There will be mud on the carpet tonight
and blood in the gravy as well.
The wifebeater is out,
the childbeater is out
eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup.
He strides bback and forth
in front of my study window
chewing little red pieces of my heart.
His eyes flash like a birthday cake
and he makes bread out of rock.
Yesterday he was walking
like a man in the world.
He was upright and conservative
but somehow evasive, somehow contagious.
Yesterday he built me a country
and laid out a shadow where I could sleep
but today a coffin for the madonna and child,
today two women in baby clothes will be hamburg.
With a tongue like a razor he will kiss,
the mother, the child,
and we three will color the stars black
in memory of his mother
who kept him chained to the food tree
or turned him on and off like a water faucet
and made women through all these hazy years
the enemy with a heart of lies.
Tonight all the red dogs lie down in fear
and the wife and daughter knit into each other
until they are killed.

Some days it's hard to write for you, because i  know you woke up in a mood, the mood that tells the world to *******. Some days, i want you to remember the hand you are holding is mine, though you might look at me like i cut your throat. I lay down in the bed you made and fall asleep in the marks that you made in the night, when you carried out the fight, you have in your, head. Demons and witches have hunted this bed, I came in and beckoned you from the dark and opened the windows to your heart, and away they fled. You were just a boy, you were just a boy. It's not you, it's not you, who you grew, who grew you up.

I tied lashings of hurricanes to my heart to beg you stay and as i begged you to depart. I watched as you played your six string guitar, the one that blew my storm and made me weak, i begged of you, to open your mouth, and let me hear you speak. I watched you filter your coffee, I watched you burn your toast, i watch you filter the day before you, and i become a ghost. I am the one to which you belong, and that is why, i am here in this way, this is why i try to sing you this song; This smile is for you, and i might be a dreamer, but my eyes dream of you, and everything i have run from, well i was running to you. Who am i? Well i am just a fool.

I kiss you in my sleep, i drag you from the house and into the sun. I look up at you with a hand that shadows my face, 'look at the world baby, just take a taste' then i watch you sip ***** like it was mothers milk, and i watch as your words turn from torn metal to chinese silk. Words i have begged to hear, that you have not been here before and you were scared, because it was new land, i was alien but yours and how you have rolled up on my shore, ready to start again. I waltz in your kitchen and i dance a merry jig, because my smile is for you, and i am killing your pain, i am killing your shame. I want you to know guilt is not the right word for what you feel. Brazen though i may be, my churlish ways are dragging you from that bed, to tell you, this is new, this something for you to shake off and realise, you are no longer bruised.

Words burn my lips in a language i cannot speak. I am misfire from a gun you hold, my blast is off centre, strong and weak. And you are made of fire and bone, your heart is engaged in battle between barbed wire and stone; still it beats in your cavernous chest, beneath the heartfelt cotton of a wifebeater vest. And I will hold you, my love, with your head against my back, breast and cheek, i'll kiss your scars and still call you beautiful, and **** your strength as you try not to weep. I will kiss you in places you keep well hidden from those who probe and seek, i will encompass those places with my arms, i will defend, to show you how perfect you are to me.

Sometimes, somedays we are stuck in the places we're meant to be, sometimes we have to be truly blind to be free. When you are deaf, and i am dumb what of our language? What will our love become. For you are a definitive statement left in the black side of death, and we're both lost and silence is the only sense that you've got left. My darling go **** your thumb, please my father and your mother will come, see you. I will strum your six string guitar and sit in your place, i will make my mark in your ****** bed. I will let you put your fingers through my head, if that is what you need, my love. I got hope and i got love, and i got some ******' strength from the universe above, and this is what will pull us through this mess, this maze of inequity of love, lust and a death parade.

Come and sit with me in the shade, i have had enough of the sun, come sit with me, lay down your gun. I no longer know how to speak, so when you dream of me believe in me whenever you are weak, for have hope my love that one day i will have the words to help set you free in this land of vultures and heat seeking words. Do not be alone my one, do not feel frightened at my sight, for i am here for you, to cradle those bad memories and send them on their way and in to the night.

lounging in a ripped and stretched
wifebeater, a breast half peeking
and my legs, unshaved
propped against the wall

i watch as he creeps closer,
holding me with his gaze,
beads of sweat forming on his brow.

i smile at him to show him i'm not nervous,
turning to arch my back and allow
my hair to cover my eyes

i know he is unbuttoning his pants
staring at my underwear, lace-rimmed
and clinging to the parts he will touch soon

i let him **** me because
i had nothing better to do

there's no delicate, politically correct way to say this.
as soon as i saw you leaning against the wall of the bp,
with your pants halfway down your ***,
your wifebeater thrown over your shoulder,
your big brimmed hat on crooked,
and your white skin pockmarked with needle tracks,
i wasn't scared of you, i was disgusted.

