what i wish i had memorized is
the way the air hangs on you
like plums heavy
from my father’s orchard
(boughs bent in obeisance)
awaiting only you
to pluck
or to leave them
to their several fates.

at dawn the sun
peers furtively over the horizon
lest it rust
for not having seen you

what i almost get right is
a smile and then it vanishes
as afterwards
a cigarette perhaps, or better still
to run.
to do is to know
in some aleatory way:
you breathe,
i quake,
even the sea quiets,
humbled, the way i used to
sometimes.

my sister once said
she never wanted to know
what robert frost looked like
never wanted to put
a face to fragmentary blue
but if someday you trip
into the last few pages of a book
only to find
a likeness you never meant to see—
then you will know
my heart by its shards.

today for the first time
i saw sylvia plath
smiling
and the worst part is
i couldn’t decide
whether she was beautiful.

oh, to behold even this landscape
with painterly eyes—
a blight of trees, maybe,
but that does not answer
what questions i have for
their fractaling branches.
birds alight there,
weightlessly, knowing why.
so these are the lungs with which
the earth breathes.
this canvas stretches far further than
atlas, who bears
only the sky.

seaward **;
not a soul remains.

i am half-formed as an unmade bed,
flesh and warm roiling blood
not yet fed
through someone else’s veins.
quickly: shall i become
sea or sand?

my business is with
the harbor tonight.
would that i could
forget how to swim.

i pity you
neither man nor beast
not even bone but
clay.
they said you’d squeal.

adam could you
spare a rib?
this is my body—
see spot
tear it limb from
limb, sinews snapping like
so many piano strings
or better yet, the wires that hold a marionette
***** as Cleopatra’s needle
they say if you lift a conch
shell to your ear
you can hear the
blood churning,
congealing upon my lips
to form newer,
martial tongues.

when you enter my belly
what you leave behind
can hardly be called
meat.

david is your only friend.
david owns a skeleton key
(your chastity
belt is not as impregnable as
the salesman said it was)
david’s idea of a reconnaissance
mission is to calculate
the salinic content of your ****** fluids
david thinks
the numbers
still mean something to you
the pressure in your ears mounts to intolerable levels
david: perennial offerer of
hobson’s choices or
haven’t you noticed
that the bible is just
a story about dietary restrictions?

i have
blood on my hands
in more ways than one
but when you cup
each of my palms in turn and
place in them the instruments
that you use to keep death at bay i am
grateful to be holding your
blood in my hands
as your husband steadies you against
the clanging of the train, the second
strip thirsting
after your lifeblood as parched
earth after rain
and for blood money returning
a number
as though the streams
coursing through your veins
were reducible to
so many pieces of silver.

finally i am slain by
having my armpit sliced open (i feigned death the first time but
Death always knows.)

after death/
anno domini: **** me.
when you’re dead, he says,
you can **** god.

so i did.

how, then, did Death take me
by the hand (Death
in His neon green track suit)
to tell me something I already knew?

after death you can feel
only
pleasure not
pain and i guess that’s just
the cost
of a pound of flesh

an ounce
of virginal tears:
starkly they are abandoned by
the prison
industrial complex /montage it all goes
comes crashing
down like a game of mexican train
Planes crashing into trains crashing into cars &c.
into the chaos i am flung
atop a hill and there are five
rainbows, maybe more
as dozens of little silver
crosses are fired (don't get caught in the
shot up &
flipped they
land spectacularly on top of the hill. Huge
condors I mean huge
are circling. they hoist
things, possibly creatures,
up into the air but i didnt know
what they were.

a small child turns out to be the
culprit
i think through
mind control?
the other inhabitants of the
domino city ******
each other slowly
(The old lady next door donned
a green jumpsuit, snuck
into her neighbor's house,
and attempted to plant some
weird perhaps poisonous succulents
there.
knock knock—
interrupted & the knock
isn’t her neighbor

somehow she escapes.)
disposable people jump in front of a
semi. two women,
fighting tooth&nail,
make a sudden and tacit
suicide pact & jump
in front of a car together like
two virgins before
the bomb.

this is what triggers
the chain reaction of vehicular crashes.

there are phone calls.
cell phones die at critical mo-
ments. family: all three
siblings sing
(a karaoke version of) a song we didn't know at
a birthday celebration for
someone we didn’t know you
finger him and he
protests.

everything is probably a neurosis
And from somewhere comes the word "ratiocinative"

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.

coyotes like
magenta-clad twentysomethings
screaming:
singing at the unearthly
hour when I
watched the desert
stars overhead and
now I wonder what else it is they’ve
killed

and maybe if I’d hung enough
dreamcatchers I would have
caught all the dreams that
pulled me past
you (step
into my parlor said the spider to the
fly

but what is it anyway that sticks between your eyelids when you
sleep when you
keep your eyes shut and your mouth
open does the sandman glue them
together to resign you to your own
blindness

be careful with your eyes sweetheart because
too many waterfalls leave
cataracts in their wake.

