crisp is no longer the word
for 8 am and the weak white sun—
the leaves have run out of green
so their veins fill with
blood instead—

when my body protests from underneath
my sweater (too
thin) i
drive back home to my
heart
h and the vague possibility of
soup

if you open my lips
with your lips and close
them with your fist
and i forget
how to thread a needle
will you stitch my
ragdoll body back together
like a patchwork quilt of skin and
bone
china will you
bury the pieces when they
break

so you die.
in medias res (every story starts
in the middle) when
you awake from unsettling
dreams to find yourself transformed in your bed into
this city—
subway tunnels bursting with the hello(hello((hello(((hello))) of small children
and ***** words spraypainted by *****
minds onto *****
boxcars sitting like greyhounds
retired from racing and
awaiting the
slaughter—it will all
be beautiful later.

and when blinding light races
toward you
(every story ends
in the middle)

sometimes I find
poems by accident:
I trip over them in the shower or at the bottom
of the stairs and I
apologize for my misconduct but
what the **** were they doing there Im not
supposed to be inspired
by yearsold graffiti or
words scratched into
bathroom stalls or
in the dulcet tones
of the woman on the other end of the
payphone that ate up my dollar fifty
stop ******* the sleep out
of my eyes scratching at
the scrabbleplaying part of my mind that
wants to steal other people’s words and
dress them with the playclothes of
my fiveyearold daughter
why the **** is it
that when I see strangers at the coffeeshop I can’t
just let them be strangers anymore

can’t continue
(my love)
to sit on this granitecold floor without
you And so on and so forth until
lips     on lips on apples of
cheeks. Eyelashes.
harpsichord tones of throat against fingers against
bloodredblue;
  jugular pulse of
   barestripped trees

in the morning stale coffee and
cigarettes and the
view from
our window:

flip/switch.

the dark runs to corners:
unswept cobwebs, unmarked
graves of
lacewings.

mirror, mirror.

tessellate:
you
me
you
kaleidoscopic in the seven years’
worth of bad luck.

you come here with new eyes and
brand-new dockers. i
mend the broken siding in my mind’s eye.
prune the wisteria and uproot
ivy in handfuls.

i unconsciously check for
onion peel
underneath the kitchen sink.

the pantry
where one of the pups died.
the disappointment of eyes
bloodshot
but dry.

perhaps *******
are unaware of themselves
until they blossom at the touch of
the cold
or
hungry hands
mapping
the topography of skin. perhaps
they wait
for lips and ivory teeth
to explain every pregnant
pause in your touch;
each time we undress our bodies
are new again.
we emerge
from the cocoon of bedlinens
coloured and crumpled and
left to dry in the sun.