it remembers me.
the sky.
the mouth above the mouth.
the lightless gullet where clouds go to rot.

i kneel in the driveway
and my bones click like prayer beads.
i say nothing.
the wind fills in the blanks.

above,
the bruised vault peels open.
something pours out that smells like me—
ozone and old milk and motherlessness.

i know this feeling.
the ache behind the eye.
the tug in the marrow.
the static in the throat right before god speaks
and forgets my name again.

the sky remembers me.
like blood remembers stain.
like salt remembers wound.
like hunger remembers teeth.

and so i let it.
i open my mouth
and taste iron,
and ascend.

not float.
not rise.
just—
dislocate upward
until every tendon sings its own name
and snaps
like wet string.

there is no rupture.
there is no goodbye.
only the soft gulp
of return

—i remember  
the root-spool spool’d & spindled into him (the Tallshoes)—  
his collarbone made of oak-meat & mothjaw,  
his breath a sermon from the century’s throat  
           & he (he?)  
              was all knuckles & psalms, breaking—breaking  

              me  

so gently i could almost not die  

:in the lampdusk, where piecrust dreams go to rot,  
i lived in a hush-jar behind the walls of  
     her (yes–her/ not-me)  
     knitting sugar into skin,  
     biting stars till they bled apologies.  
     this was our manor of hushthings.  

he’d kiss like a rifle.

and somewhere between  
the eighth clatter of china and the third motherless sun,  
the lungs of the house exhaled me—  
                         (twigbone, mossgut, tailghost)  
                         soft ruin squeaking for its end.  

i prayed to the god in the cellar drain.  
i danced with the dustmen.  
i unremembered my own name until it was appleseed, cough, smudge.  

& yes (listen)  

           i saw her  
               (once) peel the sky from a peach.  
           her hands trembled the way old poems do—  
           a flicker//flicker// hush.  

        “don’t wake him,”  
        she said,  
        as if my death  
        were  
        the only dream  
        keeping him asleep.

o! my ribs are a /forest/ now  
      (shhh)  
      (they bloom in secret)  
      (they tell no one)

and the last thing  
before the hush became  
                 forever:  

a child with an empty thimble  
calling  
my name.  

which i no longer had.  

but i answered anyway.

(we  
              cradle—limbless—hungerly in violet  
           half-snow)
    barnacled to a ribcage of someone’s leftover   //god–  
my brother’s eyes        were spoonfuls of thistle  
    and so  
         he gave them

                          (    to mother  
               in a bell jar  
                         packed with apples that never rot)  
          

i said—dear—"shall we rot together?"  
he said  
               no  
but held my tail tighter than  
        the census did the mute  

            when they told us  
the white-ones  
       could out-breed  
       guilt  
       (our teeth were ripped  
         not sharpened)

       [oh darling look!] the moon  
ate itself out of order,  
  its halves spitting  
  bloodless milk on  
     sterilized clover  

—           the doctors wore hands like corkscrews  
               & unbirthed  
             any child that could  
            dream backwards—

       (i remembered)  
             chewing on a pipe-cleaner name  
        while a man with a cage of bees  
                instead of a face  
                        taught me the word for  
             acceptable.  

——

       there are songs that only come  
         when your tail’s caught  
in a trap meant for  
        your cousin’s ghost  
            (he cried into me  
               like a buckshot lullaby)  

and so i  
      curl.  
    (last ***** first).  
             hide my eyes  
                  in the cracks between

     <<he loved me with a scalpel made of lightning>>  
     <<i loved him with the parts they said to  
                            unsee>>  

and (       hush hush now       )  
              the roots are crawling into me—  
                       gentle, dumb  
                                 unchosen—

i  
       am  
           not  
              the mistake  
                       i was taught to  
                            worship.

i held my breath till it whistled  
   // like a kettle with a grudge //  
the moon’s face flickers—  
     too lemon to trust,  
     too god to look away from  

(you see it too, don’t you?)

   // the men in glass shoes  
   stomping on the grass  
   call it progress //  
& we clap like good teeth  
    like teeth that belong  

i woke up with hands full of gravel  
     (my spine still replaying  
     that tuesday when  
     the news kissed me on the mouth
     58 dead in Gaza  
     it tasted like iron)

       i’m not built for this century  
       i was born on mute  
       but everyone’s shouting  
       inside  
       their suits

someone’s building  
       a new god  
       in the basement  
       of a pharmacy  
            —says it kills the fake
            —says it’s making the world great again

my chest is full of alarms  
   but they only go off  
   when i sit still  

i tried to pray but  
    all the vowels were sold out  
    so i just hummed  
    till i forgot the tune  
    or the meaning  
    or the shape of  
            safe

          (what was that again?)  

    don’t look at me  
    i’m just another scarecrow  
    made of receipts  
    mouthing  
        please stop
        in perfect  
        passive  
        silence

(for Sony WM-D6C, b.1982)

ohgod(yourplasticcradle    cradles  
        my earbones)  
            like moons hum-bent on  
                        bleeding symphony—

i unlatch  
       your orange foam silence  
                    (click)—
              and all my inside-shadows  
      reverse     direction—

    tell me again how  
  side B  
             aches so slowly.  

