Before midnight.
His breath turns to smoke
in mid-air. Sorcery.
I try, too.
Inhale. My lungs fill,
swallowing cold.
Like fingertip pressing on raw meat
fresh out the freezer.
The chill spikes, envelops
my body. Like my spine
is out.

Then, exhale. But it doesn't
Turn to smoke.
Instead, vapor.
Instead, mouth still open.
Instead, vanish.
In this suspended wait
He touches my back
and instantly I stop being a person
and weigh only as much as
dust mites, or the
germs in air corroding steel,
or the air. Probably the air.
Most likely the air.
His air?

I would like my breath
to turn to smoke.
Like Him. And with Him.
Instead, I learn to lose.
Instead, midnight finishes
its dark role, the light appears,
and the city before us
says Die.

I clean wounds with animal spit
so I inherit a lust to escape
human capture. But what happens is
I take in their power of blind loyalty
and approach the incarcerator wielding
the softest gun. I fall for boys
who teach me how to mend my
anomalies, and when I'm renewed,
they find I'm not damaged enough
to keep fixing. So I'm free but I miss
prison. I miss following the cowbell
that leads me home. I forget the past
it took to crumble me. My own shadow
haunts me when I step into the light.
So I hide in dark places to keep him out of sight.

Body, body.
Take into account light.
Falling closer to mist, feather
wait becomes wait becomes
wait. The jelly in each pocket
of spine brews ancient songcraft
for swimming, so in water you
stay with air as it allows, like
wings against gust. I wish for a place
like this for all of us. For Isabel, Charisse,
the other names. Return to cinder.
Abuse and obey. We're faster
than symphony, in torture saying things like
pelican, gingersnap just so tongue
slithers around mouth like a wand
brewing spells.

Bark and blemish. Toads
ribbiting amid ***** dark.
Poison underneath lip balm,
prayers and price tags
scattershot amongst pared
rosebuds. I feel like explaining.
But I can’t. Just imagine
the sun peeking above,
morning starshow, skinmelt.
Fingertip whorls
pinking with sheen.

All we do is deconstruct,
this isn’t love. This is
microscopic examination
of potential disasters.
This is you building
an escape hatch before
there’s any reason to flee.
The weight of your hands
on my underbelly feels
like frisk. What’s there?
What did you find?

My boy
stick your tongue out
even if no winters
could ever arrive here.
Don't wait.
Come and go
As you please.
Earth is a hotel room
of strangers
rehearsing abandon
with ease.
When you get cold,
bet on me.
I can lay
my body down.
Fitting to yours
like crooked teeth
biting the ridges
of a saw.
I promise, it's
a soft bite.
Trust, that's all.
And I'll try my best.
But please.
Don't ever ask,
Are We Here

Spin softly.
Touch pebbles like your
finger will sink by mere impact.
Melt right here, in this place.
Not there, inside the heart
full of porcelain turtle doves
and twigs. But here, in my hands,
where a map of surrender is
eating itself.

As fast as fire
burns animal skin, as fast as
phantom secrets slither through
crowded teeth, I will answer the door.
And you will appear. Though dripping wet.
Though missing parts.
Though fallow heart.
Mine, then ours.

God is looking at you

asking, what are you up to?

Imagine I’m just a voice. A voice without a body. So now you have to ask, where is the voice coming from? Imagine you don’t want to ask where I come from. You don’t want to accept the more challenging questions of hearing a voice from a vacuum. So you accept that I must come from a body. Now imagine what my body looks like. Let’s start from the deepest layer, where it all begins: Poprocks. Sprinkles. Skittles. Pebbles. All the sugary grit underneath. Candy bomb flavor, sweet like carnivore blood. Sweetness, the start of my body. Then we get to thinking about bone, soft as sponge, wet as electric posts during a typhoon, breakable under natural tragedy. But blameless. Sugar and bone. Then veins: uncut confetti. Rainbow spaghetti. Canals of bloodspeak, channel of time, of heat, of elixir. So Sugar. So Bone. So Vein. Then you have the heart, made of chocolate and pounded crickets, plus the corpse of queen bees. The hive emptied their wombs to give you your sugar, and they go to your heart to die. Their resting place is your alive, the miracle machine protecting the tether between sane, sedated and over, ended. So now we have Sugar. Have Bone. Have Vein. Have Heart. Imagine the alternative. All those are lies. I’m just a voice. A voice without a body. Where is the voice coming from? Or you can always go back to the body, even if you don’t understand what it’s made of. Not yet. Sugar, Bone, Vein, Heart. Vigor sown, slain — depart. Body, I butcher, loan for shame to start. Consider the voice is alone, but alive, and the world completely dead. The voice lives to tell its perfect heartaches, the contortions of the body struggling to be itself turned into vibrations, sounds, moaning, exhalation. I’m just a voice. I’m just a body. I’m just words shifting between multiple properties and materials. Moving fast, then slow, then turning invisible and visible. Until you accept that I am and stop looking for where I am, what I mean.

