on a rainy day your body spread over a picnic table
like an egg yolk, and you swallowed the word profound
again and again.
someone from your past
has gone beneath the ocean, leafless
and you can hear the wailing from here to the saginaw
people begin to breathe blood: they’re choking up, soughing
“be easy buddy” and
“he wanted a black eye for prom so i punched him in the face”
flowers arrived at the door, a ghost, an ear of corn
while everything yearned tall: frames, shadows,
in st. louis you circle a bit of claret earth
spotting your sister’s face in the mirror, leaving linseed and shreds
i could never ask how you are.
the wail is a train whistle, i hear it pauses
for no softness of flesh, these midwestern daughters
she loved all living things.
imagine carefully painting a boat
a pencil in your teeth,
cutting through earth, the nantucket sound
you’re going to take your boat beyond
this firmament, you know, we’re all
waiting through this salty crush
sinking below a winter current
this is all yours now:
mainsail, rudder, hard-a-lee
you darling masters of the sea.

for PW and LE. goodnight.

a winter visit is
blood to us,
collected in our thumbs, pressed together, always
distracted by
effectively knowing that which is true:
feral will never make do.
going to the space needle,
her mouth was a cowry shell that i saw in the water
in my fingers i heard the snapping of twigs
just that prickly little feeling saying
“kenna, watch the corners of her mouth”
lovely in the passenger seat
my hand quaking
ninety miles to go
oregon behind,
peppering the corridor with firs
quietly i sang watery songs
“run river run,”  “golden vanity,”
she slept with the stars sitting on her hair
then seattle waited
underneath her black dress
(velvet, from her mother)
wondering where will we stay-
she woke up. from the sky fell
zebra orchids, already dying

like the time i walked a mile
to her house with no shoes on
she was waiting with a bowl of cold water
the pavement was wet with heat
twenty nine **** cigarettes on the teenage balcony
trying to hit the neighbors house with spit
or ash because they
never really liked us, distractedly stroking the dog’s back in
every crosslegged seventeen year old
too hot to breathe sticking minute
the bathtub is overflowing because
i’m talking on the phone
ghosts slip on the stairs
i’m needlessly concerned with everything, with
victory, drooling blood all over the bathroom
i get in trouble for the things i do with my boyfriend
in the 35 thousand dollar swimming pool
and in the foyer of the two million dollar home
that i’ve been ******* around in since 1995
distractedly mouthing words every crosslegged
fourteen year old minute, we are both
licking our lips
looking at all the cars in the driveway i’m
somewhat tired of gentle eye makeup remover
the classic morning lens flare in the guest bedroom
artifacts gathering light instead of dust, it’s all
growing white through the glass blocks, carefully installed
wary of “architectural importance”
(the cars in the driveway are all
just people looking)
i’m pooling in this glass
and all over the walls like a thrown egg
i can’t help but kneel here
and keep my face turned up,
licking up sweat, waiting for the fever to break
when the tornado comes we’re pressed
together in the safe room
where the house is the most dark
if you look outside, you can see owls
and where the turtles were buried
the swimming pool
the gasping fingers clenching
the high water pressure-
do you know what i’m talking about?

you have to face it:
you are getting tired of your boyfriend
especially when he sings along to the radio
your smile is cut open,
you are daydreaming through the midwest
your friend looking a little too hard
you touch your boyfriend’s jeans
just slightly.

her mouth is cut open,
and you can feel her red hair
spreading through you like a fever
you were always tired of her boyfriend
and you are already tired of los angeles
and you are only in texas.

you’ve been here for three days
and the earth shakes with *******
and gold bikinis. you sip a harvey wallbanger
and watch people **** in the fountain
and you resent your boyfriend
you cross your legs. you study the greek myths,
holding a cigarette.

her name is roxanne
and her mouth is a vase
of red flowers standing in the kitchen
of your connecticut home
when you are thirteen and
everyone is still alive
she is wearing black
and so are you.

