqueous form)"  
                 whispered into tubes of   blue    gel-light

they                (we)  
    hunted her in sonatas  
            dissonant harpoons      
                            like broken violins
                      stitched with heartbeat wire

   a net of     unreason, &     peach-blind codes

           she swallowed our time  
                        whole

(yes)  
& spat it out      garnished with  
                         cumulus

                          (‘*** in bubblewrap’  
                             & I wept:  
                                   not for her  
                                       but because)  

you should see  
   the way her eye  
                 bends around corners  
       like velvet crawling up the leg of the void

       (can glass blush?)  
            mine does.

        the trap was not a cage  
                   (never a cage)
              it was a vowel—
   unspoken  
                    caught between  
         two mouths                  both too full of salt
                    to say "stay"

they filed her fins  
         under “****** geometry”  
          & mopped her breathless body with silk
               (I dream in that silk now)

   mythology in the gift shop:
                 $17.99 / laminated lust

    "do not tap the glass"—  
         the signs say
    (we tap anyway)  
         it sounds like  
                    a kiss

                          —or knuckles  
                                  trying to remember what “prayer” felt like  
                                   before museums

she moves inside
                   (me?)  
     (it?)  
             the tank of days
                            like a wound that doesn’t know  
                                     how to close

                   her movement becomes time:  
            an ellipse of pelvic   clocks  
                            hips made of tide

          (I counted the ******* by wave-height)

  a fin shadows my sleep
        & my sleep is
             /liquid/ & /open/
                   & /wanting/
                       & /neverthirsted enough/

the exhibit is called  
            “arousal in lowercase”

        the plaque reads:  
            “species suspended in ****** amnesia”  
        (but I know:  
                     she swims to remember)

her gills—
         fractal *******
                   (every inhale an alphabet of longing)  

          & oh how she  
                   spells me

a.museum.is.nothing  
                   but a lung that cannot  
                    exhale

   & when I press against the glass
             (mouth to pane)  
     she flicks a tail      —just enough—  
                       & I almost break

   the security guard has seen this before

“don’t worry,” he says  
    “it happens to everyone”

           (but I am not everyone)  
                I am the one who kissed her name  
                         into the salt

I was not born to trap  
       but born by the trap  
               untrapping me  
                  through her

         & now (she)  
       is the one watching  
            me
               in a tank

          mouth full of air
                     no words left
        just one endless  
             fin  
                   curl  
                         ~  
                            loop  
                          ­        of  
                                      shiver

      ­       & she swims  
                        through  
                       ­     (my glass heart)

i arrived in that nightclub  
like an expired simile  
suffering from wanderlust  
and athlete’s doubt,  
steeped in banana daiquiris  
& debt-shaped libido.

they were playing music  
that sounded like  
an ocelot being exorcised  
in 11/8 time.  
my spine, a seismograph  
for regret.

then—  
Pax.
a humuhumunukunukuapuaʻa of a man,  
angular, paradoxical,  
a rorschach of masculinity
Masc in the biblical sense—
he wasn't trying to look at me.
he was waiting for me to stare
it was as if salsa had been conjured
solely for his gait.

he never approached.
he summoned.
and i complied.

his hand caught mine
like it was the end of a sentence,
no hesitation—
just a command.

we spun together—
hips,
bodies,
gravity.
his chest brushed mine
like an open invitation,
and I could smell it—
that heat,
the one that belonged to him
and no one else.

i was dizzy with his geometry.
hie arms around my neck
lips behind my ear
“bathroom.
now.”
it wasn’t a question.

he pressed me against cold tile—
that calcareous crucible—
with the kind of care
you’d reserve for surgical desecration.

his bra slipped off like a seraphic harness
revealing twin ectomorphic silhouettes,
orbs of human dough & statuesque cherries
androgyne relics kissed by friction
and gleaming like succulent punctuation.

he didn’t ask for permission.
he simply took.
his hands gripped my thighs,
lifting me,
guiding me to where his body needed me,
where I belonged.