Pretend you’re dead
after risking it all.
You’re on your stomach
sprawled on a moor.
Someone approaches.
Limps forward, more like.
He’s dark, and being
hounded by bees.
Pretend you lost everything
after betting on him.
You’re on your back
in an empty house.
Someone opens the door.
They start beating the carpets
with a bat. You hear puffy thuds,
like rust prongs landing
on thin cotton against concrete.
Pretend light enters
after injuring yourself.
Someone checks for blemishes.
His fingers are lava hot.
His voice so cavernous there’s
echo and delay.
It terrifies you, what this
Man might do.
You shed skin for the day
and return to the kiln. Then you fall asleep
to the sound of creaking gates.

I like
pressing your lips

on my palm
as I push your head
against the wall and
hear you
whimper.

This is the only
way I can say
I love you
With you
not refuting.

I’m sorry if love didn’t work out.
There are other forms of worship.
Or maybe that’s why it didn’t work out.
You made him into a jezebel.
He wanted to be skin, bone, breath,
touch, sinew, sweat. Not God.
So now you’re stuck with an imprint
of a person you barely gave time
to settle in — how could that happen?
Residue even when he walked on air.
Sourmouth lingering there when you
close your eyes. Every letter of his name
spelling a fragrance that betrays pure-grade
everlasting peace. Your heart choking on its
own spit. His ***** inside you hardening
into a lair for a nightmare still brewing.
I’m sorry if I never held you the way
you wanted to be held. Sorry for starting
aerobic sessions of always wanting
more. For expecting you knew how to repair
a body addicted to electric shocks.
I told you. Didn’t I? I promised ruin; you pushed
unblinking. I wanted someone to invent
a new period of day between morning
and nighttime, but the only thing we ever
came up with was dimness.

I can’t sleep. It’s 4 in the morning.
I’m thinking of disappearing.
Not running away, but actually
wishing to be gone. As in the body
has had enough replenish and wants
instead to be a vacuum.
As in the body is
the only place that
has no interim between
detonating a bomb
and the residue falling
like featherweight acid hail.
Looping forever like
a memory without suffer.
No absurd pain
of shattered bones, no healing
required.
Do I want this?
I want sleep. It’s 5.

These were occasions.
A dispute about my body
hung in the public space
like an errand. All of the sadness.
Down to residual guilt.
The sheer force shredding,
splintering, performing
perfect, finite drama.
It amused them. It amused
me, too. Laughing concisely,
succinctly. All of the sadness.
Bearer of barren beauty, peddler
of disguises. A chance encounter
at night with animals unlearning
howl. Maybe it is the way it is.
When I explode, I am both
material and immaterial.
Both promise and time elapsed
to surrender it. One day it’ll get simpler.
The pains more easily described.
In a way it’s just a story about love.

A funeral pyre.
Tonight our bodies on the bed.
I will never tire.
Mapping what isn't being said.

Dead roaches pool flat and limp
down the garage, the air
smells of tungsten and thick rain.
The river, she says, they’re
covering it up. New walkway.
Where would the water go, she says.

Then,

pulling from the tapestry of her
memory shelf. There are board games,
stationery, unused journals, bracelets,
earrings, a $25 Precious Moments.
If only I said,
Are you sure you’re giving these all away.
If only I said,
These probably have a lot of sentiment.
She would reconsider.
And I wouldn’t hold these fossils
of thinking about buying, then buying,
then lending, then using, then storing,
then forgetting, then finally
discarding. Falling into
the vacuum underneath
the lining of the heart muscle in charge of
letting things go.

