I would eat my own heart if I could,
and spit parts into a glass locket
so everyone could see inside

me, the breast split open and
pumping. I would eat my own heart
if I could feel its pulse on my lips,

have the red rouge paint beauty
where there was only white before.
These veins that **** compulsively

for something that was stolen, airy
and pleading. I would eat my
own heart if it’d make me feel full.

I am ******* on a lemon,
he lost his sour decades ago –

the pulpy, lampshade grind gathers
in the rings of my throat,
and burning like an enemy-girl.

She, with her knives and languages
learned afresh, just for a pit:
there are none left in my lemon,
he has become so dry
in her memory too, a four year cave.

Fear that he may vanish,
and upon his last chance: nine.
The lives I let spill in my mouth &

deaths I take responsibility for,
****** the eight, his skin and bones.

She comes wielding pillow cases,
for the brain I have swallowed,
and soon he is a carcass,
better arid than shriveling in water,
my lemon rather than a prune.

I gave her a go, and now I must leave
or else I cannot save him by me,
no lemonade to drink.

Become medieval when the rain starts –
put coins in my corset, they are pure gold & evil
and show the men using my Thanatos drive:

I could not care if they want me,
I could not care if they hated me alive.

Rather the leaf upon dress-******* much as
a muzzle, came from a box of cardboard slits
opening like lady-legs. I bribe the thrash with my

whispers & wheels, promise to soak up sky’s tears
but she certainly prefers the black ash haul.

I bring myself to the top of a volcano, its arc,
convinced that it cannot soot me,
not in the rain: such scorch is unreachable.

There is this protruding spiral in the center,
going dark, a pupil. It eats my hair-ribbon and I

sweat, but I am upon all terrains of the Earth
prepared to fall into a clutch, the gold stain my skin
before peeling by storms, how plague-like I seem.

Could be on my back when it implodes –
though my skirt would not appreciate the mess,
I think the idea fine. I am already pink, red’s better.

Wires and flushed cheeks will be what they find,
the men, knowing that I could not care.

And I did not; it was not less than a shot of
lightning stuck under a petticoat, frilled for nobody
but the volcano who turns ******* to embers.
the rain that beasts eyelashes to amputees.

fragile earth
tarnish its pulp
in my molars, adult

and a sheen that
lays paper

kites flying inside
gum nerves &

the brass touches
porcelain

you give me
cavities, my love
our life is so sweet

i feel your words
before they
are said

the homeostasis
as you speak

strength.

When you cry,
I see a sailboat on your back,

but float through clouds,
their evaporate:
morph substance-less.

Taking us back to when you
thought we would be dead,
by tomorrow

and the rain let up,
though we still could sail

in its thundering paint,
like leather beads. I rolled in
the canvas, laid our name

on the vessel’s curtains.
Every glitter sparks,

this weather under our feet,
shaking and sand-greens
better than last sea.

I breathe salt when you can’t
sleep, my angel’s peach.

I did not know that I was starving
until I had you in my mouth.

The candlestick, waxy and red.
Now I burn my tongue with it and
pretend it is you.

And kiss the flames that scorch
my hair, my hands. I am still not

as warm as I was with you –
ruby outside, empty empty empty
in.

I am in the furnace
    and it has these red spokes

    looking like candy,
I know this is how I will go

  the chunks of fruit beads
       oh jam, and my jelly

   I become a worm,
he has put me in an apple

    adjust the stem and crotch
nap like a pit, like seeds.

Huffing demigod, a scarf of your hair is around my neck
and it nicks my clavicles. Pin a rose between thighs –
     that is how it feels, like thorn-blood your love.
           I am the emptiest thing you
                            have touched the toes of.

When you ****** my pulse,
             I became a coffee drink, now funneling the
      tentacles who suffocate my hair strings &
you cannot know how subtle I am not. Finger my teeth.

