Soil alchemy under the lilac tree. The smell of a dozen dead tadpoles stuck in the aquarium filter. Porcelain figures—staring at me. Sunshine on Leith. Newspaper film wet with chemicals. Attic bedroom touching. Return of the Mack. Leaf River Napstering. Two scoops of blue moon in a waffle cone. The dial-up tone before 2am A/S/L-ing in a gay chat room. Vinegar dripping from faucets dipped in 24k gold. All of that blood and screaming our silver CR-V to the vet. The midwife and a placenta in the freezer to forget. Cloth diaper pails and thermoforming meltdowns. The domino effect of coming out. All alone in the Jefferson house. A Modern *****. A small fist. A dance floor. The sound of his voice. How all of these things are darlings on a cliff top. Waiting their turn to be ****** off.

but first, it was the sun
scooped up by small glass
immolating ants in the tall grass
set free

then hiding out in the basement
striking 10,000 sticks
mesmerized by the shimmer
until it kissed my fingertips

how did i not burn our house down?

the mysterious charm
becomes mere utility
on the farm
burning copper
for a few dollars
the tower of black smoke
reaches out like
a dystopian arm

then a wood-burning stove
to escape two feet of snow
on the chocolate sofa
where my words
(not the heat)
left our home in flames

the matchbook
is nothing if not
mundane
these days

just two sticks
of incense
one morning
one night

a lonely ceremony

an occasional candle
whose light i want to
scoop up
& wash over me

I don’t want to age gracefully, I want to touch the sun and feel engulfing flames. I want my bones exposed upon the plains. Every soul from my past will come to survey. Monocle and stethoscope—does a spark remain?

Only echoes now.

They reflect upon the times I laughed. Grew a garden so high the neighbors cried. Scent of cider and autumn on parade. Painted a house in sage and a deck in grey. The grass cut neatly like a landing strip. Where my skeleton is softly laid.

you had the
a u d a c i t y
to walk in with
  green hair
& a grin


        ****, boy
bowl me over
i’m your pin


wash my mop
buy me a whiskey
drunk on the couch
getting             risky


peel off that blazer
  hand on my thigh
bleach blonde
        open wide


but when my
eyes are touched
by morning light
i’m alone
            no nirvana
in sight


i sigh
   & think
fantasies are fun
        juicy like
wet dreams

     w a i t
why is your
b r a c e l e t
on my sink?

peppered pinky
touch of pheromones
twisting the tufted
hair between your
shoulder bones

a forbidden meal
burrito never
consumed
a chipotle tomb

back on meds
cruising the grid
& test driving beds

now i’ve heard there
was a secret chord
the jester played &
a dance with moves
to fool ya

but i have seen
the light & fled
the scene
with nothing on
my tongue
but hallelujah

He was lost in the second verse when a hand settled softly on his chest. & if he knew then what he knows now, he’d see it not as gentle. Not as sweet.

He would’ve leapt from the sill of his second-story window if only to feel less perishable.

He’d mind the gap when boarding the train. Calmly staring out the window at the syrup sunset & a longhorn-shaped hole. A matador, too slow.

But it was the love J didn’t feel when holding him that sent him screaming down the street. It wasn’t serene. It was wet with love-deth.

&
d e a f e n i n g .

The chorus hit like an ice pick when the white car pulled up to drag his body away. The berbere dream euthanized and preserved in a jar. On display for strangers to gawk.

I take Eli by the hand and lead him toward the tattered door. “No one’s around. Let’s go in.” The thrill. Was it? Empty pews and stained glass glow. Past the alter to a secret corridor. The shallow pool. To lay our bodies. Disrobed and divine. Baptism. Was it? His pinkening cheeks. The shrill of a trapped bird on the sill. Or was that the sound of our release? A sticky truth in the holy halls. We rest. And breathe. Rinse it all down the drain. Salvation. Was it?