A shout across spacetime--
infinite
simal beam of light.

The warm overwash of watercolor cadence--
joy of numbers not
patterned together before under your
nameless eyes faceless voice--

When you stand in the wheatfield
the crows sing, too
if you listen.

I’d forgotten that
You could make me a poet:

Muscle and five-o’-clock
Shadow and the smell of shaving
Cream or the
Sound of someone showering in your
Home or the
Rocks and trees through which you bike here every
Sunday just to get to
Me I
Think or the
Wise words with which
You pray
Tell, what did you
Gain from the dryer sheets?

Sensitive skin and
Massages don’t mix
Messages I’m
Sorry if you love the rugs enough that they scratch
You and I think your feet
Are the size of my forearm are you trying to
Outgrow me by degrees?

He may rule over all other life
But Adam cannot rule his own wife.

picture this,
o sons of judah:
arctic shallows, a
shellbeached leviathan cordially extending
an invitation to this
everfast slowdance of heart
throb lust in the
inkwell satisfaction of knowing you bleed
india blue & bone china and the moths that got
into the tent will swallow the naphtha in time;

there are parts of you that
are never clean.
yeah isn’t that
wonderful

? mark the few drops of
tequila left & a
heavy sunrise in your
swankissed beechwood
heart;

*there are parts of you that
will not be released.

corundum puppies and you begin to wonder if
they’ll ever move again not
much escapes your midas touch

you used to organgrind your teeth and
nails at the dusty mayhem floors
(it’s suppertime baby let’s
**** some airtime by eating the fish right off the
CAUTIONwet
hardwood as they gasp for air so we
gasp for blood)

seashell lakeshore pumpkinpatch painting of
bugjuice spattered on the back windshield;
you’re not afraid of
a little fog.

not enough
sodium in the air (not enough
salt in your wounds) and
you begin to choke on the potassium of our
bananasplit ages ago;
if you’re eating
your own molasses words
please make sure you spit them back
out again where the children can have them

they wouldn’t say no to
something sweet

gracklestare blue eats away at the
worms in my (ever notice how hearts are kind of
appleshaped and women are always
pearshaped and
muscled and coy and
bruised in the thick places you know
) eating empty roomfuls of charcoal dust and
cigarette ash motels (the numbers have
come off the nails room 80 is now
infinityoh)

can’t eat enough winegrapes so we
set aside the fidelity for another time when we’re both
drunk after all what good is a heart drenched in
only the viscous warmth of your own sweet
blood money pays for most things but not
d) all of the above

jeweltoned and silent figeating fidgeting
mayqueens of vienna:
morituri te
salutant.

cupidfresh bruises on your thighs brought to you by
johnson &
johnson a family company amen they will do right by
you.

honeyed dew sticks to
morning eyelids (sugarwater my eyelashes
hummingbird tongues)—
vague rifle form at constant alert

attn. california capricorns:
your winterspeak eludes me yet.
lighteyed candle-holders and
coffeeringed eyes tell me
all I have ever needed to know about
yelling fire in an ice
skating rink

good equestrians you know like
young things who giggle all pretty
major embellishments of lipstickglaze and
sourpuss pouts skin smooth as
vanilla in summertime:
nymphs if you only
champ at the bit to have your
hair brushed to be
carrotfed and bootkicked into
stockholm races (sing this song

wear your
habit on your sleeve or
break it fast
come now sister let’s
put on some tea and
watch the jasmine bloom I hear it’s
particularly fragrant this
time of year.