      Purposely, I do not bite.
              As Pacific as an ink ocean, you are deep
         between what I swallow and ***** and keep inside.
   Where fish once swam you took. I can only drain for you.
                   I know you empty me deliberately,
                               the final ache and void.

Love for me to stay the emptiest woman you have ******,
         until I do not need a house for my soul. No,
                           not more than I need your cut.

I unload your god in that laissez-faire way
where the bandages mend and have no need to be placed,
formidably, regret to admit the moonshine in my hair
looking Gothic, but beautiful:
sober the men’s breath as it falls, falls, falls
not more mild than a snowstorm in its final lapse.

Sat there to be dreamt. He put his hand to his beard,
and I would have kissed if had I believed
that he was not merely trying to haunt my body,
the hair I kneaded into air.

It flowers, and flowing these marzipan sands
where God lays man next to his wife,
she bears the peaches: juicy, ripened, but not to eat
expecting us to swallow ourselves in turn, spin the bottle.
I could not care less for the braces in his lips –
or their fur, but gums beneath like peaches.

**** it out until the pulps mirror,
you have the skin of a four fruit, or an eighty,
flames high as kites. But suffering for each flicker-****
and dating a girl who smokes cigarettes in bed,
I know he could not support that, your god.

Morning comes with a glare, now eating her hair
the involvement of some odd raconteurs. I beat them
and they beat my ******* for their heat –
God is a cabin boy with genitals in his palms,
said he would love the women as long as they are gone;
if he does not see me, the flames, I cannot exist
not more than falling falling falling hair.

you are a stoneman, and the new year
wrapped in a confetti shawl

january will dye your eyes white
and december as patient as fertility

as always, the april bomb –
flowers detonate into the may-days

but you are too frozen to touch them,
will crack the stems for milk

mouth our womanly eggnog
bleeding butter into the next thirteen.

love the scratches on your knees,
meant that you have loved
somebody

or something more
than yourself, enough to bleed

in their  honor

you will bite skyscraper lights
to stop my insomnia
and put my demon to sleep

finally,
one strawberry bruise for me.

you are fuller than a baby’s feet,
the nubs that struggle to move and carry
mushrooms to his skull

explode, nuclear
& bleached as white as a diaper

you are that house that lives within
so many children’s arms,
separating for tree-trunks and satellites

but not to hug their father until
bedtime

if he has treated them alright –
you are the heart that swells of blood
green-love on the moon.

Oh daffodil, you are not what I had hoped for
but you are alright now. Do not weep,
and please, do not wilt on me,
this fertilizer is a necessary evil, to devour
your bad things

in a basin, or howling at the moon –
dogs you left empty-bowelled,
sunken as a level cloth in the rain, still fat
but darker than smoke haze at dusk
not better of what mothers feed the precious

stuck, and stinking sons. I love men, I do,
just not the boys I have been handed
in their snotty noses, copepod backpacks &
bandanas for the laboratory. Promise, though
to make chloroform for your head

as if the sun could slap your eardrums,
what wonder would it be! A yellow plague,
bit the toenails of your baby’s feet,
said to injure petals among tall, lusting slopes,
hope you will die as a blonde woman,
and dye, daffodil, goodbye.

an evening facing the tangerine seafloor
where mermaids mate and breed some more

each child looks like a cypress tree, hanging
on the peak of twists, crafts wider than brains

but some forget their belly buttons’ bow
and underwater a search arises, sea-babies go

couples who watch from their hotel room
when he asks why you cry, say you’re amused

she is lavender, she remembers the month
spent scavenging for her own swimming dove

Daylight in the castle,
there is the king and the queen.

She is of Europe, floats like a bee
upon clouds, these saltwater beacons
drenching for her hair to dampen black.

And he thinks she seems angelic,
each morning, opening umbrella limbs
stars & stripes he gave her last night.

Shine and prim kiss-kneads,
nobody can tell that he loves me.

