This all becomes intriguing, as these things are.
Listening to couples speak in different languages—
which consonants are abundant, which sounds
I can’t recreate with my lazy American tongue.

But I try, bending it back further than I ever have,
folding it in half until it’s touching my tonsils.
I flip it over, loop it into a water slide,
let the new sounds tumble out in delight

kicking up waves and losing their swim trunks
along the way. They barrel out of my mouth
red-faced and quietly embarrassed. I learned

to whistle when I was seven, a whole week
of pursing my lips, rearranging the furniture
in my little mouth, hooting in frustration like a sham.

I was told to imagine my mouth was full
of peanut butter, the kind you had to mix yourself,
heavy and gritty. Or to actually eat peanut butter
and the crusts of all my sandwiches
which would be instrumental to my success.

Pretend you are kissing, wet your lips. Press
your tongue against the fence of your top teeth,
no the bottom, as if your tongue had
a bigger kid behind it, stealing everything from its pockets.

Open as a glass, vulnerable as clear water,
this is the place hot with birth. I’ve risked more
for less. Much, much less:
I ordered a nightstand from a catalogue,
the wood from Brazil probably,
pressed in Mexico, packaged in China,
traveling to my doorstep in pieces
seeing more than I’ll ever see.
Electric eyes of nocturnal forests,
the habits of the ocean
when the land’s not watching.
Connect bracket 3 with bolt C,
drop of blood, cross my heart
and fingers. It has four legs
but the drawer won’t open,
its crookedness leans against the wall
for support. There’s no money back
guarantee but there’s value in knowing
one cannot build furniture.
Now I take pictures and send them
with my Christmas cards.
I pull it out at parties and point to
the scratches and empty nail holes,
the unused brackets and each joint
where the wood has split so bravely.

I am your denial, your Lent fast
The mania in your DNA,
the way the helix twists around itself.

I am the finger-shaped bruises on the inside
soft of the thigh, the color of ripe plums
that you can’t stop pressing

because it hurts just right—
like us, the way we crack our knuckles.

The scoliosis question mark,
bent spoon of your spine like
Scandinavian silverware, its unfunctioning beauty.  

The snow of a thousand dandelions gone to seed.

The sugar sacks of fat around my body
that I love to touch and hate to see.

I am the thrift store of your desires,
a polyester pantsuit resold.
The starch of morning arthritis.

The dark under your nails
that isn’t really dirt.

The yellow smoke smell in a jacket.
A mango eaten off the pit,
stringy mango veins that stay in your teeth.

A washing machine that doesn’t drain.

A man cursing in his native language,
foreign words that don’t translate.

but throw things
anyway.

Break something glass
and beautiful.

appreciate
the sound of it.

Like handfuls of water,
                  carry it
or let it lie there unfixed
shards for days;

walk in it
if you have to.

Stop breathing
and let your body

                    No breathing,
feel what it’s like
what happens after.

“The atoms that comprise life on earth are all traceable to the crucibles that cooked light element into heavy element.”   —Neil deGrasse Tyson*


And up here we have Vega, rigged to a few older men,
Jupiter’s herd of moons. Look through its eyepiece,
convince us there is no such thing as reconstruction.
The right time to return light, the path to earth. Yes,
we are part, living or real. Such is the layout
of this cosmic ballet. A naked man and woman,
a map of earth’s location, unstable in their older years.
He spreads himself so wide, hard at the heavens
for two reasons. Fairly often, someone would call the police.

Handcuffs came from stars, next generation solar systems
quantumly entangled. Size is only development condensed
into a singularity, enriched guts against gears of war.
So what does this mean? The breadth of the actions
taken, meaning limitations, meaning sky was worth looking at.
He charmed the cops with conversational boom, dozens of people
crouching in the dark. Their common center of gravity:

darker barrel shaped streets with long rows of sold-out houses.
It’s not a lecture—how to calculate latitude, one neck cramp at a time,
an extension cord across Merlin’s Tour of the Universe
to satellites gliding in low orbit, nine years to work its way out.
The voice is deep and rowdy—from a man at the edge of the crowd.
The other reason is down here on earth, down the handle of the Big
Dipper. An artist will tell you—crank it some more, until it begins
to glow blue. Red-hot is the coldest among all the hots.

Time moves snakely
whipping around tripping me up
on the scales which are really just trap doors
on hinges, flapping shut to the rhythm of
the blood currants
carrying river run-off to the mouth.
He that dares stand where I stood
to drum up sunlight from the cellar
pulling the cord, hand over fist—
Calling the ring shouts in my place
weaving and wasting what little is left.

We will calculate
the weight of your last few months
by measuring the angles
of afternoon sunlight—
fiber-optic puddles with receding shorelines,

and we’ll rain dance every night
for more time.
In my quiet house, I’ll make you
a deep bed with seven layers
of patterned sheets and pink pillows.
Those little bunk beds
that dad built for us,
remember? That we kept
well after our feet dangled over
the edge.

I’ll say to you, remember
hula hooping until our hips bruised.
Remember sneaking out in our pajamas
to the night grass
and calling after constellations
who were not yet born,
who would never be.