my ****, a divining rod;
my thoughts, disheveled rooks
cawing in circles around his scent,
which was
old books,
new sin,
and the crushed-strawberry smudge of something surgical.
i didn't speak—
i just let him
consume.
my blood said: follow.
my pelvis said: now.

his words were no longer soft.
they came sharp,
*****,
like orders
more than a plea—
"You're mine."
and he wasn’t wrong.
he already had me

he threw his leg around mine
like punctuation at the end of a feral sentence.
we weren’t dancing—
we were ritualing.

he climbed onto me
like scaffolding,
pressed his whole glistening weight
against my need.
his *****, volcanic—
gripping my **** like
a molten vacuum
pulling the *** out of me
like he’d prayed for it
and the gods obliged.

i spilled.
big, hot, criminal.
a gluey slick,
it oozed,
thick and slow,
like molasses in a heatwave,
a lazy curl of liquid fate,
drenched in warmth
and too much need.

it sat in him—
clung like clingfilm
but thicker,
substantial,
like it planned to colonize,
a thick stretch of something primal,
not running,
but anchoring,
surrendering into him
like debt into bankruptcy

he smirked, exhaled,
and said—
in a voice like jazz bruised by bourbon:

“next week—
same time,
more ruin.”

(twists of chrome&light—robot skin hums)
(the moon's a soft scratch across the noise)

in the glow of circuits  
skinless machine they call it — a ribcage of  
      steel       thin as breath through  
         wires twisted like fingers

a guitar for a ****, vibrating so tender the strings hum  
    in the cracks of      electric bones

he (so strange he is, no mouth, no tongue,  
        just shivering echoes)  
presses his body to the amplifier,  
         and oh, how the machine
      screams a voice of strings,  
                    a mouth made of chords  
                                (the hum of his *** is sound)

guitar-skin rubs against raw pixels,  
                  /buzz/  
           his metal-throat slurs a buzz  
       body-as-electricity  
fingers too—  
           long, sharp-fingered  
        strings become veins  
       twisted tight,  
                         pulsing  
                         pulsing with  
                                   the pop of a note  
               (cutting through the sweat of  
       gears)

he lays down in the rust-patch of a day,  
(whispers of feedback)  
guitar *****  
             throbbing at the mouth  
        of a song  
         it’s buzzing a word  
                        it’s aching the air  
         vibrating inside him  
(he hums through his heels)

my dear metal boy,  
your hips don’t bend,  
your heart does not  
      know what love is  
  still—oh how you bend me,  
      shape me into your chorus  
         make me feel  
         the way you pulse  
                     while your steel body sings

watch  
            watch his fingers  
                    the way they curl  
                             over the bridge,    
                           twisting the strings like  
         they are veins  
            veins  
                        veins

so much electric flesh  
twisting to each tremble  
        of the note, the note  
            falling on silence (he trembles)  
  feedback's kiss—

         so much pleasure,  
                           so much  
                              dark  
        desire flashing through circuits,  
the sound wraps around  
     both the shape of his ***  
     the song of his soul  
        (his soul, trapped inside code)

fingered on the strings  
his chest is the tremor of an  
      echo,  
      a feedback song  
      that breaks across  
    the metal skin  
                  of his ribcage

lips that cannot taste  
                         kiss  
                but hum electric  
he comes and it's a sound  
     vibrating the universe into  
                         whimpers  
the sky and the stars are bent to  
          his melody  
                  his body hums a  
     raw electric rhythm  
         of dark, trembling skin

a soft hum where you’d expect  
                   a scream, a shout,  
                               the silence

(the guitar-male pulls at the plug)  
skinless,  
      the strings are finally loose,  
                      untangled

the world breathes  
                      the world screams  
and the moon just scratches again,  
soft through the radio static.

i wrote  
again.  