Something went awry with the experiment because his skin became translucent for a few seconds when time bent. Now in some ancient city and the people in the street are coughing. Stumbling into a building, he slumps to the floor next to three dead bodies. He knows he can’t go back. He knows the sickness is coming. The sun sets an amber glow across his cheek as a small bird sings. “It’s the future I miss the most”, he thinks. A flash of his daughter's smile…as he falls asleep.

I’m trapped, ok. Do you understand? Frozen on Delaware. Teetering on a low-head dam. Praying to be pulled into the drowning machine. Yet stuck like a glitch two seconds from death. I am the déjà vu black cat on loop. Subsisting in a broken economy where heartbeats are stutters of lace in a famished bed. Don’t you get it? I’m not even here. Or there. Call my name and listen to it echo down the halls of Lovers Lane. Ricocheted off the asphalt and taped into cardboard. Left behind in past-due storage units. A scuffed CD-R in a wi-fi world. Desiderium monolithed in bedrock. An analog fossil shipwrecked in minor key. Driftwood grief washed upon a February beach.

The way your forearm sculpts as your fist pumps the steam. Give me all the toppings on a six-inch submarine. My god, I’m starving.

Eighty-five cents and something sweet. You’re laughing with your friends. But can you imagine? In the closet near the vending machines. You could be my BB King.

You see,
I've been downhearted baby
Ever since the day we met

And it’s worse at the bar. 1 am. I’m locking up when you hold me tight. You dare to kiss my neck. A choice, unfair. Boy, you better come correct.

Because you split. No ****. But I want two scoops of you in my bowl. Whipped cream and a cherry stem in my teeth. I could be your Dairy Queen.

Ever since we met
(your hair moves in the breeze)
I’ve been downhearted
(the way you look at me)
I’ll never be your baby

G.I. Joes exploding
With a pillow gripped
M80 in my hand
Becoming

A Cobra Commander
Villain in the making

Hiding behind office walls
And bathroom stalls
A bomb maker
Tripped breaker

Flip me back
& forth
But I’m 15 amps
When I should be 20

Empty

So toss me out
With frozen fingers
Forget me
In the warmth of
A kerosene heater

I’m back in summer
Like bitter tea
As you disappear
Into the grass
Screaming
Like a banshee

You’ll never be
Proud, it seems

Alone
In this city
Still
Soldering wires
& exploding
S a d l y

Sometimes I pretend to have blood-love enveloping. And if I did, when I’m too weary to breathe they’d tell me:

“Rinse out your soul in sage and citrus. Wrap your heart in artichoke leaves. Kiss your cheeks with bing cherries and paint your nails chartreuse. Drink.

This tea is ancestral and sweet. Son, breathe. Slip your limbs into water so salted you’re floating.”

They’d burn candles ceremoniously. And inside this ring of protection, my racing thoughts cease. A holy basil embrace. A family.

But let’s be real. When my inhale catches in my throat like a flash flood. I’m alone. It was all just a fantasy painted in cord blood.

A Sicilian lemon grove.
Root-rotted.
Fruit of stone.

Once I started dancing the secrets fell from my eyes like a transaction. So I belly up to the bar to refract it. Something close to death for a little bit.

“You see, timing is of the essence.” He mutters while biting his cigarette. So I called off work and left it all on the line. But now I’m curbside and ghosted wondering what to do about today.

Some nips of whiskey at the cinema to quiet all the stimulus. Time slips.

Then I’m shaken awake with strobe lights and his hands on my hips. Two more sips. Lost in the music. The whole thing felt like subtraction. I mean, a distraction. Tonguing the neck of death for a little bit.

It’s a bastardized glance from down the avenue. Whispering like bitter apple seed acts of mercy. Microdosing their way to an end with a means. Now will you please carve the mirror raw until my lemon eyes are pulp on the pages? I need blindness, can’t you see?

