Ruby red slippers, rich with passionate love
for you, dear state, as I search your land,
grazing the colors, the life, and the mystery
of weeds choking gravestones, tangling the dead.
But you, dear state, yourself is so gentle.

Kansas, you stretch to ****** my curls;
to stroke my tender cheek with a
flock of sunflowers, blooming vivid gold and
a mizzle of musicality, too high, too loud for me.

Your screams of country overwhelm me.
Why you, dear state, never treat us to
tangles of concrete nor mazes of glass?

Kansas, your heaven gives me migraine.

Mixing your whisky breath,
              your unshaven cheeks,
              your liquored-down smile
                                                                               in an orange bottle labeled B.

WITHDRAWAL withdrawal withdrawal
Advice from a man with unshaven cheeks, a ring around his eye, and a cross near his breast.
Withdrawal from him, be careful, withdrawal from him you’ll see.
Clenched fists and a bouncing ball of hair, tied, atop my head

Sundays are slow, a holy ****** awaits.
                                                      They teach we aren’t supposed to be here.
                                                                               They teach this is not home.
Everyone is temporary, and
the concept of forever: my methadone.

But he’s only a pain reliever, you see.

concrete slams across my shoulder blades as you press your body against mine
an outside invasion;
oppression
my hands climb to my lips warding off the gin and wine of your
kiss
it poisons me as you reach to grab my flesh

I should’ve turned to coffee and water;
velvet nights of smooth moonlight and a bitter windchill
God whispered warnings of you
across my thighs, near your neck
gin and wine

it’s you and me, mixing liquor with jealousy
fabricated curls and a whitened smile
you stand towering over me
asserting deceitful dominance at every chance
yet darling,
I’m

fortunate dreams, folded within security and affluence
a laundry pile of capital
you’ve tried and succeeded
prosperity, wealth, Constitutional rights in abundance
American dreams lay thriving, slithering between your fingers like sludge
nice sludge though
snow crystals rest upon the sludge, decorating it for the holidays

barren attempts to take hold of opportunities, you didn’t really try
efforts lay unmade, like the bed he shared with you
penniless
inferior in the corner of the kitchen
last night’s events crawling across the tile towards you
running over stains and chips, creating unshaped perfect squares
a city on fire; flames stumbling in the breezes

I didn’t hand it over
I neglected to sign a consent
I never said you could                                 yet you did anyway

a cavity within my chest
anatomical rather than cliché
the mask told me it’s a ventricle                then I stuttered okay

hollowed inside thick walls
it gathers substance productively
like a strawberry picker                              but the berries are smashed

it’s inevitable
we are two waves crashing upon one another from diverse directions
6 feet overpowering a near five
an abundance of sand collected in her toes, painted sunset in season
salt in the crevices of his cracked lips
                       he hasn’t drank since March
wildflowers on her dress and holes in his shoes

it’s faulty
we are racing towards riverbanks: barefoot, unsteady, and homely
this doesn’t feel like home
he’s a moonlit tower, prewar stairwells, and a bright white nail bed
she secretes meteors in her pockets and a jackknife
slopes and curves and hills to stumble
words and doorknobs and photographs to wonder

it’s vexed
we headline in bold faced Georgia
friends concerned themselves with each petty fight
        oh, boy did we
fight until her tongue wore out
his palms scratched to be healed by hers
her mother was on board, she guessed; his mother said yes

it’s bereft
we’re naked on the South lawn
a rose brush picked, prodded, called to question
her hazel eyes lack the ability to cry and cry and cry
his voice, stripped of rage
politics behind the scene
a young widow’s desperation for peace

it’s mass-produced
we’re political maps facing the chalkboard
colored crayons and heel-high socks
pepperoni’s dot her pizza the way she dots her i’s
                       as she writes lyrics of you
he raids the kitchen for her, prying the fridge for her
glinting sparkles in artificial light

it's submitted
we’re chipped steel bracelets
her straw bends forward at a crease
they didn’t realize what factors meant
                                     his version too close to candor
yielded, the missing L on a paper sign
a stranded guitar pick balancing atop city grates and a below ground maze

it’s whatever it may be
and may be whatever it’s
but she and he and I and you
we perch on seven lines of fact
like birds we wallow, and trees we droop
‘til the ending sunrise
where you figure the truth

Poetry’s carved into her flesh,
intertwined with her ribs
and parasitic on her brain, the softest ***** now that her thrashing chest hardened.

It’s the thorn of a plastic rose, jabbing her distinct print, and
analogies crawling down to her jaw line,
sprawling at individual forks of two points; it was always only two.

Melodic qualities burgled her mind to
exist in ubiquity throughout her pores
and soiled strands of hair pinched with a tie ten centimeters from the root.

Poetry, disobedient and sovereign,
lived to spell a testimony
individual to her since no one breathed her air.

Overwhelming, bitter, unsteady
Alcohol burned my nostrils
Wisps of the scent crawling
Crawling through my sinuses
Lodging in my nervous system
Obscuring the thoughts
Adhering to the brain

Your choice affects me.
And though it may seem strange,
Such a way of delight enters me
When you speak my name.
We dance with a dance
That is not our own
Statistical, recycled, frequent

Beer bottles chipped, flutes shattered
From slamming against the coffee table.
You twirl me towards a wine glass.
Blood seeps from the shards
Staining crimson, the carpet of facade.
Acidic from heel to bunion,
Daddy no longer dances.