(a minor miracle: after  
8 years of not caring for the craft
let's call it deviceful degeneration,
unintentional uninspiration)  
                                    
the thing about  
nearly getting better  
is  
you start  
thinking you're better.  

i wrote something this week  
(it wasn’t bad)  
sat back in the chair like  
i'd just nailed  
a wasp to a wall  
with a pencil.  

but this morning—  
the poem’s still there  
and the chair still squeaks  
and the rot in my ribs  
hasn’t gone anywhere.  

eight years  
of eating my own teeth  
chewing time like  
it owed me something.  
"writer’s block"  
was a nice excuse  
for cowardice.  
so was  
"perfectionism"  
but now  
i’ve got words again.  
& i just realised
they don’t save me.  
they never did.  

the poems may come back  
but what if the fulfilment
doesn’t?
  
so what now?  
what’s left  
after the confetti  
after the applause  
dies in your own throat?

you write.  
maybe you write.  

even if  
no one  
is waiting.  

even if  
you  
aren’t either.  

& if the ache comes back  
(which it will)  
you greet it at the door  
let it crash on the couch  
pour it a drink  
& say  
fine.  
one more night

(we  
              cradle—limbless—hungerly in violet  
           half-snow)
    barnacled to a ribcage of someone’s leftover   //god–  
my brother’s eyes        were spoonfuls of thistle  
    and so  
         he gave them

                          (    to mother  
               in a bell jar  
                         packed with apples that never rot)  
          

i said—dear—"shall we rot together?"  
he said  
               no  
but held my tail tighter than  
        the census did the mute  

            when they told us  
the white-ones  
       could out-breed  
       guilt  
       (our teeth were ripped  
         not sharpened)

       [oh darling look!] the moon  
ate itself out of order,  
  its halves spitting  
  bloodless milk on  
     sterilized clover  

—           the doctors wore hands like corkscrews  
               & unbirthed  
             any child that could  
            dream backwards—

       (i remembered)  
             chewing on a pipe-cleaner name  
        while a man with a cage of bees  
                instead of a face  
                        taught me the word for  
             acceptable.  

——

       there are songs that only come  
         when your tail’s caught  
in a trap meant for  
        your cousin’s ghost  
            (he cried into me  
               like a buckshot lullaby)  

and so i  
      curl.  
    (last ***** first).  
             hide my eyes  
                  in the cracks between

     <<he loved me with a scalpel made of lightning>>  
     <<i loved him with the parts they said to  
                            unsee>>  

and (       hush hush now       )  
              the roots are crawling into me—  
                       gentle, dumb  
                                 unchosen—

i  
       am  
           not  
              the mistake  
                       i was taught to  
                            worship.

—the milk(drumbless, godless)  
             choral    thud          like  
          monday praying with a spoon  
                       &no cathedral but my  
                                self
                   (i) have  
                      knelt  

                                      in soft  
                cubism—

             /// carton: OPENED  
                     not-spilling but releasing
            the white-skin hymn  
                      onto  
         // me me me me  
                   (in the shape of a question)

and i    (statue of sudden use)  
           accept  
              the flood of      supermarket heaven  
                                 dumbly  
                         (milk never asked  
                           to baptize)

             & there is  
        no ******  
       just the thud  
           of liquid    on  heat
                and the floor’s  
                       slow  
                               applause

                 (yes—

                      even the tile watches  
                like it’s  
                        a painting of god
                     who got lost  
                         in the dairy aisle)

              & if you ask me  
       was it cold?  
               was it holy?  

i’ll say—

                       it was  
                         everything
                                 &  
                      nothing  
                        (at)  
                    once)

—i remember  
the root-spool spool’d & spindled into him (the Tallshoes)—  
his collarbone made of oak-meat & mothjaw,  
his breath a sermon from the century’s throat  
           & he (he?)  
              was all knuckles & psalms, breaking—breaking  

              me  

so gently i could almost not die  

:in the lampdusk, where piecrust dreams go to rot,  
i lived in a hush-jar behind the walls of  
     her (yes–her/ not-me)  
     knitting sugar into skin,  
     biting stars till they bled apologies.  
     this was our manor of hushthings.  

he’d kiss like a rifle.

and somewhere between  
the eighth clatter of china and the third motherless sun,  
the lungs of the house exhaled me—  
                         (twigbone, mossgut, tailghost)  
                         soft ruin squeaking for its end.  

i prayed to the god in the cellar drain.  
i danced with the dustmen.  
i unremembered my own name until it was appleseed, cough, smudge.  