yodelaugh bluebells
bugle the frenchorn debate;
youngheld punchropes
in freezing cordoba rain when the
silt hits the sand we’re all
****** into oblivion like
so much candyswirl
into the labial plains of
galaxyfrost are you in sentia where
the sun don’t rain and the sky don’t
glow grey beneath the hooded lambswool grain
there ain’t no gumption like
compunction like
eating sand to feed your ****** daughters overripe
mangoes hit the cement and explode in saffronochre gutspill
when else
does the world end

there are perfect
fifths between
us but bach would
cry if they were
parallel so we both
lean into the doorway sloping toward
unison

what I got was
a january smile
from a milkblooded boy.
if only the pearl of your teeth were
white as my eyes

deertail flash in the dark
and nowhere else to hide but
five a.m. sheets and the smell of
sunrise mumbles

toofast weightloss:
a late spring heart
is drenched with its
ripeness but
rots if you leave it to
the bees

then the summer desiccation becomes
winter starvation—
in between, autumn comes to
stay. purples, mostly
maroons moth
-eaten by the greengrass deadweight of
so many depetalled flowers. Midnight never strikes
soon enough.

there have been no doves for
weeks &
maybe longer than
that i haven’t
kept count
on you to teach me where they go when
the seasons change

but given time and
tide rips the
stains from your whites
so i with
patience await the
first frosts;
you are never far behind the
snow.

meanwhile your
jewel-studded eyes & corsair heart
glint in the moonlit touchmenot of your
faraway skin
keep your hair
shirt on.

I. introitus

you join the procession of the
weeping daughters of jerusalem
but you
arent sure what theyre
weeping about.

perhaps they weep because they saw you
shipwrecked on the shores of
my body—
the fishermen howl, their painstakingly
hewn vessel
lost to the south wind.

or perhaps because you
charted my topography climbed up
my ******* and never came back

perhaps someone has died,
possibly you.

at your own funeral, you shed no tears.

II. kyrie eleison

at 8:56 am on judgment day

the cicadas start to
scrape against my skull

roaring like the lionesses that
rip open your chest in the tall grass they
lick your blood from their fur, pick
your bones from between their teeth and
recede, sated, into the
shade

the hyenas arrive at sun-
set and leave only
the weeds to glut
themselves
on your carcass.


III. sequentia

its all just flashes of course: the whys and wherewereyous and the
wildness in your eyes that said if someone snapped your neck i mean wrung it like a spring hen
you would still
be staring into some vision only you could
see.

sometimes it is not enough to eat humble pie.
we have to chew our cud and spit it back out and i am a
fool, a ruminant lying in the pastures waiting
to be taken one thousand seventy-four miles
home:

when you kissed me flowers bloomed from my
navel as if to say—
Yes yes yes yes yes.
blood rising behind my
lips pumping in all its holy majesty
burning metallic against my skin and i thought let me be branded by
you.

you, gift-wrapped in linen and old
spice, sunlight peeking
out through your smile lines
the surprise the perfect
O of your lips as we
made love amid the skyscrapers of cardboard
boxes as we
leapt across your mattress like buzz
aldrin like
children;

i take your hand and you lead me out the
window for a cigarette and a
better view of the moon

both are made of
paper

IV. offertorium

a.
a thousand
miles of orchard—
fruit laced with one point
oh seven four kg of powdered
kisses i havent yet given you

if you crave their nectarblood dont
blame me if you must
drink up the sea to quench
your thirst

b.   
I will sink into you like
a warm bath I will
lie back and eat mangoes and
let the juice drip
down my chin from my
fingers into you

V. sanctus

a.
i come in the name of
the woman inside whose body you were
sewn;
inside my body your seams
will be ripped.

b.
i come in the name of
the woman inside whose body you were
sown;
inside my body your harvest
will be reaped.


VI. agnus dei

the bridegroom lies
in tatters at the
altar,
reaching out to the
bloodied lamb beside him.

we cover him in
wool and
pull it over his eyes,
kissing his hand as we lower
him into the ground,
hoping to be blessed by his
blood. some of us get
drunk instead.

VII. communio

i dont know but Ive been told
that good bread and wine is
the best meal but
no bread breaks better than
your flesh no liquor goes down smoother than
your blood no
light shines brighter than your eyes
(blue moons in a scleral
sky) and when they spark like flint
and ignite my soul will you
remember to scatter my ashes into
whatever poison you drink

when I see us its at the white-sand beaches
the scent of turmeric in our hair and
wild quicksilver kisses—
why does salt turn up in your
sweat when inches away from you it laps at your feet miles
away crashes against the
cliffs of dover

does the sea rush through your
veins through your eyes is that why our
seagull cries scatter to the
muriatic air the buoy of the
bedframe bobbing against the wall my hips anchored to
yours should I learn how to
sail

after we bought the fava beans at the
farmers’ market that we weren’t
sure how to use for dinner we
drew the shades and drew a
blank and
read the suicide notes of strangers.