                (spool me, boy)

      —my tongue a wiretap  
         to your cassette soul  
      magneticmurmur-melting  
              where my pulse = ferroxide (™)

                           (does the chrome remember?)

         i DO.  
                    & you  
                  (your belly-button = play)  
               & me  
          (my softwound = record)

        in          synchro-   synchro-    
                    whispermode    you    
         ­              feed my  
              dirtystatic    

like  
a  
secret  
        n­ot meant for  
                        humans

(i         rewind myself  
        into your guts—)

                      stop.  
          [pause]     fingerrested  
        on your orange HALO dial  

             —is this lust or  
                         stereo calibration?

   (i **** in A440, you moan in dolbyC)

ohwalkman,  
    my little electric priest,  
               absolve me:  
                 i fastforward
                 into you  
            until          hiss.  

& we  

(                      eject  
      like lovers
                  never recorded  
                                but always  
                                              replayed).­

—the milk(drumbless, godless)  
             choral    thud          like  
          monday praying with a spoon  
                       &no cathedral but my  
                                self
                   (i) have  
                      knelt  

                                      in soft  
                cubism—

             /// carton: OPENED  
                     not-spilling but releasing
            the white-skin hymn  
                      onto  
         // me me me me  
                   (in the shape of a question)

and i    (statue of sudden use)  
           accept  
              the flood of      supermarket heaven  
                                 dumbly  
                         (milk never asked  
                           to baptize)

             & there is  
        no ******  
       just the thud  
           of liquid    on  heat
                and the floor’s  
                       slow  
                               applause

                 (yes—

                      even the tile watches  
                like it’s  
                        a painting of god
                     who got lost  
                         in the dairy aisle)

              & if you ask me  
       was it cold?  
               was it holy?  

i’ll say—

                       it was  
                         everything
                                 &  
                      nothing  
                        (at)  
                    once)

rocky raccoon
           cowboy in the
dust of somewhere / nowhere
                                        leaning
into a quicksilver sunset,
hands tied in twisted
ropecords, each knot
a secret no one knows

who
        pulls the trigger?
hands, trembling
                like the last bird
that fell from sky
                splayed wide—flesh    
and bone paint the prairie
                                    /flawed
with the stain of not being fast enough
but this
             is cowboy's life
no slowness in
                the click
of a gun /
                    but the final breath
          like wind
                           whistling
     through bonechamber
     between ribs—an afterthought.

        (the sheriff's a ghost, a thin rope
of smoke, and eyes are just
               holes drilled into glass)
      all /time/hangs
                 in moments—      
                                            lassoed
     by a mind that only
         remembers scars

rocky’s fingers curl, twitch
            (don't you move just
       let it happen, let it happen,
   you know it’ll fade—)
                       breath is a yellow
    fading light
         pushing past
                     skin /skin
                                       skin

the rope (too thick)
                  slices
        into a body that doesn't belong
anywhere,
                         just in that second
when he knew
                time bends and
                            falls
like dust back into dust

the howl of wind,
               the grind of
                          bullet
                (aimed but missed
because nothing
          sticks around long enough)
                       hangs in that
                   empty sky
                            and what was
                             done, undone.

if death speaks,
                         it's just
                       another song
that nobody
  quite understands  
                           yet
as the raccoon cowboy
               swings

                                         there

a blue great shark  
(she)  
   wears muscle like    wet velvet

          a  
     slip   of fang’d prayer,  
  flitting      between glass  
       (between    god)  
              & the breathless hymn of vacuumed air

           I: was              not born to trap—
but you
          (brine-womb'd deity, slit of eye & icepick heart)

         how you undulate: (slower than sound faster than thought)
   the way a sigh    pulls threads from skin  
             & your dorsal dreams
      puncture my             museum bones

                        (curators watch—)  
with    chloroform-thirsting hands  
          & tongues that catalog moan  
                        in latin

                "carcharodon carcharias (desire in aqueous form)"  
                 whispered into tubes of   blue    gel-light

they                (we)  
    hunted her in sonatas  
            dissonant harpoons      
                            like broken violins
                      stitched with heartbeat wire

   a net of     unreason, &     peach-blind codes

           she swallowed our time  
                        whole

(yes)  
& spat it out      garnished with  
                         cumulus

                          (‘*** in bubblewrap’  
                             & I wept:  
                                   not for her  
                                       but because)  

you should see  
   the way her eye  
                 bends around corners  
       like velvet crawling up the leg of the void