my first thought? burned out ******.
my second? just please don't say anything to me.
my third? ****, he's probably looking at my ****** white girl ***.
my fourth? he just opened the door for me.

i think what i said was, "oh! thank you. excuse me."
and i think what you said was, "ain't no thang."
and i saw on your forearm not needle tracks,
but the very same scars that have lined my hips and thighs.

i looked at the sodas, and you pointed out the cheap ones.
"my girl drank three sodas an hour before she passed.
i guess you could call me a cheapskate, but it's worth it."

i was lost for words, so i just thanked you again.
you got in line, asked for the usual. you got your cigarettes.
i bought my soda, and turned around to you holding the door.
i said, "thank you again." and walked away.

i don't know you. i don't know your life.
i don't ever feel bad about making snap judgements.
but you radically changed my view of you in two short minutes.
if there was any way for you to know, i'd like to say i'm sorry.
and thank you...you've inspired me to change.

The sky is dip-dyed in gray
Worn at the edges by pulling little hands
Opaque; no light shines through
No pinpricks of the crossweaves of this satin
Only the shadows of stars seen by darting eyes

Below,
A contained rainforest nestled in a suburb
heard but not seen,
separate sounds aligning.

This mingles with the clink of car tools and occasional laughter
soft, a murmur, like rain in the dark
not meant to be witness, only listened
a moment of peace,
undisturbed,
alone but not lonely.

Assuming a Corona
resting on the still-warm curb,
dripping a cold summer sweat.
Assuming a pickup
A red Ford? Too cliche.
Hood open, leaned over or slid under
Grease stains and a wifebeater

Everything is swelled and lazy and happy
like sun-grown watermelons
everything falls away to this sweltering peace
narrated by AC and bicycle chains.

Mid-April in northeast Ohio.
She’s bitter at the cold,
for overstaying its welcome.

The snow obscures the line
between the sidewalk
and the Devil’s Strip.

There’s a long line
of determined footprints
punched into the snow behind her.

Halfway through a song and a cigarette,
the CD skips -
figures.

These library disks never play for ****.
She ***** her fist
and whacks her Walkman.

Across the street,
in a wifebeater and sweatpants,
he people-watches from his front porch.

Sipping ***** and orange juice
from a chipped mug -
World’s Greatest Dad.

In his driveway sits a ‘97 Cavalier
with a plastic wrap passenger window
he’s hoping holds up to the wind.

Will this ever stop?
he says to himself, toward the falling snow.
A passerby might think he meant the weather.

Next door, she’s been up all night
with her newborn tornado siren
fruitlessly singing lullabies off key.

Six cups of coffee
keep her from collapsing
into a pile of ***** laundry.

She thinks about herself as a kid.
Thinks about how she used to like to
walk with her eyes closed.

How she used to like the thrill of it
the uncertainty and doubt of it.
This is like that. She tells herself.

She almost believes it.

She says she tripped
She always says she did
Down the stairs
Knocked her head against the door
Even when we call her bluff
She sticks to the story.
It's the only way she knows
To cope with the pain
He hits her everyday
It's sad to watch her cry.

She thinks it's too late
No one can ever help
Not strong enough to testify
Besides who would believe?
an upstanding citizen to be a wifebeater?
He threatens to take away
The little ones if she ever tells
She cowers in a corner
Fearing for her life.
She loves her kids.

He's got her brainwashed
that he dragged her out of hell
She should be grateful
no one ever will love her.
She believes him
No sense of self worth
She thinks she is lucky
She must defend him
He only wants to make her
Happy as can be.
And so she lies everyday.

feet planted in the dirt,
the painter sways on the edge of the hill
wild ferns curling around his thighs
and pollen dusting his collarbone.
a canvas, as pale as his wifebeater,
is slotted onto the creaking easel.
the air is thick with sunshine
and it drips from his temple
before sliding down his shoulders.
birds whistle and swoop,
the thrum of the trees behind him
hum in appreciation and contentment.
the sweet wind is warm on the back of his neck,
and he departs with tinges of yellow behind his ear.

the air escaped the cramped room and made a large sound .
I heard
the Russian jabbering while she flicked her cigarette in the dust bowl.

hissing out in the corner
with the Italian and his wifebeater
cackling in the star flake


I only drink water when I need to.

still I'm here and
i'm only doing a little to get by.