Last night you handed me glass to swallow,
shards to choke on,                       and I did.
I choked.
Blood immersed my lungs.
It flooded around my kidneys, my bladder, my colon,
brimming the muscular tendrils near my nerves.
Slivers knife the tissue enclosing
a once-pounding-for-you heart.
The soul I sold to you, for
you, is polluted beyond preservation.
It’s the extinct ***** in my body,
a hearth of life no longer there.

You yell at me for something I cannot help;
force me to ignore beliefs when I must deny.
I understand you see no room to budge.
I accept that it’s hard to grasp.
But if you call for me, I’ll run         run         run             to you,
and I can’t help that I love you:
the way you coerce my body to throb
and pump blood               through and through
though sometimes you clot it.
Your lips, magnetic, lure me near,
forcing an opening to suffocate
me as spidery limbs finger my veins
leaving traces of your web to tangle
me whole.

You’re my stonefish gliding
towards exposed skin, preparing
to attack with neurotoxins.
As ashamed am I
that only you are the antidote, too
even in great blue waves swallowing me
like I once did glass
in the end
                                                            I­ still sleep in your sweatshirt.

A heart full of wine
and liquor-spotted lips
I can’t remember the last time we kissed or how long it lasted for.

Yesterday’s makeup across a sham of a smile
I always catch a glimpse of you on Sundays; it’s where you used
to hold my hand and trace secrets across my forearm.

Daisies stripe the path we ambled again and again until the grass was embedded
with stumbling prints of your neon Nikes and the soft tap of my feet.

I still feel you in my veins
The toxin levels rise; I watch it on the monitor.
A plastic bracelet wraps my wrist too tight, the way your left hand did.

I expected you to burst like a volcano
and flood me with heat, scalding my ribs
and charing all flesh.
I waited for you to make me new,
and you didn’t.
My hair was the darkest black,
and I faded into shadows
following you.

Lips dance like raindrops on a car window
(set the scene: fog, island, river, rain)
the rain the lips dancing towards isolation

A lion in a coma
missing prey in sweet dreams of undrained blood, skin
          lacking a pure bite of crooked teeth

Wrists snap towards a limb of another body,
a separate body moored to a dock - one heart, two sets of teeth -
***, sweat, skin,              DNA absorbed and merging

A beast upon the throne of bronze
his claws dig deep through the velvet cushion
                    oh, how much the taxpayers compromised for that
you wretched maniac, may you marry rich - if you don’t marry me

A heart full of wine
and liquor-spotted lips.
A backless dress
and an inch to breathe.

Inch of garment, inch of air
suffocating underneath starlit blue
I, an abstract decoration, in your cabin of lies.
Touched me when you felt it, as if I was the skin
of a bear draped over a bookshelf,
murdered and witnessed first-
hand. Red.

Do it ‘cause you love me

The pillow, a shade of red,
you placed beneath my hair, curling it between fingers.
Pouted whispers across my neck
Do it ‘cause you love me
Slyness and sadness gleaming in your left eye.

A birthmark on your bicep, the hue of mulch surrounding flowers
holding flowers in place
Roots with a fixed circumference
Petals with a uniform height

Silk of a widow’s nightgown never did compare
to the softness of your skin on my skin,       hands,       lips,      body  whole
oh, dear, oh dear an entire body blanketing mine.
Your stance, superior, and I, an invalid, counting cars and
tracing with my eyes the plaid of boxers.
A predator recovering from a pounce.

Purple veins pierced through skin,
a sunrise just below layers of naked,
parallel lines racing through wrists, legs, a forehead
differing shades of her own hair envelope her fingers,
delicate and stronger, two limbs of power.
Her body breaks; rubble in a storm.

The town’s on fire, my love. Lightning
struck dust on the south building.
God is real, living within your color.

I wanted your temper (I’m sorry) tempest to
flood me with heat, scalding my ribs
and charing all flesh.
Patiently waiting for renewal,
and you didn’t.

Lavender veins,
my hair was the darkest black,
and I faded into shadows
following you.

A dumb little girl who took her ******* off whenever you said she could.

The moon’s light faded beneath a sweatshirt of clouds;
ancient stars lost their luster;
Saturn’s rings dismembered themselves
the night you typed goodbye.

beast, you are.
What will become of me?
You devour my chest, a beat slithers down your throat.
***** black-painted nails grabbed at your fur,
smooth as the silk of a widow’s nightgown,
yet now they rest among an internal *****.
The moon smirks.
She’s proud.
Her disciple is showing his scripture through
action.

A blouse droops across my moonlit breast, scarred horizontally
one                                 two                           three
Stars disappear beyond eyelids; they’re too beautiful to view.

He unveils a balded below with vertical, light strokes from his knuckles.
one                                 two                           three
Flames freeze any hesitation floating upon my heart.

I twist to turn the opposite way, to create crooks in my spine, I bend
one                                two                            three
Pressure rises against my bladder, pounding in fervor.

Sterling silver scorches a line around my left index
                                                          engraved with a contrasting verse
“flee from youth
desire the pure”
         I moan
         and moan
             and moan