i have swallowed
the cosmos
whole.
the resultant morning
sickness informs me that
perhaps i am now its mother--
for a mother may
devour her children but never digest
them. my jaw
splits with the swallowing &
my hunger, never rational,
sets this meal in motion:
i feel it squirm in my stomach
as the acrid burning of gastric juices
sears the sphere of the fixed
stars like cigarette burns
on a tapestry. somewhere a möbius strip
rips itself in two.

yes of course
i noticed you yes
you sitting on a park bench watching
the tail-wagging hunting dog you bought to charm
us into loving you

and if you really want one of us why
challenge me to this game of
mixed doubles badminton i can't possibly win
some lose some

how can i trust you if you
have to put my plants out in the rain to
catch a chirping cricket or if you
can’t make me cry with laughter when you
make fun of my religion

you are not
the kind of person who would
tell me the rugs make your body itch so much you have to
take a shower & steal my clothes while i let the
tetrahydrocannabinol go to my
mouth (and you think
god she's beautiful and
god i'm such a handsome *******) you are not
the kind of person who would
wish people took care of you as well as i
(do or die trying) and

i have severed the hand that fed me
with these flesh-sharpened canines
of mine
and i have not had seconds yet i have not
said grace i have not
eaten the porridge from your
outstretched hands cupped
as if to catch the hail that
stings my skin and
ricochets from yours as if it were
leather and the sheath of your knife
concentrated in the firelight and the
scent of burning cedar i am not
the one with a wrung-out neck and a
doll-eyed stare if you could
pluck the feathers one by one from my
frozen flesh i would not
bat an eyelid swing
low closed and animal finish
your story and in the dewy
morning the dead pine
will crawl with the beetles you brought in mason jars

how can you look me in the eyes when
dinner & wine always ends with a
checkmate

you did not need
to shoot me with a .22
twice
in the face
]perfectly symmetrically[

in my dream
last night

to pluck out his eyes and
stain the earth with vitreous humor.

to separate the lonely wind from its
counterpart in my soul and its
thickness choking my lungs—

to escape the death grip of
the twisting jaws and
****** talons of the
sharks that rip us raw
hawks that
streak from the sky
harpies
harbingers of

to eat the flesh that
drips like candlewax from our
febrile skin

to hold morality in one hand and
maps in the other

to learn the general principles of cartography
one must commit genocide.

The tenderness of creeper vines
and garden trellises
plucking fruit from branches and
leaping with abandon into the
Dirt and the
Rocks & water—
Idyll & idolatry
fed through a tube.

I am on
Four blocks north of eagles court and
Where is a funny kind of word
won’t you stop to dust your feet off and
hang your jacket on the trees on orchard road—
This is our home now,
I told you with the early morning
dewdrops in my eyes and you
plucked them from the apples
of my cheeks and pocketed them like
diamonds.

Burn yourself onto my skin
brand me like the devil—
I quake not at the
Eruptions of hearts & other
wise blood that pulses through the stones and
trees among which we’ve gotten lost.

Tangled together, you
Weave, serpentine, in & out of
focus as the poison works its way into
my skull.

I.

You can always tell the
Virgins from the way they
Glide—cerebral giddy with nectarfilled
Hearts and earlobes full of
Wax/
Wane moonshine turf if you’re not
Dying for astronomers’ loves and what makes
Ptolemy different from Claude is
Given prove:
Equal and opposite reaction.

II.

Shove knife down pork
Wasn’t so hard, was it.

III.

TWO SOLIDS INTERSECT

In a plane. In the bathroom, to be exact.
What follows is not
Essential to the proposition;
Calculate the spatial
(surface area, volume of cubicle,
conclude insufficient is <
where escape
velocity is )
useless to
resistance factor 7 [prepare
for lift-off landing
taxi

To the Bronx of course where else would I
Be on a night like this it’s raining in the parlour
Wont you step outside?

III.

anemic & half-
starved half-
sandwich
go on,
have a bite.

IV.

in arm will undulate bloodcellspouroutcantstoptoowide
are you just imagining this?
What would they tell you in school blood is
thicker than water
i’m not sure they eat
carnivores here.

CARNIVAL
festival of meat.

Flesh
LIVE
trembling
quiver SWIFT shoot through air DUCK dead swandive nosedive outplug
BOOM go the couple in the cabin
lavatory
laboratory? Rats go bang in the night

crash & burn debris over Detroit is our
favorite way to die
colorful isn’t it rainbow—
brushfire—
bruises and fire storms out and around the
populace to decimate seems like mating by a factor of ten

V; or. X^2+i(70x7)=

aftermath:

my ex squared
with me seventy times
seven
equals in
fortitude (labor-intensive)
tea costs sixpence in dallas what about
you so
integral to my
being that sometimes I wonder if you’re just
imaginary or if
what it takes to be transcendental is
beyond what’s rational or even what’s
real to me:

eight is
enough for the eggs.

and no you dont understand when i
tell you i want you to hold me a certain way it's not because
your elbow hits my
scapula in a way that makes it
impossible to sleep
and when i ask you to kiss me it's
not because i really need the
validation or
comfort of lips pressed hips ******
together and heartbeats
knocking like
opportunity at the door & my knees
and when i ask you
to make love to me it's not because i can't
take it ***** i mean you could just
shoehorn it in there but that's not the
point and what do you
get when you ask for

twenty pages of love notes and dust scribbles in cobwebbed
corners where you'll never look twice and
how do years curl up the way
pillbugs do when they die
accordions collapse and ribbons
lie shredded on sawdusted floors

above us you know lately i've been begging every man i meet to tell me fifteen stories
high on acid low on fuel
the fire when i knelt to feed it cedar explodes in embers writhing syllogisms of love
the way that moths feel like featherpaper shadows when you turn off the lights where do they go
on and on and on andon andonandon&onampersand;
storm and locust breeze might be the only thing we have to eat
until you can't stop
.

if i drive back to colorado tomorrow it's
not because i cant take the heat and lord
knows it's not the rain thats keeping me rooted
even if my
boots are covered in mud

it's because
right now i'm a little
fragile &
that doesnt mean dont
touch.