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

in my dream
last night

The aroma of coconut milk
permeating the frost
of the windshield.

Vague scent of cigarettes and Febreze
in your hair.
Your teeth between my thighs.

Your tongue
circling mine
like two hyenas
scavenging .

You taste like
the tea you drank
half an hour ago.

Neutral
This car has been hit before.

I am frightened by your
automatic seatbelts.

Start with a picture.
Any one will do.
Names rattled off, like
Stars, constellations—
Screamed into silence.

Blink. Close your eyes; imagine
Red ribbons and blood floating
Through frigid air, in the snow.
See this tall, dark, frail body
Consumed by snowflakes and cold
Laugh like a choir in the
Middle of the stage (bright light)

Start with lips. Eyes, nose.
Start with clavicle
Breastbone and a thigh.
Start with oxygen
End with a human.

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

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.

The rusty
red earth
created
beneath your feet
is all you have to your name.

Angel laugh
(bells)
Broken lyre strings lining the floor like
carpet

Never look
down.

Don't hide
your scarred knees
from the world
don't cage your beating heart
with your ivory ribs

But rather
bare yourself
to the unforgiving universe

Try until your fingers bleed
and your hair grows silver with the wind
be thankful for every breath that fills your gasping lungs
and sing to the wind that you are alive
with the song still in you.
The ridges of your lips
tell stories of women
gained and lost
like pounds
or wooden pencils
from grade school

Behind a thicket of eyelashes
(downcast)
you weep
and laugh
with the same pair of bright eyes.

Pearl smile
(glint in the sunlight)
safe in the lines of your eyes.

Crane your pale neck
like a swan;
watch the cliff
burst open with sparrows and
rock doves.

Hands.
(tactile)
In your mind the song of color
shower water and
a tri-tone
thick as the sound of thighs upon thighs
helium-light
sorrow-heavy

Words.
The way you say anything
and nothing
clean-cut by the shears of your tongue
at the end of the rope.

Song.
Polyphony of your voice
and the sound of the storm
as you stand
arms outstretched
rain-soaked and cold
with bright glass eyes
and a warm heart
the storm crescendos
with the rise and fall of your hands
rain falling like cigarette smoke
on your upturned face
You taste on your tongue
yourself
passion and salt
slightly sweetened
by cologne
and the grainy bitterness
of skin

Soul.
This vase full of tears
like your breakable soul
(tastes like wildflowers and rain)
this lace-feathered honey hair
perfection contained in one white body
in one frosted-glass soul.

father
forgive me
for i have sinned.

i have
carried
in myself
passion and
thorns and
christ i have carried
fear pain love loathing
i have (mis)carried
justice and
children
who will never see the light
of day

father forgive me
for my hair loves my neck as my skin loves my bones
my thighs are scarred and my wrists
bleed
for someone else
my lips and
my crescent *******
are swollen with kisses
from lips that hold me together
forgive me for my scarlet blood
(it tastes like lincoln copper on my tongue)
forgive me for
my renaissance form
bursting from the sea
my limbs inter
twined with tree branches
armslegs like snakes

father
forgive me
for my body is broken
but my soul
pulses with
lovelight and blessings

my father
my child
do you forgive me?

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

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

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)

this late in the afternoon
my tongue
circles itself
searching
for red velvet cake
earl grey
with
devonshire cream and scones
showing more concern for
spilled milk than spilled
blood
i know why
the mona lisa smiles
folds her hands over each
other
just so
(furtive)
i have met caged birds
and heard their songs
they are
not
alone.

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

i brush the popcorn off my jacket.
outside the theater where they show
fassbinder films
i dig for spare change in my pocket
for the homeless man on the corner of
seventeenth and arbor.

heard through the psychobabble
as he extends his hand:
“get a girlfriend
get a job
stay warm”

the things we do to be human.