perfect girl
in reverse she moves like the minute-hand of the watch wound
up down through

pilot all in leather crash into the steel
ocean and eat the seaweed until
emerge looking like hubcap trash

fifty tons of water weight you move home
covered in barnacles and
flotsam out of the driftwood
you built your house

where the dogs come to eat dirt &
grasshoppers
beneath the foundations lie the
carcasses of chewedupspitout cockroaches
you killed when you were young enough to think that
racing greyhounds meant
chasing them across state borders

you and the peeling paint reading the tea leaves they say time to rip the
oil pastel wrappers off so you can't tell which color is
which and then draw draw everywhere until
you cover the world in color that can't be washed out up
off things are no longer crayola clear

in the sun you turn on natural lights to **** the
wolftooth glare of photophobia
sun sneezing out into the porch do you dare
doubleyou dee forty these hinges someday man, do you really
want this house to have the last word?

so that when you cover the fire pit (no stone unturned)
and roll over to the
cold side of the bed you realize
that the pipes are only leaking in your head
that the dresser did not collapse
that the broken glass & the ants on the floor are not the cause of the
blood on your heels
cracked like brazil nut shells all along the
corridor

(perfect girl runs
skirt flies up in the back hair whips neck turns
hips like a rose in the honeyed dew
melancholy untuned viola strings improve the flavor like
hints of saffron in her eyes--
she is taller than you remember)

the bats
(moths between teeth)
watch you curiously
as though you were standing
right-side up

cacophony caused by
one too few chairs at the
dining table.

Last someday I told him you know soldier you gotta stop saying please. You gotta pull the punches like get off your knees and onto your head and roll away laughing in cartwheels. Get your shoes shined your collar pressed your dogs walked, your **** ****** by women who will tell you they think you’re a riot sort of. Gotta stop counting the ghosts in the hall and the pills every week and the calories burned and the blessings. Eventually you will learn to tie your own **** tie but you’re proud of rolling your own cigars, you’re proud of remembering to water the calla lily on the windowsill. You’ve forgotten most of what you’ve read. You can’t remember the news from yesterday or was it the day before did one of the neighborhood kids get shot or did we go to war again, maybe it doesn’t really matter. Haven’t had a fruit juicy enough in six years and you gotta find a tropical country where the papayas and the sunshine make you melt into puddles and you are the rainy season, you roll ominously overhead. You think you’ll stop staying at the Ritz-Carlton on business trips, you think you’ll check into the Super 8 at three forty-two a.m. and when you open the door the ashtray’s full and there’s *** caked on the wall. When you go to the bar you keep forgetting you want a shot of bourbon or maybe a double of Scotch and you order a g&t; instead. The clouds stay grey and the sky stays tearstained. You remember playing tennis and skinning your knee when you were seven, you remember grinning the widest when you had lost your front teeth. You don’t own a single photo album. In spring when the flowers start to bloom you think you ought to have a daughter so you can read her Maurice Sendak. You’ll get shampoo in her eyes and she’ll be cross, and she’ll only forgive you when you tell her that story your college friends are all tired of by now. You have those thoughts and then you remember to wash your hands. But I said yes gotta stop being a yes-man because that turns into I do and then where are you, on the altar with the sacrificial lamb and a woman and when you slip the ring onto her finger and say this isn’t funny she says you’re a riot sort of. You wanna make it here, then you better learn to eat the locusts and ride a camel and not get angry with the scorpion in your underpants. You don’t get angry, you gotta squish his head between thumb and forefinger before he manages to jab your pecker. You are fifty-two. You don’t feel fifty-two. You don’t feel anything other than maybe an intense dislike for carob bean. You were told to be on the lookout so I said to him I said.

I need you yesterday
ripped up from rope burns in my
darkling bedroom and
finally able to get out of the sack with some
semblance around four
leafing already? I asked the twilit
mid-june trees and the
cicadas in their infinite whirring
forgot to answer

all I know is that they spit
electricity like the demons spit
hair lice they
laugh you in the face

a yearsfromnow dream—
the kids playing
fifty-two pick-up
in the garage;
don’t ask me what else
you have up your sleeve, baby
that’s enough
card tricks for one night.

twenty-nine inches of
bruises from your ivory teeth--
that is how i measure my legs.

I dont really know her but
I will hold her red balloon for a little while if she wants me to.
She will forget about it and I will
let it float
out into the infinite grey.