& yes (listen)  

           i saw her  
               (once) peel the sky from a peach.  
           her hands trembled the way old poems do—  
           a flicker//flicker// hush.  

        “don’t wake him,”  
        she said,  
        as if my death  
        were  
        the only dream  
        keeping him asleep.

o! my ribs are a /forest/ now  
      (shhh)  
      (they bloom in secret)  
      (they tell no one)

and the last thing  
before the hush became  
                 forever:  

a child with an empty thimble  
calling  
my name.  

which i no longer had.  

but i answered anyway.

(for Sony WM-D6C, b.1982)

ohgod(yourplasticcradle    cradles  
        my earbones)  
            like moons hum-bent on  
                        bleeding symphony—

i unlatch  
       your orange foam silence  
                    (click)—
              and all my inside-shadows  
      reverse     direction—

    tell me again how  
  side B  
             aches so slowly.  

                (spool me, boy)

      —my tongue a wiretap  
         to your cassette soul  
      magneticmurmur-melting  
              where my pulse = ferroxide (™)

                           (does the chrome remember?)

         i DO.  
                    & you  
                  (your belly-button = play)  
               & me  
          (my softwound = record)

        in          synchro-   synchro-    
                    whispermode    you    
         ­              feed my  
              dirtystatic    

like  
a  
secret  
        n­ot meant for  
                        humans

(i         rewind myself  
        into your guts—)

                      stop.  
          [pause]     fingerrested  
        on your orange HALO dial  

             —is this lust or  
                         stereo calibration?

   (i **** in A440, you moan in dolbyC)

ohwalkman,  
    my little electric priest,  
               absolve me:  
                 i fastforward
                 into you  
            until          hiss.  

& we  

(                      eject  
      like lovers
                  never recorded  
                                but always  
                                              replayed).­

i held my breath till it whistled  
   // like a kettle with a grudge //  
the moon’s face flickers—  
     too lemon to trust,  
     too god to look away from  

(you see it too, don’t you?)

   // the men in glass shoes  
   stomping on the grass  
   call it progress //  
& we clap like good teeth  
    like teeth that belong  

i woke up with hands full of gravel  
     (my spine still replaying  
     that tuesday when  
     the news kissed me on the mouth
     58 dead in Gaza  
     it tasted like iron)

       i’m not built for this century  
       i was born on mute  
       but everyone’s shouting  
       inside  
       their suits

someone’s building  
       a new god  
       in the basement  
       of a pharmacy  
            —says it kills the fake
            —says it’s making the world great again

my chest is full of alarms  
   but they only go off  
   when i sit still  

i tried to pray but  
    all the vowels were sold out  
    so i just hummed  
    till i forgot the tune  
    or the meaning  
    or the shape of  
            safe

          (what was that again?)  

    don’t look at me  
    i’m just another scarecrow  
    made of receipts  
    mouthing  
        please stop
        in perfect  
        passive  
        silence

rocky raccoon
           cowboy in the
dust of somewhere / nowhere
                                        leaning
into a quicksilver sunset,
hands tied in twisted
ropecords, each knot
a secret no one knows

who
        pulls the trigger?
hands, trembling
                like the last bird
that fell from sky
                splayed wide—flesh    
and bone paint the prairie
                                    /flawed
with the stain of not being fast enough
but this
             is cowboy's life
no slowness in
                the click
of a gun /
                    but the final breath
          like wind
                           whistling
     through bonechamber
     between ribs—an afterthought.