Knock, knock. The seraphim is here. Six-winged & singing. Cue the volcano until its hot **** is pouring down the drain. Tear the scabs from the cracks & watch fresh blood swirl like soft serve on a Sunday afternoon. Draw the gentle strands from each follicle until a nest for feral things is laid gently at your feet.

“This is the closest to death I’ve ever been.”

Something to be said by every living thing upon waking. & the sun & the moon keep doing their ******* thing. & these lungs keep filling & emptying. No permission was granted, yet they drag me into every sentient morning.

He was brushing his teeth when the eyes begin to glaze over (again). He feels a torrent in his chest. Clawing up his neck. Thrown against the travertine. A little death. & the dead lay upon the living. & the dark corners swallow the light. It’s only eight o’clock in the ******* morning & he’s his own EMT resuscitating himself back to breath. He spits the Listerine & tries to forget. The Uber is arriving. & besides, who’d pay the fee for dying? He can’t stomach any more debt.

He poured all the years into the river of his youth. It curves like black tears under the midnight moon, and the atmosphere is bent in sapphires. Estrangement—a circuit board with one ***** loose. What is the hour without an atomic clock? Or GPS coordinates when all the satellites are ******? Life in the periphery is to be a precious gem in a forgotten alley market after the fall of capitalism.

Sweaty bodies spike volleyballs outside of the avocado. That’s when you strolled in with some sand in your toes. A few chance hellos & maybe a wave lost in the mist of a crowd. But that wasn’t it.

Nor the platinum locks & black triangle pointing down with no birthday drink,
Nor the lack of sushi in a rooftop bar where strange girls tell us how perfect we are,
Nor the climbing onto your lap when we make out in your car,
Nor the deep-throat choke that went too far.

It was fast & it was fun with ladles of pre-*** but not enough love. Maybe if your heart had the right gland, you’d drip something meaningful into my cup.

& when the pouring rain collapsed the windshield, I witnessed hometown glory trampled by equestrian gold. & your touch was cold. But your homes have such stylish throw pillows.

Now you get your pills for *******. & your smile is a jackknife. While I’m down the hall listening to a young man from Venezuela who ran through the jungles of Panama so he could sit in a rooftop bar or make out with a boy in a car & not fear for his life.

sheathe me in
vanilla heat
all musked up
& shower wet

roll me into
a fat blunt
draw in the
dank taste

c o m e
undone

take me back
ten turns around
the sun when
you were my life

i’ll kindly ask
a stranger to
ignite the spark
in my teeth

because i’m a
bergamot *****
torching this
nylon dream

you try to
rip my pith
from your
brain pits

but when you
pull back his
husk to take
in the oud . . .

the sillage of our
love is conjured
& suddenly we
are back in the
b  e  d  r  o  o  m
on joseph avenue

I see a lone moose bellowing at the end of the world. From a neighboring ice cap, I kneel until my bones scream. & in a sweater poorly knit, I sing one last song to the three souls split from my own.

I know you hate me. Foals ripped from a home. A kitchen beam to hang all things lovely. But Rochelle rusted clean & chariots dragged us into new things unfolding on a serpent’s tongue. I see a hollow carcass in the shed drained of plasma.

What remains is spirit. A whisper of hope. Can you hear it? From the lips of an antique angel on a tree. You & you & you & me. Grey spaces in between. & when the loaf is cut in half will there be room for forgiving?

The ship left the bay 10 years ago, bro. So why does this carve my arteries like a heartless severing? I dunno. I guess I’m broke in. Like a ******* hauling too many groceries. All the while this is what you’ve shown me: how shadow can be soft.

I’m sat by the river when the sunlight crests & the scalpel sneaks in.

Like an end-of-times film where the people we love simply disappear. Why am I so surprised? I don’t know. I guess I’ve spent another token. A naive kid in an arcade fantasy. But the neon gas burned out from the inside. Every vessel & every vein are collapsing, my guy.

& these poor lonely bones are forgotten—
just like the rain.