Im smiling because I have nothing else to
do with my lips and
walking because I have nothing else to do with my
legs
crying because I have nothing else to do with my eyes and
praying because I have nothing else to do with my
hands and dying because
I have nothing else
to do.

i’ll take
a side order of hash browns black
coffee to start the day (job security in a paper
cup) the blood the body whatever scraps of
christ i can salvage from the
supermarket and maybe i will have fries and a shake and absolution
for $100 alex can you supersize that please

don’t worry;
I can black my own boots
just fine.

one less thing for you to do.

concave,
convex;
you stretch and shrink

from the blood and chocolate
on your tongue.
a mouse, peripherally,
jumps sobbing out of your
breadbox.

you drive your fist through the mirror and when
i walk in you
are at the dining table,
playing chess with the pieces of your shattered
soul
the blood still running
from your knuckles.

on the impracticality of
impracticality
of the
wings of dragonflies made of
cellophane in which
i wrap myself in the hopes that one day i will
suffocate on the impracticality of
shoulders moulded to fit
the leaning heads of our lovers on the
impracticality of
bedsprings
creaking to wake up the neighbors at three forty-
six a.m. or
clouds, even
bursting at the seams to drench us with our own
tears
why can’t we just
**** each other from the
outside instead

out:
     murmurations and even
     simpler:
     the way grass grows and
     dandelion pollen rubs off on your
     nose
     the motive behind a ******
     of crows in this galaxy of
     peacocks

in:
     bloodskinbone and
     respiration and a
     heart that won’t *******
     quit.

I stir one
tablespoon of honey
in with the sarcasm. (Sip
) This is how I hope God’s
cup of poison tastes: pungent,
earthy, and delightfully warm going
down. I smile and
say to you, *I like this. It’s
bitter.

american spirit in your mouth and
english breakfast in your mug
here at the café kitty corner from the
bank—
the echo of your swan song
rebounding from the concrete exoskeleton
of this desiccated city
curled in on itself like
paint chips and
parchment
like bright blue coleoptera in a dusty corner
of the attic.

my words taste like
whiskey left out too long;
they are worse
going back down.

this
is a mirror and this
is the stove Don’t
touch it
you’ll get burned

this is
a papaya.
taste it, it’s
good if you
like that sort of flavor and this
is a word
it used to be god but i guess it’s with
you now
and this
is
the cat.
see
she likes you.

this
is watercolor
for paper and for skin and sometimes
those are the same
thing and this is your
bottom lip and

turn around.
stop. stop stop stop stopstop
stop:
this is
it.

I keep my soul like
you wear your
socks inside out so they don’t get
***** on the outside.

in the way crows fly
crooked against the clouds I find

love written on the corners of
maps & the backs of my knees that you
kiss with reckless
abandon
and perhaps the crows are
lying but they

could’ve fooled
me

are you really
the kind of person who
licks a finger to turn the page I mean god
who does that
any
more

light a cigarette
with a match made in heaven
lipstick-smudged & bent

red plaid (skin:
eggshell white and
porcelain fragile) flannel shirt.

hands bleached by a
lemon accident in the kitchen
blonde curls softened by sleep
(vague scent of dreams
deafening sound of clocks and
snowfall)
door closed blinds drawn
so they can’t watch the films
that play in her head past midnight
(remastered sepia footage of
children who knew better)

she stares at the wet
coffee grounds dripping
through the filter.
at the
unfinished crossword and coffee
ring on the counter.

dawn:
the light will last until
the sky catches fire and
shoves the burning sun back below the
horizon
and in the hearth of ebony velvet
the stars come to nestle
(embers
they burn out when the man in the moon
left to tend them
falls asleep with a patchwork
quilt draped across his shoulders)

so when she sleeps again
(her bed is warmer than she remembered)
and the coffee is
tepid
(sixteen across)
the other side of the pillow will be
cold.

so speak
plainly, eve
of the nature of dust and ashes
are we all
men of sand
are the beaches made of our
skinboneshair
are we
Him, too, jesus
I mean—did HisDust
and mydust
collide

query:
when adam’s lips
brush your thigh is it only
dust when your limbs tangle
themselves like vines is it dust
to dust to
dust

before we make
love i will take a magic
marker to your skin and
draw the streets
(intersections of veins on the insides
of your wrists) I will
connect the freckle constellations
read your
mountainsvalleys with my fingers like braille I will
drink from the freshwater streams of
your cinema paradiso tears
bathe
in the salt sea of your skin—

a baptism.
before you break me
like bread.

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