Her daughter asks her to keep something.
Her high school diploma. She thinks about that.

The ride back home was bone-chilling per the rain, and
the driver babbled about a ****** encounter.

The road
damp, the windows ebbing with fresnels.

I pull my fingers and I watch Earth whir
past us like a conclusion unread.

España forgives the people trying
To find their way during Holy Week.

We go the wrong way,
and still end up here,
home, together.

Tight
in there, pulling
enough teeth
to doorstop the
night ghosts, who sing
songs of taking you.
Too dead then,
keeping secrets of
that time when
the mirror almost
sprung out a hand
to slap you awake from
self-loathing.
Here you come,
years later
on the floorboards
weightless.
Now that you’re made of light
only the shadow gets splinters.
Enough with your body, Carl.
Enough limbs have sunken
into gracelessness.
Enough, enough, enough.
Enough for reserved wounds.
Stop writing the instructions
on what it takes to become unforgiven.

In half the spine still a spine,
longing for its missing parcels.
Your body will rest
in the middle
of its punishment, but
still no tailbone.
Incomplete, you did that.
Now learn, Carl.
Pay prices.

My valleys bleed blue. They rhyme under only
The language of summer, coarse and sticky.
A droplet, spineless trees, baked mahogany.
A piece of clothing soaked in water
hangs at night on a beam, begging for mercy.
It's been many years since I had
A clear head. Tonight I watch the sway
then swallow the sway, and the sway is in me.
It feels like magic foam fluttering here, or
kids hopscotching and the noises they make.
Do not question now, only wait. It ends when it ends.
Do not catch up now. A handsome sky pauses
Your song to try and say, dance without it.
You can. It is there, the sway. Even in summer; in coarse,
sticky summer.

I saw a dead
bird on the ground
while walking home.

How bad had it gotten,
I thought, for someone
who could fly
to end up here.

I wondered if I should
leave it be and walk away,
or say something.

“I didn't know you,
but I hope you
had a great life.
The things you must have
seen up there.”

Then I continued walking
again. I don’t know why,
but I thought of
the way my little sister
says “computer shop,”
how lovely she sounds.
The loveliest sound on
the planet, for me.

He has black eyes
like voids.

He has black hair,
prickly, like grass fields

inked with blood
from animal ******.

An extra set of ribs,
which he developed

after variations
of downfall.

He is big and tall.
Imposing, heavy.

But he knows
how to be weightless.

He is grisly.
And then he is light.

He consumes you,
and then he's residue.

A blank aftermath,
sin without consequence.

Then he reappears
as a promise

broken before
it's made.

He tastes whatever fire
tastes like before it's

officially fire,
the taste of verge.

Sweet but delicate,
the taste of almost.

The taste of nearly
there but not yet.

It burned.
Graciously, it burned.

after C. Sandberg

It's hard to know you now.
Classic sadness, wide open.
Words beneath driftwood
flayed on top of cornflower blue

Ocean.

Remember I was afraid
it might never be love
But now it scares me that
Love is all it is.

Do you see me
as conquered or had.
Here's how I see you.
Imagine how ants see.
They won't know what
stairs, bridges, and ledges
are for. Everything valleys
low or high, endless surfaces.
Sprawled and
likely untreadable

Ocean.

I'm not making promises anymore.
Not accepting tiny requests at the moment.
This happened because somebody
taught me how to lament the limits
of love. I thought the pleasure I got
from sit-ins with you was pure.
I looked at you through ****** sizzle,
sometimes outright panic. You seemed
a candidate for *******, and also
precious. But why not more.
What is wrong with me.
Why do I make you wear costumes
like extractee, validator, jezebel?

Why not more.

How did I learn
this love. A love like licking the ooze
dripping down the decanter instead of
cleaning it?

So I need some time. I've flown wrongly.
I thought wingspan was all it took; ******
lift, drag made it go.
Let me learn how to choose you,
how to Look at this man as man again.