The pond across the way,  I drown
in the flesh-earth, memory of our space
just ruffles swaddling where he tastes.

I am his handmaid as I am queen,
when light surfaces on my snowbank
ever ghosting the skin of knobby-knees.

Daylight in the castle,
beams for more than just a queen –
clumsy, odorless of the love she’s seen.

DELETE

I let go too soon, of these three fingers
pinning a white dress to my knees,
such a strut they possess, and psychic
for the waggle I do on my tulip-days:

mama said that the lace came from an
elves’ head, I could not wear it.
I put it in a dresser drawer, as I lost
my appetite for marriage and friends.

She said that father wanted to see it,
I should parade my red, pulsing veins.
A torpedo, it became, cowering until
liftoff  and glory hallelujah first kisses.

Was it not funny when I, poor chap,
kept garbage in my teeth and laughed
when you slithered your tongue inside,
like Friday penetrating the weekend?

You are a Leo; I am far from such, but
I understand why you may be insulted,
as mama garbs turquoise as the sky
and all our daffodils burn like rubber.

Each says it is because they love me,
railing cat-scratches with a stitch –
but I do not want that, see earthquakes
that hammer on  our tulip-days, dear.

We have touched so much since December,
steeping teas torrid and arctic ice cubes
a thousand fibers, prince bee his princess
generous blankets papering flu
the drizzle on wedding dawns or departure’s eve
pieces of candy for holiday celebrations
even the ending of a movie –

these are wild fingers that we have
rebellious, juveniles in mind
singing summer stories through knuckles  
bodies long slenderized
and they are more than myself

to them, I have no name
but my brain and I are their mother
a well-mannered woman in command

I feed them lotion,
then play in the sand apathetic
whistles papercuts that sting with
mouths as lions tigers bears sharks leaves
asking which hurts most significantly of all we
have loved –

and then again, what enduring does not belong?

The adolescents scoff at each of their
five circadian baths, and I hear cries
for showers because soap makes them crack

but it is in your best interest, I say;
you touch everything that gets in your way

to move is beauty and transitioning more so:
my hands are dancers, pirouetting
on stage to fall harmoniously with
bashes, revelations, words I care to mean
yes, these are what causes the bleed of
my aging hands, and throughout their years,
rings dying them green.

I only live in your heart,
the masculine particle of your air and
whimsical, my treat within

I will love you forever if only
you keep your breath winded.

A doll, button eyes and two cloth feet
which walks her on a chant –
for that is me, dwelling in your body
I exist as a plaything

or a burbling dream.  

My strings attach to your arteries
and I am on a highway to your soul.

I wobble, topple, follow
your staple, an underground troll
of noiseless, poppy veins
because you welcomed me in the lull.

as you slept in peace,
i washed out to sea
and dreamt that your body
climbed a city building

the water stings my eyes
as floodlit light

pursed lips
or consuming fireflies

do you think they can swim,
i wonder –
do you think you have wings,
i wonder, too

now while i drink salt
i envision an angel
formed from you

an eyelash twinkle tear,
and melted

the sugar in honey and wine
so god helped me cry

like a cramped muscle
after mile-runs

love, lava lamp red
makes me an island child

disperse the burden to each
of my adoring friends

you just do not know
how beautiful he can get

weep at the foot of a cross
but, by god, he is mine

lapping salt-beads
from the coast of an eye

hair is insignificant if not of a
root

row in streams of myself
destiny i spat up

with cemeteries,
learned to cradle an infant

feed him with my milk –
anon, i am a peasant

he cannot love me as i love
yet another waterfall’s dusk.

how odd, to be a woman and a girl
to wear the dresses but concern about cleavage
more than meets the eye: because.

and so we waddle for the men –
twisting straps, my petticoat drawbridge

i am over-aware of myself: know the pulse and
when to tug draperies from ‘part thighs
they only see what i am okay with,
which does not include exhaling.

i am like a drum, drumbeat
i punch my body until the purple softens
and it sounds beautiful, but incomprehensible:

me, this woman-girl and child cheeks
placed upon petals that flap
with attention, not the old storm breezes –
every april shower molded me into a flower
i rise above each season, gay spectacle

the men that believe hurricanes so enigmatic
must lust me for such a reason –
i have been through many in girlhood
that i bleed one as a woman.

because of word infidelities, the muse
april said that i am only as big as my body

and i grew, grew, grew
until my stem became caught
to where it grew no longer, a woman-child
who took the wind like salad dressing.

