a dime,
a piece from my mouth

ask him to sit
he stands
I sweat

buck, gut, gralloch
send him off his balance
send him off with a ballad
a song of hands disappearing
up to the wrist, inside him

become a thick-skinned
being
or
shed it completely

fold me in two

I swallow, I spit
I learn to drink and laugh again

he
sticks a hand into the border fires
stokes that fray of running wires with his tongue and I warn him "it'll burn you up,"

sweet love of my life

living like
the moon pulls not just the tide,
but all manner of things

I pick every seed off the bun–get em all off,
every one

sesame
sesame
sesame

his shoulders slump,
eyes roll
nostrils flare
its barbed wire
another bucket
another drum on my already pounding heart I can't take it I can't take it I can't—

sesame
sesame
sesame

I'll forget
what I've been, I'll forget what—
I don't remember, but
I only want to stretch toward the sun

On the shoulder of I-84’s
overpass as eastbound
enters Portland,
an almond tree
lets down its fruit.

Her petals,
pink the same as preschoolers
color the sky
and white as the paper
beneath the wax,
tremble in the violence
of Internationals
and Peterbilts,
the same violence
that grabs fistfuls
of my sweater
in intervals.

Jack under, jack up,
lug nuts off after a fight
and this freeway tumbles
in a storm of those flowers
cast off in April-sun,
I am down a layer and sweaty.

Steel wire arcs where sidewall was
and rubber gralloch marks its death,
those eight seconds of braking
behind, those eleven tree species
lined as a windbreak.

      I am lucky to have stopped
      beneath this almond.
      It is the only tree in bloom
      along this stretch.
      Its softness has lessened the day.
      Her olfactory embrace deadens
      that of axle grease and sunrot.
      I am not afraid of those trucks
      passing a wrench-span away.
      This is enough, for now.