eo-04

we’ve no choice but to see, our eyes clicking like jaws: a pond of black porcelain, thawing;the browned apple, bruised while on the branch;that choir of pill bugs, warming itself,breath by breath, by armored breath. we wish it were otherwise, this helpless projection, this endowingof mud with mood; wish these scriptures of tender observationwere not so benttoward that which enthralls

To soothe the injured Tree SCRAPE the ragged edges off the Wound leave the bark smooth and tight to the wood the bark heals AROUND the Wound’s edge never covers it you may want to apply an antibiotic ointment the Tree CAN grow back from a Stump The Roots are still there but a broken branch will never the formatting

Under armadillo armorrough torn patchesiron tough. Beneath taut scarsabraded tissue tornto compost fodder. Down, down into dark –cry to sleep, count sheep,dashed dreams and nightmares: childhood locked away in congealed memories which longfor light, fresh aira taste of freedom from their rancid selves. Chip away concretionary surfaces.Run barefoot through the violet crystalcenter of my heart.

“Not me, says the boxing writer. Sayin’, Boxing ain’t to blame,There’s just as much danger in a football game. Sayin’,“Fist fighting is here to stay. It’s just the old American way” — Bob Dylan “Don’t come back, they’ll kill you for being gay”— BBC NEWS At the sleight of my arm, each eyelid folds in bloodshot grace.my fury, breaking jaws

Water and its sounds taking rounds of de-devotion.I wish I could say it was gentle, that it would listenwhen I mimicked the sun.What stayed was weightwashing over, a light twisting in front of my eyeslike hot gold.I wish I could say I didn’t know heavinesscould go beyond a body.I sit there, hand on bone, bone halfwayin the trunk, trying to

I.Dorsal surface of a mouse skullas unflinching as its neck.Circle close just above clavicle,spiraling outward, slippagethen clean, sharp clamping,feel the bone shutter beforequieting the unquietness. II.A sentiment that has not left me since:I’d rather have my heart routinely broken,you break mine, I’ll break yours. That way,you’re never out of practice. That way,you can really feel this world.Which is to say,

To grow up is to shed our exoskeletons of childhood,then spend our lives trying to climb back within them.Bones of our own making repose in parks, reminding usof how fun we tell ourselves life ought to be, all the time.Dystopian chic in their abandoned disrepair, they sunsetfurther into memory with every passing year. I hearthe creak of the merry-go-round stalling

the other night you found me in my binary shell:one finger dancing over the emergency sos switch on my phonethe other being dragged around by unwanted thoughtsone glance at the hips of my shadowand i want to sink into the darkness with iti felt your presence before I saw youheard the familiar language of women’s wails i’m fluent inthe silent

A rebounding spray of water on bare skin, such innocent intimacy. Maintenance workers watering the softball field at a liberal arts college in March, Southern California; my father filling the paddling pool in July, Southern England. He’d stand with his weight on his left foot (a lingering football injury) and his hand on his right hip, the garden hose spewing

When I heard my epidermis ticking like a time bomb.When I heard him whispermy name as he touched the soft parts.When I heard my voice say “no.”When I heard no one else around.When I heard his laughter in another room.When I heard the trainrumble along the tracks outside.When I heard it takes 27 days for it to renew itself,and I

The First Woman grabbed the First Daughterfresh on the chin, just moisturized,spectator and the object,red nails on skin reddened and blade puckered,and there did she say,“Do you think you’re a man?” This is what I know. Scattered not like stars across a canvasdipped in brown paint by the handof the sun—more freckle-brown thanpale, where heat has burned the hairswhich curl

I’ve tried to say this before, in the wrong ways.  Everything is real until it becomes true.  Like standing straight up in my corner-enclosure shower in my first apartment, and I feel the water running down my back. I know the temperature has changed because it runs under my scalded feet, but I don’t notice the burns until I look

for Malakai how would their parents reactif they knew what these children were doing at night? in the hidden safety of rehearsals, of group chats,of school lunch tables, they’re swapping names, rearranging the alphabet together,hypothetically trading limbs and shapes and silhouettes and wondering what it would take to livea life that fits, to wear skin like skin and not a

It’s here. What is? Ah, yes! My seeing, hearing, and speaking; or well, the eye of my I, the here of my ears, and the drouth of my mouth. Of course, what I mean is the body, mind, heart, and soul of my body. He appears on a beach of deep violet sands, where underneath, he walks above the softly

I am a childless mother who teaches teenage boys tenderness. I lose them in malls and to life sentences. I shop online for a skeleton key. I repeat their names until I find one that will unlatch my fear. We play out stale loops with concrete checkers. the games always end with a draw until I meet Judah. He is

The first snow happens quietly, midnight on a Sunday. It tells no one its whereabouts, and before it shows itself, we wait with the frustration of bored soldiers, premature coats and scarves. With the snow, we stand, crouched before the windows, somehow wide-awake again. He chews Trident peppermint gum, and we are there together, before the window, the window that

I reassemble myself well inside the scope of non-duality, which we deem salubrious or at most, biological. Waking up as the same person who went to bed the night before would be like time-travel. It never happens. I mean, which “me” is this in here, anyway. Genetically, my bacteria outnumber, making this box of skin their cozy home. And then,

Skin taunt like over ripe fruitvelveteen under your mouththe way it eventually yieldsand splitswetly against the guillotineof your teeth I yield to your sharp edges I yieldI yield there is an openingin the cosmic imprint of timeand I fall through burrow beneath thelayers ofgristle and fleshthe tendons strung tightas your maniathe muffled drumof womb and pumping blood the silence between

1 Kinda glad poetry is dead. The New York Times pronounced it. I’d rather speak to the dead in a dead language, if you know what I mean. When I say something to Musil now, 2 he nods, rather than giving me that befuddled grunt. 3 Even now, I’m not sure if he understands, or even listens. Enough said. Dead.

I put my fingers in the hot sand of the dune and close my hand, but the sand disappears between my fingers. I imagine being a gecko, a cold-blooded animal that needs the sun to survive. Everything is red through my eyelids. I sink my hand deeper into that sand, which burns when I walk on it. Beneath this earth

I’ve slept on a floor for months andin the same room lives a man on bed.The man is only twenty three in his IDsbut his face looks old.He waits till the time of God (4 a.m.)to let his eyes rest for the day.He tries to talk to me once in a while,maybe he wants to know if I’ve metamorphosedinto a

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In the white haze, in black spots, in the blizzard of time, in the fact that winter is coming, do not pronounce the names of the past, they are all shadows, they are all that cannot be told in words, adverbs and numbers. About what happened, about what happened, be silent and forget …  Crow-wing hair, red lips, brown eyes,

Scene One The Lioness sits on stage in the sand.Her tail flicks.She yawns.The Lioness scoops sand into a bucket. SUNWhat are you doing, Lioness? The Lioness turns the bucket over onto the beach. LIONESSI am building a sand castle. SUNWhy? LIONESSBecause the waves created the sand from the rocks and the rocks from the earth and the earth from the

not a swoosh or a slide or an oh dear more like a j-j-j-j kind of anti-fluidity pliant like butter in your microwave, and i know who did it pulling at my cuticles earthquaking friction between my little digits must be hothothot, OH! i’ll tell you what my cousin-in-law said at dinner he says “your hands are… nimble!” corbin they