I knew I was in the burning building with her –
and it was like Limburg,  maggoty
but obliged its fortress of a rowboat life.
Without its ice, I am in pine-high, to dull selves
which will later stiff upon these floors.

He was hell. He did this to us.
Not even a masked ******: shown needles
for his dog expression, and I am prodded
rather with teeth than a nose drill.

But she did dissolve before I could have,
must have had thin bones,
of maturity, an osteoporosis ache.

It saved her, perhaps, although she passed:
a kidney stone philosophy book,
these death-doctors will read numb.
I do wonder if it were their hips in fire,
why could they not sit in a mausoleum place.
Just how we did so many instances –
practicing a routine in the bathtub, like knowing.

Had the correct arrangement, too,
I pretended I was in a womb with you.
And mother’s was like that claw-tub so
we, fetus, sensed like castle buffs, carrying
the rings of gold and lockets of princess blood.

Then, she became papier-mâché statues
before a meadow of hell’s dust: I had to kiss
each curve because one ash was not enough.

I knew I was in the burning building with her
when I could not recognize her stumps.
She was an emblem of past upon fair carpet,
or the haze I inhale to shadow –
knowing that he sees our wallpaths and
catches the hum of infernos taking bodies,
then say that he is a monster even more than I.

You are a radar-buzz,
I feel the jitter when you are around.

It is stony, it is inescapable,
but I do not mind.
I might want it, even if it weren’t yours.

For your shake I have my own,
like a thousand peacocks, enhancing
themselves for their mates.
Already too bright.

And what they are, I cannot say,  
not much better than my midnight jolt
when I go dancing in you.

Dilate your clavicles, sweet:
I am diving inward.

I think you sound like suicide inside,
do not want to admit you hate life.

So your body speaks for you.

That, the drone, it travels me in,
Love you like a son, a brother, a husband,
and cannot decide which is moving.

The buttocks of a round building,
here we sleep, in the cheeks

each penny groans
and a door with the inlet

like lemonade mist, egotistical
where I mouth waterholes

they are without genitals
I can travel by candles to amend

my bed-sins –
such a chaos, still look silk

folly, belly-aching mistakes
not enough apologies to escape

I bet you would, had you no cribs,
you could tuck me in

staple comets to our ceiling
darling, I have the sleigh bells

and I think you made the pearls
hot, our mattress’ internal springs

while businessmen clothe
we will make love again

beyond astronomy, college didn’t
teach what is beneath the stars

but now I am learning
it is your tongue and chest-plate

glow you consider me delectable
though this office has more bottom.

glasses have no private view
like i could **** myself
when everyone could see,
though it was only meant for you
an image you have “for keeps”
everyone else defiles me

i want to be beautiful
and walk to the library at dawn
but they point, call me a ghost
they claim i do not belong

then, he with no teeth
will bite and snip my dress
until his gums begin to bleed

when they stain my shirt,
i will mourn, death of invisibility
once i scavenge i am caught
to the lens of your eye
climb the brim of your lids,
very tippy bit, you let me die.

What man would buy me a ticket,
and into a cocoon where moss bites?

I would sting like bees on buds,
or ***** rushing to fertilize, create
an angel no other gentlemen touches
with white hair, eyes like sesame seeds:
she seems more attractive than the
woman he made love with, for certain.

Looks unnatural to swim in a pool
when a waterfall can pour ice onto his
head: just as viney-things drape me.