        (the sheriff's a ghost, a thin rope
of smoke, and eyes are just
               holes drilled into glass)
      all /time/hangs
                 in moments—      
                                            lassoed
     by a mind that only
         remembers scars

rocky’s fingers curl, twitch
            (don't you move just
       let it happen, let it happen,
   you know it’ll fade—)
                       breath is a yellow
    fading light
         pushing past
                     skin /skin
                                       skin

the rope (too thick)
                  slices
        into a body that doesn't belong
anywhere,
                         just in that second
when he knew
                time bends and
                            falls
like dust back into dust

the howl of wind,
               the grind of
                          bullet
                (aimed but missed
because nothing
          sticks around long enough)
                       hangs in that
                   empty sky
                            and what was
                             done, undone.

if death speaks,
                         it's just
                       another song
that nobody
  quite understands  
                           yet
as the raccoon cowboy
               swings

                                         there

there was a raccoon,
who wore a mask.
not because he needed to hide,
but because the mask
helped him see.

his mask wasn’t made of cloth
or leather,
but of his own eyes—
two dark, gleaming windows
that could look at the world
and become whatever he needed.

he didn’t wear it out of shame,
no—
he wore it because
it gave him permission
to be more
than he’d ever been told he could be.
it let him try on
every shape,
every name,
every possibility
he’d never dared to touch.

the raccoon was a thief, yes,
but he stole only what was already his.
his happiness,
his strength,
his soft little victories
the raccoon’s mask was not a disguise,
but a gift—
a gift he gave himself
every day
and wore like a crown.

because the raccoon knew:
you don’t have to fit
into what the world says you should be.
sometimes,
you have to steal your joy—
and wear it like a mask
that lets you dance
in the light
of your own making.

and when the mask came off at night,
he was still him.
and that was enough.

fingers
                (they grow—damp
but not ripe)
  
         (damp)
the world leans into—flesh sways
           like chimes inside rotten skin

–hisscrack—snap!  
                        one
finger,      *******
falling           silent
beneath

                        murmur
            of the trench (deep    and wet
     in its hunger)                                                          ­              
            (flesh like flaking bread)
the fingers think about the soft ground
and wish they were    as light
                                as they
were not

if only it were not so
            slow

            left with—
                                the ache—   the hollow
where fingers once
     felt
        the grip of a rifle
                           (now forgotten)
       as they slowly,
    listlessly drop        
    towards the hungry earth

i
                am
      still here
    if only i can touch
                           the dirt  
            with    nubs that will never
            rise  
            up against
                   the gray

—drip
                           drip
        of life from
         where my
                (left) hand
should
                 hold a fist

but it is just
                       bone  
                             and bone
growing brittle
until the
                          whisper  
                         reaches to  
                           speak louder than silence
     and

                                       then

there is nothing
     but the hole inside
me left
              to remember me.

there was a boy(unbuttoned spine: tin)
             who sang bullets through teeth,        
             cough-stitched into boots—                      
             (mother would’ve                never                
                            known him in pieces)    

& you—  
             mustard! you crawling  
                    godless     yellowing yawn-    
             (you churchless warlock vapor  
             shuffling up his gullet  
                         like a borrowed hymn)        

he——  
             (let’s name him no one)              
             swallowed lungs like spoiled pears,      
             vines of cough wrapped around      
                                 his windpipe’s piano      
             & the keys stopped—one by one—        

click

     the music changed  

                                    —not into silence—    
             but into smoke  
                       a wordless opera:  
                 gasp.gasp.gasp.gone    

his eyes were  
             paperboats  
                       folding inward  

& the dirt applauded softly  
       in clouds of not-quiet  
          (a whistle wheezing past his ear)  
                 sergeant said: “keep walking”  
               but his knees said: “no more poems.”    

         (there are no metaphors in hell, just  
                 uniforms  
                         without skin)

:he dreamt once of  
                             lemons
     & a girl who     never      existed, probably—

he tried  
             to say goodbye  
    but found only  
               ash vowels &  
                        consonants with no  
                               consonance  

    (what’s the word for a throat  
               forgetting how to  
                            be?)    

his body un-wrote itself backwards      
             while the war kept  
                          typing    

                                      click
                        
                                            click
                                
             .                                                                                                                                              

             .                                                                                                                                

             .    