you’ve never been ****** before.
the sun pushes through swelling flowers
towards the bar. you can’t stop blinking
when he leans into you, you giggle
like a mouse in a minidress
and uncross your legs, slowly
like you learned about in the magazines.

you’re wondering how much coke
one person can do in one night
(a lot)
but it’s not you, and the red fills the room
and you have benzodiazepine in your pocket
and you think about the word “calamity”
calm, or not?
what is the music industry?
you have started to sleep face down
and you keep the flowers close at night
and in the morning.

you’ve been kissing the sun
with your mouth open
so your boyfriend does a stage dive on national television
from 30 ft up
and the red fills the room.

when you are invited to his house
you want to say no
but instead you dress in silks
and take peyote, or LSD
roxanne drifts, laureled, around the ceilings
the host is drooling mad words
all over the candles. they’re not going out
and neither are you.

do you deserve half a million dollars,
or are you just telling yourself that?

roxanne doesn’t feel the gun in her mouth
until it’s going off
and she can see you outside on the beach
building your dream house out of sand-
but only for a second.

obviously, you didn’t think
you’d ever love your boyfriend again
but he relearned to walk
and you think it’s admirable
and strong, and brave
you’re the only one that los angeles didn’t swallow

by this time, the sun is going out
the blood around her mouth like a vase
of flowers on the kitchen table
give it a minute, you’ll be gone too.

i like those lakes in elliot’s bed. i love your nose the telephone, in the stairs
caroling almost like milk

—-
i want to wake you up to talk about landscape
it’s there-there on girls’ faces, ponds with a chair,
the lovely black, graphic novels about Scandinavia, MDMA, a beast…
describe your earliest memory.
perfect, shy, painful and no one is an American petal. a sunny room
recedes into his head like bark and the blue veins, almost lewdly thick blue canals of memory. it is so entirely unfocused and I cried, shed tears for the moon. I am meticulously cutting holes in his chest as in a deep breath-
That’s it. My literary malfunction is chopping at the snow, ankle-deep

sneaking around the front door,
i’ve become in my loneliness one of those spiders
that waits underground. are you, too, underground?
you spend time hidden, you say
“i am under the blankets.”
in my backpack are seven small seeds
that i break with my palms
and take with water
(this is a slow-growing flower)
in my dream i hear
jamas, jamas
the flower comes out of my mouth:
i am awake
elliot brings me my fur coat
and in the pocket there’s a letter
and i eat it
he dejado de ser tuyo
i don’t think i will ever
again walk on a railroad,
says the flower
i think i am poison
where is your breathing? it’s going out the window
to the foxes, down to the baseball field,
rolling like a sweet apple
pulling a petal out of my throat
like a string
she sits in the chair, smoking
have you ever been a carbon steel knife?
daydreaming in the midwest, waking to think
of being carbon steel knives
that dreamt of new edges.

the moment before
hearing myself say things
for the best, this is for
us to be ok, friends
different places
do you have someone
do you have rachel.
i spent my break where your ribbons used to hang
your body leaving a soft leather imprint
“i made a mistake”
my mother gives me xanax
we watch shark television
and wolves rip through a bison
and i take a shower,
slicing open my belly under the hot water
and no one tells me not to.
(on loop: you in the water,
meowing “too hot”
you straighten above me,
and i wash your hair more lovingly
and you squint like a child against the lather,
and squirm)
i drive around for hours
and there isn’t anywhere you have not touched
with your eyes, those lunar orbs
circling me as i sleep
i light a cigarette with a cigarette
i don’t want to leave my car
my roommate is here with her ****** girlfriend
making unicorn cookies
and listening to sonic youth
when they stand pressed together,
i leave the room, burning my hands on the mason jar
and i wash your hair more lovingly
and you squint like a child against the lather,
and squirm
this pale landscape is streaked with blood
if i cut open my stomach
did i think you’d spill out
i did, i would.
and your hair is soaking wet
and you bow for the towel
and suddenly i am nothing.