I am but a fair girl, have no color.
He could not love me beneath green,
there is no comparison, me and trees,
but he does, and I feel April will return
sooner and ruddier than anticipated.

May will bark like a dog: on my knees,
cradling children who hold vanities up to
my forehead, I boast a bellyful of bugs,
brick-hued and even with red stripes;
I think they must wear sweaters to bed.

How noble in our thirty-six months!
We cuddle baby slugs, not counting sap,
then burp their brothers, spout-mouths.

He is, in fact, the man that would do
the unthinkable grey-lipped love,
authors gather inspiration from and
snakes slip, spiders webbing shapes of:
cocoon with our metamorphosis in mind.

your forest’s architecture
verdant in spots, and then a stump
did the dead leaves ever have a heart beat
what made the ballad stop, was it sun?

little larva squirming towards a moon
and their mama maggots weep –
to lose a child, to lose a child

when death-creatures want to be
an astronaut, the green canopies are bars
prosper in the centipede teeth munch
fertilizer for a final seed

without vertebrae they climb over stars
& leave your forest’s architecture
crumbling for buzzards.

doubled & folded a two way mirror
see the blush on a pale bottom,
it is as white as me

read a book on “how to be a ghost”
working as crows fornicate,
black, love made with dead bodies

i floated over the lot of them
and i was so afraid, i did not know
what was seen on the other side

car lights, a saint to pick up roadkill
do not forget that ghosts watch
the birds echo, they might

verses were rehearsed & daresay
written on a couple dimes
we both have wings

while we both have wings,
i cannot fly –
oh, crows not the white of doves

i am dead & they eat my color, alive
fern to shield beads and eyes
*****, pricking red bowels inside

should not know for literature
god’s couple of miles higher than
what the good book claimed

and he watches us from a mirror
the other side of a stage
we look so ugly, the crows eat my face.

Visual interest –
he is twiddling his thumbs,
has marinated his split ends
with a brew of saliva, tears,
and sweat from his temples;

I see, then watch in ****** concern,
I must recognize the person who
could act with such gawkiness,
while appearing so poised:
he is like a performer on stage,
and I am his captivated audience.

Between two index fingers a
mug is situated, vapor fabricating
from its contents – presumably
coffee, with its caffeinated veins
pulsing as a phased mine of energy.

I wish I could be the pin on his vest
or the leather strap bearing his luggage;
his home must be calloused and draped,
its wealth in a single fireplace where
my poetries burn quick, quick, quick.

Well, there’s these watery eyes
that plead and guide my travels –
a remote without a power switch,
so I can never not act, in fear of
disappointing infants, lambs, art.

I am told to sway from right
to left, then back around again,
as an image for more beautiful
things than my mangled self.

Transposed beneath moonlight,
a hundred vials of innocence
taunt me, a kaleidoscope of the
experiences I’ve lost through
mania and wishing to be less manic.

Lulling conversations
about ceiling fans and washing machines –
appliances I’d never think
to purchase as an idealistic youth,
because they’re included
in the best homes, a lifetime warranty.

Such as the time I learned
vinegar dissolves sweat from t-shirts,
or that nail polish remover cleans carpets.

There were occasions I
unplugged lamps during storms,
as knowledge crept upon my aging spirit,
while on others, teenage
dramatics fell solid victim to the
irate beast of lethargy, a sandman.  

Can responsibility be measured
by the care I offer electrical sockets
and moments devoted to preventing sparks?

Quality versus quantity –
there’s a hearty debate, countering
kitchen tips exchanged from
housewives to sisters and the infrequent son
that I base my initial worth on,
of all arbitrary numbers.

I am ready to put
two feet out the door,
kiss winters goodbye,
and leave behind cash
on the kitchen table.

My family will use it
better than I could –
funerals are expensive.

