Her haunted look and I’m buying Grand Marnier, hot salmon, tomatoes, something called couscous. I can’t look right in the eyes, she reminds me the trouble, there are two blondes either side but it is her I want, her motherly, her ache, her deep explosive love, she’s good, she’s heart, she’s screaming blood, hurricanes and…
We’re eating Thai food, like we were supposed to do yesterday, and I tell you that spice level, I couldn’t handle but next I know we’re walking through alleys shoulder-to-shoulder when you ask when you gonna talk about the real shit? And we keep on, sun dipping to avoid the real conversations and I know…
Too much of a good thing I call breakfast. We meet for coffee and talk. For a bit, it’s warm out. The same conversation again. You pull the ripcord saying you have to go to the work you don’t have today but it’s a good excuse. I don’t call you out on lying and play…
More than empathetic, I will know where your hands are. If I survive your antibodies I will have a walk-in closet full of shoes and make a pretense of necessity, a virtue, then a state of grace, and in my medical facility four doctors out of five have healthy habits but the other doctor has…
My bones feel soft enough to slip my hands right through my chest, part my breastbone like clay reach inside and take out my organs, one by one fill the bathtub with cool water gently place each organ in to soak rinse cheap vodka from my liver squeeze the smoke from my lungs let them…
Their time at sea became its’ own reality. The salt and musk that sunk into their hair, their clothes, the way their bodies learned to lean, bracing in their sleep. Their mother who carved her wrists into flowers, and the way her body twitched as she was eaten by silver fish beneath her like a…
The world spins me, tucked into its spokes, thoughts a gymnast’s ribbon flaring, altered by degrees, wheeling through sun and shadow. I stretch, twist, pull tight, the maypole center of conspiring forces. Journeying, I am the herm, wherever I stand, center. The light about me breaks color. I gather shards, pocket palettes. I toss fracture…
The ghost in my vagina led me to the woods. Piss on the bones. I did and gathered the face and spine of a dead raccoon. That’s all that was left. I know a guy, and he got the spine. I don’t know anyone else, so I kept the face. Feel tenderly for that which…
In the kitchen, the oven clicks until it’s cool again, until the weight I thought was needing a fuck cools and balls into something more juvenile and optimistic. Mama would never say that, even to herself—fuck. My gyno checks to make sure my copper ‘T’ is adjusting to the culture shock, isn’t slouching in her…
He promises not to fall soft in love Or to trip over lines of loveliness When he tries to find the words to tell her The dark tower, his hunger, vigilance. It’s a hard road to be a quiet man In a world where heroes shout and echo. He speaks in jumps and starts and…