like an extended stay at the funny farm --

no pigs
only goats

and your fowl

as much as i’d wanted to believe it,
they weren’t two boys
with too much pomade in their hair
and too much denim between them;

no, just a blonde with a pixie cut
and her boyfriend
and her overbearing boyfriend
and her tattooed troublemaker boyfriend
and her bad boy book trope boyfriend
(my mind wanted to fill in these blanks
perhaps a little unfairly)

the gelatin silver photograph at once
lost its candor and its truth:
they were outsiders like us (were they really?),
but what did they know of hair slicked back
into greasy jet-black sine curves
and sun-dappled leather car seats
and whorling tobacco smoke,
hazy streetlight-lit trysts marked by
tucked-in cotton twill chinos,
ribbed wifebeater tank tops,
the brownstone monoliths of brooklyn;
these were not their glory days
(nor were they mine).

there was never art in the norm:
this beholder saw no beauty to behold

for what could they know,
of the fall of the great constantinople,
besieged and opulent,
the overland journey of a fleet,
to quench the ravenous whims of war?
what could they know,
of primitive andalusian
cante jondo and flamenco,
scottish-gaelic folk songs
what could they know—
of babel and babylon ,
tarnished daguerrotypes
of the selma march,
pacific islander funerary rites,
polynesian bark cloth,
of grecian frescoes and the rhetoric
of the orators of roman antiquity?

they too, much like myself,
know of labyrinths and afterglows:
what nobility, what patriotism lies
in aimless violence? in blood spilled?

i have vowed to write about it all,
with prose that tastes of morning-after mouths;
dry, astringent, greasy, salty-acidic like olive brine
left on ***** dishes in the sink overnight,
and poetry that sounds like what i'd imagine
scabs ripped from skin to sound like,
our wounds hissing from the heat of daylight,
the ugly undead-unliving poultice
torn from the gruesome truth:

about the startling gait of my dogs that
always seems to make me question
the limits of sentience,
but also their fur-sheathed bodies
dormant on hardwood floors:
their sleep, an unseemly schrödinger’s
superposition of rigor mortis and rest;

about the boyish indignation—no, fury—i felt
at having you order the same glasses frames,
i wear, because oversized lens, gold and tortoise shell,
champagne-colored acetate and dark gunmetal
belong to me because i found it first,
because i staked my claim to this identity
and way of life before you could grit your teeth
and claim your own queerness for yourself;

i hate it when you wait for me
during passing periods, armed always
with a patronizing compliment and a hug;
i hate that you can hold car keys
without fear or apprehension
and learned to drive (confidently)
far before i did;
i hate that you too, want ampules
upon ampules of oils and serums and creams
resting on your bathroom vanity,
in hopes of assuaging the invisible
angry red lumps framing your face;
i can spare no more peroxide for your countenance
because you refuse to realize that it takes
one to sting before they heal;

how many times have you
much like myself, vuestra elocuencia,
(unsung martyr of my elegies, clavel temprano
verde, gesto de rosa y de azucena)
much like myself, appraised those
tempting porcelain figures
with careful eye and quick-witted tongue,
a façade of feigned indifference
but hunger that ached to
keep you alive not on food nor drink,
but adrenaline, poring over pores
polaroids, and presagios,
head clenched between your knees in fetal pose
whispering mantras of "hermoso, hermoso"
and "are you too, like me?"
over and over with the sporadic breath
clenched in the colic chasm of your gut,
with monastic allegiance to your burden;

sé de un amor que no se atreve a decir su nombre—
i know of a love that dare not speak its name—
(but i am not love and love is not me,
so i will shout my nocturnes and sonnets
to the burgeoning night—without fear

all the words of english and spanish
would not even begin to describe
our doleful plight, dios mío:

i will have flesh shiny and taut as apples
between my jaws like a suckling pig
on the table of our feasting;

i will have the coarse-grained driftwood
of your pleasure shred and splinter my throat raw,
until voice hoarse and breath ragged,
your name is the only one that
comes to my lips;

tan largo me lo fiáis.

might i find port and asylum in your shallows?
might i find deception and deceit in your craggy promontories?
might i find barbed wire in your jungle and poison in your tributaries?
might my lágrimas sucias find rest in your age-old cobbles?

when our crystal cruets run empty,
we will press oil from our own olives;
perhaps more bitter than herbaceous,
maybe more astringent than fruit-like,
but it will be ours and ours alone
to anoint our hands and feet
and our hands and feet alone.

before you ask a poet for
counsel, friendship, love…
be certain you can brave
our collateral damage,
before you too, are nothing
but tephra, the shards that
remain after cataclysm

there is blood on my fingers
and i am unsure of where it is from
there is not even a pyrrhic victory,
not art nor vanguardism
in a war of attrition:
only decay, surreally ever-constant.

~fin.