       (can glass blush?)  
            mine does.

        the trap was not a cage  
                   (never a cage)
              it was a vowel—
   unspoken  
                    caught between  
         two mouths                  both too full of salt
                    to say "stay"

they filed her fins  
         under “****** geometry”  
          & mopped her breathless body with silk
               (I dream in that silk now)

   mythology in the gift shop:
                 $17.99 / laminated lust

    "do not tap the glass"—  
         the signs say
    (we tap anyway)  
         it sounds like  
                    a kiss

                          —or knuckles  
                                  trying to remember what “prayer” felt like  
                                   before museums

she moves inside
                   (me?)  
     (it?)  
             the tank of days
                            like a wound that doesn’t know  
                                     how to close

                   her movement becomes time:  
            an ellipse of pelvic   clocks  
                            hips made of tide

          (I counted the ******* by wave-height)

  a fin shadows my sleep
        & my sleep is
             /liquid/ & /open/
                   & /wanting/
                       & /neverthirsted enough/

the exhibit is called  
            “arousal in lowercase”

        the plaque reads:  
            “species suspended in ****** amnesia”  
        (but I know:  
                     she swims to remember)

her gills—
         fractal *******
                   (every inhale an alphabet of longing)  

          & oh how she  
                   spells me

a.museum.is.nothing  
                   but a lung that cannot  
                    exhale

   & when I press against the glass
             (mouth to pane)  
     she flicks a tail      —just enough—  
                       & I almost break

   the security guard has seen this before

“don’t worry,” he says  
    “it happens to everyone”

           (but I am not everyone)  
                I am the one who kissed her name  
                         into the salt

I was not born to trap  
       but born by the trap  
               untrapping me  
                  through her

         & now (she)  
       is the one watching  
            me
               in a tank

          mouth full of air
                     no words left
        just one endless  
             fin  
                   curl  
                         ~  
                            loop  
                          ­        of  
                                      shiver

      ­       & she swims  
                        through  
                       ­     (my glass heart)

do you know  
   who planted          your thoughts —  
          or did they         bloom  
               without asking?

     opinions peel  
         like wallpaper  
   in a house          you've never  
        seen from      the outside.  

               you say:  
        this is right.  
   but who carved        that word  
        into the stone?  
     who handed you            the chisel?

      belief is just  
         fog     in a jar—  
  shake it           and swear  
           it’s       snow.

         who told you  
      fire      was holy  
         but water  
                was wild?

      i heard someone once  
         mistake a noose       for a necklace.  
           it shimmered.  
               it fit.  
                    they smiled.

         how do you know  
      you’re standing         on ground—  
         not        a painted floor  
   that flakes         if you question it?

           do your convictions  
                   creak  
        when you       lean on them?  

    have you ever  
       touched         your thoughts  
             with        bare hands?

       some days  
   i think the sky      is only blue  
        because someone  
              forgot another       color.

       maybe you     aren’t wrong.  
            maybe         no one is.  
         maybe we all  
        just swallowed         different mirrors.

         how do you know  
     the echo        isn’t lying?

               how do you know  
        the voice       is yours?

There is a mad place inside some certain
Cold lane where windows creak with
Each gentle whisper.
Surely some revelation is at hand,
Surely someone is to come.
But this mad place, oh this mad place.

It beats and it beats, night and day
And doesn’t stop to sit to mourn or
Feel, this mad place, oh but
Surely some revelation is at hand,
Surely one might someday let it out.

In times of despair, one thinks of
Old age, one thinks of holding hands
And one thinks of committing a sin,
But this mad place, it never stops
To dream, da dum, da dum, indeed,
It beats and it beats!

One day, maybe, it will find a way
To figure it out, one day, or perhaps,
I shall grow a wing, or least
find a way to live with it,
But seldom, will it stop?

When will it stop? When
Will it make sense to stop?
Surely there must be something,
Some shade under a tree

Or some fine stone to sit on.
Oh but this mad place,
this mad place, this restless bird,
When would it drop the shiny pebble from its hands?

Yes, there are times when it lets out a sigh,
Mostly out of desperation. But
When the night passes, it makes up lies
It doesn’t look back to see what it said.

Does it even means what it says?
Does it even bother to say what it means?
This mad place, this uncaged cage,
What does it seem to wait for?
Who is to come? What is to come?

This mad place, this mad place,
When the words fly like out of season
Birds, when it squeaks like winter winds,
Maybe it will think to stop, or ask,
Surely someone is to come.
Surely some revelation is at hand!