tell me who your father is, or
who he was, who you know him to be
I want to know even the ugliest parts
of you
the parts that screech in your ears
when you say them, and you can't
block it out with headphones
how when old ideas blasted, courseless

you asked to speak to the girl who
walked like she had elegies written
on her legs
tell me about your home, she demands
how the walls don't know you yet
and the roof is still a stranger to
your shouts

the painful truths that split ice in
your echoes, whose spirits you conjure
with a blacklight, or in other words,
hell

how when odd interpretations become
compatible to your angles
you ****** the same girl to tell her
she was right, she was right about it all

-c.j.

Through the world's eyes, there can't be enough loving.
But have I loved enough?
When do I become done?

The moon doesn't care what I will regret.
The rain won't remember my stories.
The desert already knows all about illusion.

That I could control the rat babies being born and eaten by the cat,
Their tiny heads leftover in the grass.

That I could undo the night on the mountain,
The coyote that ran under my car, too dark to stop its body.

That I could prevent the roadrunner from picking off my hummingbirds,
One by one, like beetles on a cactus.

That I could keep the hawk and owl apart,
Afraid for the hawk, because the owl always wins.

That I could force the snow, or the winks from strangers on the trail,
Or the beating of my own heart.

That I could halt death at my door, my lovely door,
Set close by the rosemary and hummingbirds.
How could I leave the feeders empty?

I am not in control, but I am made of hope.
The over-feeling fool in the deck.
Heart-struck and blind to the dangers of the cliff.
I stand right on the craggy edge.
Oh—how stunning the view!
Destined to die for beauty once again.
This time under the big sky, stooping to kiss the rocks.
To lie down with the deer a million times.

The shooting star shot across the black sky, but I missed it.
Is that what sin is?

We fly too close to the hot sun.
Because nothing is more natural than burning up in the sands of the desert,
After a long fall.

But I cannot leave my hummingbirds.
But I cannot leave my deer.
But I cannot leave my mountain.

Who will give the hummingbirds their sugar water?
Who will mourn the packrats when I am out of sight?

But I must go when I go.
To be golden like the cottonwoods in fall.
The cottonwoods chase the waterways and that makes them holy.

Dying is the letting go of the deep breath.
Dying is falling asleep in the fog, when the cold front moves on the mountain.
Slipping into that courseless moment of oblivion and the long exhale.

And then there is a new star.
It streaks and shoots, lighting up the black sky.

I see it now.

All the stories fold into me.

I am finally full enough and I am done in the desert.