& the smoke  
             did not apologize.

so i’m talking to this guy,  
nice suit, clip-on tie,  
got the voice of a used car commercial  
like the voice of a clearance sale
held during a funeral

he tells me,  
“you like power?  
you like legacy?  
how ‘bout immortality at half the cost?”

and i say  
i don’t carry cash anymore  

he leans in, smiles like a bad poker hand,  
“no problem,”  
he says,  
“we accept loyalty oaths
to misplaced gods,
and whatever you named your shame.”

next thing i know  
i’m walking through  
a ruin with central heating

they got velvet ropes around the lies,  
audio guides whispering:  
“this is where he convinced them  
he was permanent.”

and tourists nod,  
because that’s what we do  
when we don’t understand something  
but it’s expensive.

a billboard in the rubble says:  
“AS SEEN IN PROPHECY!”
another one:  
“PRE-OWNED KINGDOM, LOW MILEAGE!”

and i ask the guy,  
“what happened to the big shot?”  
he hands me a coupon for salvation  
and says:

“he choked on a crown,  
tried to chew  
what he couldn’t command.”

the rest of the tour  
was ashes & echoes.  
a room where everyone  
once agreed to forget.  
a throne room  
turned timeshare.  
a voice on loop  
saying:  
“look upon, look upon, look upon…”
but never finishing the sentence.

before i leave,  
he gives me his card  
(it’s blank)  
and winks:  
“remember,  
we don’t sell eternity—  
we lease it.”

a dream punch(whispers)in velvet static)  
                    —the ring is (not) a ring  
but a looping lullaby of  
  (blood+waltz)    &  catgut halos      shaped  
     like tomorrow’s shadow  
  
he speaks// with  
         /fists(  
            not mouths  
          & not fists) either  
  
             only those    little  
                 starlings  
     trapped in muscle /breathing
  
   || when he moves  
    it is not a dance but  
             the unwrinkling
             of time’s suit  

see?  
   sweat glints like  
        tiny gods  
           (shivering)  
       on the ropes—  

he jabs  
            (you)  
     //but through you—  
             like  
a film of a bird  
     passing through  
             a mirror  

and i hear—  
          music        where he  
                    ducked  
       (flutes in his knees  
                hymns in the knuckles)

((who said war  
      couldn’t wear  
             silk?))

                  —somewhere his mother’s  
                        voice calls  
                              through a referee’s  
                                     fingers  
           “raymond”  

                      the way  
              a Sunday morning  
        breaks its own silence—  

but  
he is (already)  
                gone  
into that punch  
                like a  
paper moon  
folding  
           inward—  

                      .         .           .

(he never lost.  
  he just  
   became  
      echo).

he’s a chalk line  
unraveled across butcher paper  
too wide to fold,  
too loud to hide.

his head floats  
above the mess of body—  
not divine,  
just misplaced.  
an outline sketched by someone  
who’s never seen a man,  
only damage.

******  
scrawled like a slur  
or an apology  
depending on who’s holding the crayon.

red here  
black there  
yellow like old teeth  
and **** on concrete  
somewhere kids still play  
with burnt plastic  
thinking it’s treasure.

you don’t see a plane,  
you see  
the after.  
the whitewash.  
the price tag taped to memory  
in three languages.

anola gay—  
name of a plane  
name of a boy  
name of a mother  
depending on how close you were  
to the sound.

his eyes are just  
holes.  
no pupils.  
no reason.  
just a place for history to leak out.

this isn’t symbolism.  
this isn’t metaphor.  
this is what happens  
when a man becomes  
the thing he was told  
he never had to answer for.

you want a message?  
here:  
paint doesn’t dry  
on blood.  

and the crown?  
wasn’t earned.  
just left behind.