Midnight Call
Sometimes the wound speaks.
Sometimes it gets up in the night
and walks around, wiggle-dances, slides
into new parts of your body. Sometimes
the wound repeats what it's heard:
promise me you'll text; dead-eyed bitch,
what are you looking at? Sometimes the wound
grows teeth, lips, softness where you're hoping for a scar.
The wound drools. It wants to be held. It says: You
left-behind, dead flower. It wants to find the knife
that made it. Fingers where they don't belong,
love in a dark room. It says: May I ask who's speaking?
A hug, not a slap. A wet kiss. A sick thrill
that covers you slowly like a blanket. Like skin. Like earth.
Oh, you got her number? Cuz next I'd like to meet your sister.
Alone
Ankle bounce and rib pop, a curtain of muscle,
soft rhyme of bone. A curtain of music.
Heartbeat my dance partner. The pain zap.
The paint streak, wall's shadow.
I try so hard to dive for the flame but I am the flame;
knowing this is not always helpful.
Closing my own loop is no satisfaction.
Who hears their own voice like a lover?
A cloud which contains nothing. A clock.
Whose hands are moving.
The Cover
A delicate warmth, a turned-over stone, sudden waters, more color than paint.
Blur and swell. Are you okay? Yes, but come back slowly. Try me again:
your hand on my throat, the prow of a boat that slices the depths.
Liquid loves the shape of its container. A glass, a leash, a mirror.
Sintering
Of course the opposite of work is pleasure. Or maybe
pleasure is all work. Maybe we dredge the waters
of our own devotion, learn what we mean by saying it.
Maybe love is taxidermy. Maybe it's a preserved rose,
wilted suggestion, a memory of scent. When you've been
in the fire so long that you turn solid. Maybe your diary
captures in frames the story of snow falling backwards,
unmelting from the ground, rising into chilly distance.
Maybe you find yourself again in spring among the trash
and weeds. A broken clay jar, distinct from the earth that made it.
The Wind
We are, so far, in the story.
Where do I put this iron gall,
burning stone? The wind is itself.
The tunnel sings. Your ghost is a cat on my chest.
They tell you to get low, get gone. But I am a bird.
But I am a balloon, light and tethered. But I am the moon.
Postcard #1
Loving the void. Soothing the void,
texting the void, coaching the void,
packing snacks for the void, shivering
for the void, undressing for the void,
telling your friends about the void, cutting
your hair for the void, writing down
in-jokes with the void, photographing the void,
breaking up with the void, carefully meeting the void
on a park bench, defending the void to your
parents, suffering a lifetime without the void.
But there is always another void coming.
They are as regular as trains.
Observation of the patient's gait and a careful neurologic examination are thus essential in evaluating this type of dizziness
Lush, scrape, syncope. I'm the one who knows:
stop talking. A balance on the margins,
getting thinner. Am I in the middle, making mistakes?
A familiar hand, a flood. A dancer. An unnamed wrong.
Nothing but this body: a gift and a sentence.
My spine is liquid, supported by clouds. Somehow
this is respite. Gesture, ghost sign, goner.
My brain a rolling marble on a bumpy floor.
Ghost Sign
Big spaces. Big silent questions
that get answered in silence.
There is so much room at the bottom.
I can be a mountain for myself--
a post-office box, balloon, loudspeaker,
a ghost sign for myself--
a thundercloud that breaks and rises again like mist.
No one else is listening.
Postcard #2
My brain is a cup of liquid, a soft basket that
stretches and collapses, an angry animal, fire
I hold in my palms. The wet straw smolders,
pain without origin or end. Sometimes I burn out.
Sometimes my me is a puff of smoke that hurts
when it takes solid form. But your me is a snake,
a blade of grass, a precious book laid open.
Postcard #3
Want to tunnel
back to the moment. Want to
be held inside the membrane,
the trip before fall. Brilliant
yellow leaf before it lets go.
Seedling before branch, bean
before sprout. Body before
decompose. Before heartbeat.
Before bone, before breaking bone.
Before I bit the fruit, worm already in.
The Mapcase
These light touches build a frame for later.
Your textbook contains me: a warm passageway
down through a puddle deep as a lake.
Where fingerprint becomes world map, spark
becomes shudder. Babe, build a house in my rib cage.
Air, water, sintered clay: I am a vessel
that knows how much it holds. Blood
and willing breath. A warm silo, short lease, heavy gift,
cathedral of bone. A candle flame still singing,
shivering and full. A sound that deepens from outside me.
How I love the cage you put me in.
Postcard #4
Where late afternoon intersects midnight neon, just us and the
dust motes scoured by sunlight, mingling in the open door's updraft.
Though my camera's only interest is its own face in the mirror
I find myself too anyway, sunhat beer stein dive bar wedding
ring and you, reflected in sly ripples by the top of my drink,
like the sky found in the surface of a puddle. Your gaze
a clear glass filled with brilliant liquid I could sip from.
Sleight of Hand
OK, stay honest. Hold it loosely. Go even slower.
But it is a puzzle, to be so unmoored from my instincts.
To be so empty yet hesitant to eat. A stage prop,
vanishing box, silk flower. A photograph of cloudless sky.
Sometimes I need to be a mirror that reflects nothing.
Can't the feeling float there without changing, like oil on water?
I walk on, content to taste the candy outside of the world.
Downlight
Give me something to withstand, and we can talk.
An electric filament between the broken rocks.
First perhaps we are beaten metal. We make a river of dirt,
crack in the facade, an entry for water. Slow fade.
Safe place in the centrifuge. But you find me
in and out of the darkness. An echo, without origin or finish.
A lump of clay which loves the hands that shape it.
Postcard #5
Tilt shift: the edge of our trances meet.
Twin waterfalls, twin maps, my warm chest
rising into yours, cloud unfurling into cloud.
A study of closed circuits, grown from seed.
A bookmark that lays the page around it.
This long chord is gentle, electric, without release.
Eating Flowers
I flip the page and find
your leash
in my hands, your stamen
in my mouth.
A sun-baked joy, cracking
rude earth.
This magic trick, a tulip turned
inside-out,
a weight shift, springtime logic,
a boundless rush.
Love, your dissolution on the point
of equinox.