You have seen as
many winters as I
have known days,
and my body still
coils under frigid
beads of weather,
while yours is an
unbolted entrance
to planes touched
and surfaces seen
by many seasons
my caress cannot
compare to, now.

At age sixty-four,
he bought his first suit to see
his mother buried.

I own no broomstick, cannot afford a car,
and sometimes I walk in circles
or a couple miles too far,
but every step I take is another in your direction –
a realm I will eventually belong to,
the demesne of desperate affection.

Once I touch my arrival, we will speak of my walk,
seven hundredth time’s the charm
even when you talk,
and soon your lips won’t do all the telling,
as we meet our hardened hands now –
a mere, simple cause of hearts’ rebelling.

Will you look me in the eye and speak a lover’s psalm
or will I stand in a corridor with my head held long?
Do I risk this chance of falling out of tune
by pursuing trust in a vacated room?

Well, whatever it may be, we shall certainly see;
I’m willing to gamble everything
for the moment our eyes meet in eternity.

I can almost remember
the exact force you
used to kiss me when
no one was looking;
when on foot, they
nearly knocked me over,
and when in bed, I
sometimes savored breaks.

I can almost remember
the exact pattern of hair
behind your neck, escaping
below rumpled fabric and
near body parts I would
have used my mouth to
make love to, had folks
turned away more often.

I can almost remember
the exact volume you
spoke in when we
leaned in too close, your
lips fondling my earlobe
and verbalizing
just what I had hoped
you might do to me later.

I can almost remember
the exact length of your
eyelashes that extended to
catch tears you cried for me;
my thumbs were not always
swift enough to form half-moons
under the almond orbs through
which you watched me depart.

Through fissured blinds,
sunlight cuts
my toenails in half –
rosy polish
and pastel skin.

I recall a blade
once used against
my thigh,
until I left pale
hues for scarlet.

If possible,
my veins quiver,
and I recognize
a familiar yearning
from days past.

These thoughts are
sour grapes
that I must wince at,
even when the
flavor isn’t so bad.

My mind is a weapon
that wrestles itself;
I am on a seesaw,
teeter-tottering as
a toddler might.

You said you like my shampoo,
but you love me more.
I didn’t shower for weeks, tucked my
***** limbs where they couldn’t be seen,
just to make you grin.

Your lips met my forehead,
tasted black waves, dyed to straw,
that stuck to your mouth in the wind.
I regret to admit
the hurricane soon fled.

I bathed today, in dish soap,
and focused on my feet,
then cut off the hair you kissed,
because it had grown too lengthy.
I waited as long as I could;
my eyes aren’t visible,
and I tripped over a rug this morning.

I’m bidding farewell to you –
the last trace of
your body on mine.
And I want to cry.

he ingests sand
like rice and
finds its grains
in his hair a
day later

his sneezes
are tornadoes,
his coughs
earthquakes

when he eats,
chocolate forms
crust in the
corners of his
parted lips

giggles slaughter
whatever age
he's acquired
in the past
twenty-five years

still, he
is young.

The exterior is thick with humidity,
damp with rain,
and I’ll never experience fever like this again.

My body is being taken
(through the wind of a thousand hurricanes)
to a building with no climate;
I will be my own meteorologist,
forecasting eroded rocks and failures,
and seldom I might discover a window to peer out of.

Squinting,
I could catch the stories –
those of capability, disability, and susceptibility –
my willowed reflection screams.

And, though I will always have my wrinkled palms,
they will never hold the weather.

I want to spread open your ribcage
and crack the unnecessary bones
separating me from your heart.

I will search for your beating vessel,
if you allow, with eyes like saucers;
I am but a child again, over-fascinated.

I long to caress the reservoir of your life,
whether it cramps under my fingers
or splatters me with infection.  

I would sample your warm blood,
its tang under the care of my intestines,
but I stitch your ruptured skin instead.

I do not dare to interrupt your body’s habits
any more than I already have;
one glimpse was a bandage to my own.