Naturally, I was an herbivore, one of the gentle giants with four or more hearts and a placid expression I carried even to the end.
Read MoreThat the insipid rain keeps falling.
That no room fills with light the same way twice.
That sin glistens like oil in a shallow dish.
I’m no good at talking to people
but I’m even worse talking to animals.
Shoulders slung high & tight, collarbone snared
between neck & arm, you rock back, hot snare
popped before the bass, & sing. What god snared
After floating from dive bar to dive bar
a windblown hamburger wrapper
Tom rests finally
in a graveyard on the outskirts of Seattle
1.
Dear Warrant’s “Cherry Pie”: Congratulations on being named the 56th-best rock song of all time. I’m super excited for you!
The doctor tells us that I need
to learn how to cut into
my own skin
I believe in a thing called war—
Huh. Yeah. What is every morning?
Some say play dead, some say tourniquet.
I say childhood. Remember lying so still beneath the tree you chose, the birds came back?
Wondering whether you’d be forgotten?
We’d say I love you, but not
in a gay way. High school
boys, we’d only touch
Your desire is a boat and I know it. Curvature of wood and the tense sides of solid to water. It seems simple: you set out, you take a boat. But, the floating, oh, it’s magic. Gliding, like the wail of a voice.
Read MoreThe four ugliest children in Christendom do not
date, eat in public, gossip, talk on the phone, hang-out.
They breathe with their mouths open, wheezing
One brother made my elbows,
the other my knees.
They struck until
Hey you
in the aggravated suit: Did you ever steal
something? And I mean something. Something
i.
My lover & I need
to cross a bridge.
It is chained closed
for the night. My lover
climbs over leaves me
to hunt antelope
once a stiletto stitched a stab wound
on the underside of my heart
when it finally grew hair again, no one could see the scar
But he’s lying—
no longer will dawn
be a sparkling hush
At fifteen, my first boyfriend
forced an earthquake
into my foundation. Entertained
We exist down a road three miles from nowhere in particular, south of where we were born, north of one gulf, in the midst of others. So much blood in this dirt. So much green in the air: tornado season all year. Imagine a cedar tree taller than wind. Imagine a buffet of oaks:
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