emails: knhik

i’ve built a real autumn here
you still scratch at the bed for the edges of cards
every moment was nice
there is still something delicate underneath
there isn’t a house of how much water falls,
there isn’t a tub that will fill up
i want to do bigger things, or other
i want to recreate that feeling like you’re not old
and tell the top layers that no matter how much water falls,
and tell the paper,
and added lights
my favorite color has changed.

sometimes this is
a barn loft filled with crumpled mad owls
like you punching the side of my car-
when your eyes became more rock,
less ice and i sobbed next to
a woman in a lexus watching me wheeze ash and spit
into my wet hands shaped like
the kuiper belt, the bodies within them
(yours the hardest, the most blue)
the condition of the sheets around six in the evening
there are ways of living
milky, the way i am
not currently living
do i confess that as i sleep alone my spine curls with want
to be other, to be nix, hydra, charon?
the black vulture circling your thighs
the water-drinker crouching
at the crater’s languid salt pool
alternately feeling the desperation of
american canyon road, zip 94503
and the thick clarity of
a non-smoking room in
the southern realm of “here”
this was a case study,
bending under you to observe:
your mouth filled with hot water and spilled out onto your naked chest
as parts of myself went missing
the water ran down into my throat
this isn’t moon linen, it’s polyester
your face television blue, your slick hair
your eyes sitting in your pretty head,
hurtling chunks of ice and rock
stealing me into torpor
we stand on a ledge and look up
the nearest planet is clear
we think of invisible things
not knowing that sometimes we ourselves disappear
like mice under the hotel floorboards
and like the highway, all covered in white.

maybe you are sad
because your hair is so long and
that’s where sorrow lives,
sleeping sickly and close to your ear
if i could i’d put you on my shoulders
and carry you to the edge of lake powell
in arizona and say look, alea
there is beauty beyond ourselves
and to us it will always remain indifferent

at 8:20 am, i get into the shower
and remember the last time you were in it
almond milk, pine sap, sputtering hot and weeping
we didn’t dream that night and
after you left i lay on the kitchen floor,
repeating myself.
during the day i sell the same wine over and over:
tobacco leaf, dry leaves, black cherry
there is one here that is a kiss, a second
i can’t describe wine as a cul-de-sac
and your button up, so i say “strawberry.”
i flew to new york and
the weather felt like my blood,
sticking to your neck
we spent the weekend in the country
entangled, frightened, drinking cider
spilling it out through our sharpening teeth:
dogs barking at a few falling leaves.
when i came home i scratched off my skin- i turn cold daily.
there’s not much to eat and
you would tell me that
there isn’t enough cheese in my fridge,
and it’s the wrong kind,
and why are you looking at me like that?
i come to you each night in your little plastic bed
breathing small seeds
pocketing light.
(you don’t know. you are asleep)
how do you do it, keeping so warm?
dear, i can’t stop drawing the moon
because i keep hoping i’ll see you in it.

you apologized with art

you, filling the room of your mouth with earth
carefully. you brush the dirt into the center of each
flawed little room, humming. there’s a light in
the front yard across the street where i cast
my long-over moody shadow
about the couch, backwards:
where she and i slept in our soft vapor
and when it was across the room
where you placed me as if i were a piece on a table
like “all part of the game” that i forgot to think of
as you slept beside me, sorry or not sorry
i say you’ve grown taller
as if sowing eight drops of blood
had stirred something within your spine,
undamaged and still young
cracking in your sleep
my jaw told her i dream of some long lost bird
and she understood,
there in the humming clarity of that first-floor room
where we’d never been
as if this could all be about me
and the condition of light on that first morning:
the music which i did not hear
the room that i never saw
(but wept at all the same)
the things you hide from me, even now
each photograph is too big for truth
and how surprised i find myself at being finished.