later in the kitchen we will compare –
around here they call them kisses,
bracelet full of bruises
creeps up your arm and becomes a flowerbed.

the nurses all have soft voices, they claim
they do not want to hurt you. but they are too quick,
too quick to bury the hatchet in my veins and
spill sugar inside.

my parents will come by, maybe,
make disapproving sounds and sigh.
make accusations by omission. we will probably
not speak, except that I will say I am tired

which is true. it is hard to sleep, when my screams
so easily become someone else’s, a chorus
of ghosts shrieking through the walls, all knowing
the same thing: once you let them tie you down,

feed you warmth, you are bound once again to this earth.

cold drink perspiring, your
hands suddenly clammy,
granite, you order another
float or maybe a milkshake
and a slick hamburger on
a checkered napkin. your
memories don’t fit through
the opening of the straw.

this poem is pressed
by the sun like a kiss to
the crook of your arm.

later, when you are
binding envelopes with twine,
signing in sea salt,

casting messages
in empty soda bottles,
think of this first love.

take the bones
they’re built around
and pull them down.
the flesh drips off them
like wax while their bodies rise.
their mouths are red
in the half-light and silent.
this place itself is whispering,
it is hungry,
it feeds on feeding
and longs for longing.
its spaces are not vaulted,
but arched – you are certain
this is not a holy place.
but still you have come to watch
the poems as they fall
and pool under their skin,
the poems that are whispered
in bright colored voices
while the lights dim.
this is not what god intended
for the world, but still you have come
to watch and whisper while the poison
of pure longing falls from your body,
less an ecstasy than an obligation of these flickering nights
and the specters floating between them
obscuring the miracle of daybreak.

“it was her wrists. they were beautiful.”
- valerie page, v for vendetta

soft underbelly of a fish, full of flesh,
is the spot where veins peel off and breed,
is the spot where she hides wrinkles in old leather
under the scents of lavender and libraries.

nobody falls in love with that anyway,
soft skin showing all its scars.
you see what you want in the bone,
fish-ribs forming a pit in your stomach,

twisting it like a cherry stem you prove your worth,
while she gives her wrist a flick and brings you in.
your eyes open wide, you stare at that spot,
fly-fishing lure on a line, holding you steady,

hiding the rot that builds underneath.

sits on her lip like a flower
makes you mutter to yourself
too many kisses falling into her
open mouth, too many sun-drenched frolics,
too many late nights
distracts you from the capillaries
popping in her eyes and the way they water,
spots of heat staining her cheeks.
while it grows over into pus-dredged weeds,
the mold on her breath talks for her.

having decided that your duty is to bring music
and a little bit of danger to the lifeless streets

of suburbia, you draw yourself up as a rebel with a cause,
hold your arms out like the spirals of the milky way,

sending the glowing children congregating around you
into a feverish whirl, because space is curved

and so are the suburbs you traversed across to bring them here,
winding through hills and streets to conduct

this sermon on a mount, so even the things that
appear to move straight are really spinning around.

you have stolen your father’s turntable,
and his old records, and his oversized coat,

and while the sunset begins to stain things
in a golden light, you put the needle

on the vinyl and open old wounds
while the only voice you have ever loved

claws its way out of the box and into
the grooves of the sky, making the stars

scratch and whir, and time instead
settles into the beats, breaks its lineage,

and begins to, like everything, spin.