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

Freckles
comma
made of sinuous threads
Between your thighs

What is a body
But bread and wine
question mark
craning like a swan apostrophe s neck

Is love supposed to happen like this
colon
With no one watching
Kneeling before the queen
Tying your shoe

Is love supposed to happen like
Blood in the park
red earth
semicolon
Like hearts pounding in
rooms with no mirrors

We start with the physics
period
The graceful art of movement
Up down in around
Blacklights
Punctuated
by sound

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

You weigh
three hundred and twenty-six pounds
two hundred and twenty of them
from the used-up
hot air
of other people’s mouths.

These hands
give voices to the voiceless
the murmurs of old ghosts in
mahogany mansions

These hands
slide up the thighs of olive-skinned women

From their hanging place above your
upturned face
the stars whisper their blessings
into the ebony
velvet night.

Find meaning
bleeding from
your smoker’s cough
ripping through your throat like
honey and citrus
and
my tongue in the winter.

Hellenic
Flesh and marrow
Raphaelite form
painted into life.

Honey hair
slipping through the vees between my fingers like
sand
conch-white skin
You blind me
like the noonday sun.
Enveloping—
body wrapped in body—
ocean and sky
meet
at the horizon.

Peel my skin from me
like an orange.
Apple.

Heal me
with hands upon thighs
Stitch my ragdoll body together with the sutures of your kisses
Stuck
by the glue of lips

Raise me like Lazarus
from the valley of death
from the orchard in Eden and the shame of skin

Reupholster me
like a dinette chair.

Vivid as the Sistine Chapel
your hand
outs t r e t c h e d
toward God

I find you in
pumpkin seeds
scattered
like tears
on the floor of my car.
They were yours.

moonwhite skin explodes into
blueblack bruises on your thighs
(chainsent)
like the words of your mother as she
consoled crying you in your crib:

she will always
know

the daughters
were not are not will never be
careful
virgincolored and apathetic
albatrosses scream overhead as you
take her paperpale hand (too thin);
and when
your fingers lace
your bluebird heart flies to your knees
and your butterfly soul flutters to your
stomach:

you will always
know.
the hopekill of your
mirrorcracked reflection
you in fragments
of
you mirror youmirroryou
knucklebleed flows onto the parqueted
wooden floor
where the silver glass
glints at you like
her skin in the moonlight.

and so tomorrow
if you are
still a
live
if tomorrow
when the sun sets west
if tomorrow when you open the gates
there are no wives
for the husbands waiting in line
if tomorrow you send her
a telegram:
(i will still be in brooklyn this week stop
and i love you
stop)

she will never
know

and the thunder
will bellow overhead as the albatrosses land
on the sweet, drunkwet pavement

chainfall.

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

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.

the ****** on fifth street
don’t ask you to buy whiskey;
they take it from you.

there are too many
words—lascivious, lewd, *****—
used to describe them.

and too many names—
**** ***** harlot ***** *****—
used to deride them.

you want one tonight
someone who’ll snort ketamine
whose laugh sounds like bells.

someone to talk to
for thirty bucks an hour;
the best ones come cheap.

the best ones come drunk
(when they’re not doing molly)
and dance in the street.

the best ones wear rouge
that glows under streetlights and
rubs off on your lips.

the best ones **** quick
and leave quicker—out through the
back door, and lights out.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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"

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.

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.

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:

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

Voice resounding in my head
(timpani)
Melodyharmony
everythinginbetween
harmonymelody

I­n the bloom of your
sprite-like youth.

You were His first creation
Women constructed from your broken ribs
and all else from dust
as you shall be.

Bodies of cracked red earth and
Sunshine
Of absent goodnight kisses
and cigarettes.

Skin to skin
Sweat to sweat
(whose is whose)

You
made of
Brittle bones rattling through your sighs
Pulsing through the sinews of your legs
hidden beneath thin skin
pale
beating, feeble heart


Who can tell from my lying eyes
behind the blackandwhite bandanna
(peekaboo)
Of a folded
diaphanous paper moon
amid a field of stars.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.