Or if the morning doesn't come
by the time you find home
I'll paint white doves by your feet
to take care of your bones,

so that if you can't open your eyes
by the time I come around
I'll lay in your grave, meet the gray ocean and
let you be

and then
maybe
you'll get to know peace,

and the wind will tell me it's okay for you to leave.

I can't part water into verses of basic poem:
the classic forms make me choke.
I can't pull the heart out and serve it up
into every wave that pillages the pores
and I do not know how to raise myself from
comfortable fetus to raging sailor.
But I am still alive
and I am sober apart from the fish.
That is enough.

I'm a survivor of many things,
but I still don't understand
anything,
and what did you do those
three whole days
while that ship was under siege
and the thousands of my
nerves screamed at you--
Captain!
Did you hold the anchor
close to that cross nailed to
your sleeve?
I'd have been a different
kind of woman from the one
you left in me,
and if I wanted to be a
*****
I'd have gone to a different corner
of a different street.
But that God of yours doesn't like me,
and if I can't have the sea in
your eyes I'll suffice with a fist
and live off the swelling.

I **** at writing love poems--
I'd rather indulge
on a feminist lens
because I hate the way
you look at me,

but today I'll let you
stroke my hair
without calling you a
*******.

No, she did not stutter
when she felt the damp earth;
So rotted from her preceding bodies.
And they shrieked--those impetuous
tongues whose eyes lingered
from their ***** havens as they
knew the flavor of their smoke-
choked skies.

She did not stutter
when she felt the damp earth.

I'm still listening
while the district sleeps alone
in the night--Where I am.
And beneath these howling sheets
I couldn't count my crosses
this time.