I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

The schoolteacher had an affair in Santa Fe.
She was a schoolteacher and a tourist.
And an affair adds dimension.
It makes a place more than memory.
The notion of it inverts.
Santa Fe now resided inside of the schoolteacher.
The city had a cracked voice and blonde hair
and a slightly sagging belly and pictures
of a New York niece on its phone and
an ambivalent relationship with combing its hair
and an irrational fear of left turns.
She expected young artists with vague academic worldviews,
chainsmokers talking loudly about point of view and Heidegger.
Instead the artists were retirees, painting nothing but landscapes
of red earth, attempting to improve on the natural world.
The schoolteacher did not like this kind of art.
It was trivial.
Wholly unnecessary.
Then the blonde artist walked up behind her
in a stucco gallery. He said, "You hate it don't you?"

"Yes."

She turned. He appeared to be in his early forties.

"Tourists never understand it."

"I'm not a tourist."

"You are. You've never been within the land."

"Don't talk to me like this."

"This is how women prefer to be talked to."

"Not this woman."

"Even you. You want to be told you're wrong.
'I look fat' No. 'Everybody hates me.' That's not true.
I'm skipping the stage where we agree. I'm going
straight to the stage where we are opposites.
Plus and minus."

"The part where we *****."

"Or connect or lose ourselves."

"I bet you live in a loft. Dozens of half-finished
canvases strewn about. Dabs of dried paint on
newspapers."

"I live in my big sister's basement. She isn't home."

"There's not enough wine in the world."

"That's where you're wrong," he said.

Please stop playing games
isn't my heart bruised enough?
have I not bled rivers
for you to bathe in?

“I am not a toy”
and when you twist the knife
I feel it

I need peace
and your song
keeps me swimming
to the deep end of despair

Please stop laughing
once you've made me cry
these tears taste like oceans
and I am more than ready
to drown in them

Buried under all the empty bottles,
And broken hearts
Lied a girl with one to many thoughts.
As she tried to find the answers
At the bottom of a glass
She ended up drowning
Deep into her past.
And she couldn't help but throw back
A mix of all her regrets
And feelings
In one big cup of what she called
Her last.

Your lips are where I'd spend an eternity
tasting them like wine
again and again
until I fall and stumble, drunken

but they are only a beginning,
a place of origin and discovery
but my journey
doesn't end there, no...

I have too many miles
to travel and I
will not rest until I have
tasted every inch of flesh

though I might linger
for a moment,  between
heaven and your thighs