[we clanged pots...]

we clanged pots as children and clinked stemware
as adults but the charade could not go on. still
wearing baggy suits and unhemmed dresses we
went out into the january night and danced amongst
a clutter of bakeware and frying pans. we became
lamps bobbing in the street throwing off the permanent
glow of adolescence, but with all awkwardness cast
aside like crystal glasses on the lawn. with windchime
mouths we crashed into the new year like a snowbank
collision, the moon a cracked china plate, some dish
like shaved light eclipsing darkness.

[inside the walnut shell...]

inside the walnut shell we found the ocean.
we kept it secret, even when our love ebbed
like the tide. the sagging garage roof formed
a depression perfect for sleeping, and when
we could not sleep, we rolled the sea back
and forth between us. the tide refused to
return so we went to the desert and opened
the shell, creating vastness with our small
hands. we swam until you grew tired. i came
back alone.

[for every broken girl...]

for every broken girl there are recycled parts.
but you are never the same. sometimes at
night you wake to find your stitched hand
around your own neck, the other over your
mouth. your heart, the newest replacement,
beats for someone else and you have forgotten
how his eyes reflected a slate-colored
ocean. but perhaps it is for the best.
better to yearn for something only certain
parts remember than have your whole
body ache for something that has been lost.

untitled.

i. open up like a moon-blooming flower

crossing statelines at midnight, i picked up a guy who told me
that if you eat enough marigolds, you turn into the sun, hovering
above an ocean that gleams like the sweat-soaked small of a back,
where we could hear an eternal chanting of om with everything
in a freeze-framed mushroom cloud of histrionic bliss.

ii. fuck like phospherescence

it’s okay, you can hurt me, i want to tell him. he cups
my chin in his hands like an egg in a spoon. he kisses me and his
eyes are the color of lit televisions. he would never hurt me.
i graffiti myself on the bedroom ceiling afterwards, a glow-in-
the-dark picture of necessary narcissism.

iii. close the world like a light

i will fold my hands like origami and create an eclipse that will
shadow your heart, and feed you marigolds that will still shine
in the darkness. we will craft our own hallucinations out of glowing
filaments of loneliness and find each other there at the edge
of the world, keeping our eyes open as we fall into the universe.

[my heart hangs on display...]

my heart hangs on display in the window between
a magnifying glass where one might see the soul
of man and a telescope where one might see his
lust, in this relic shop where he lies asleep in his
chair, pale and perfect, tattoo-whorled like a
murano vase, sharp-tongued like broken china.
my hands, grasping permanently at nothing, hang
beside the browning muscle. next to them, a sign:
these have touched gods.

[his heart is like a conch shell...]

for shawn.

his heart is like a conch shell. blow in it
and the whole ocean reverberates. i find
his current and immerse in tidal flow that
spills from his mouth. the sea is frozen in
rapture. he blows a tradewind over my
skin, leaving salt-smell and sand in my bed,
a fan-shell beneath my tongue.

legos: a haiku

we don’t play Legos
instead we play with people
hearts come crashing down

[his head reverberates...]

his head reverberates when i speak too close what
would a Buddhist do about a termite problem in the
heart? the mosquitos answer by buzzing in our
faces as we walk in search of some unnameable
plunder. at the playground of a school i never went
to, a bell sounds (is this is a meditation or a match?)
i stand on the stone turtle that has no face and spread
my arms wide, holding up the sky for an instant.
this is a secret that every child knows, how to become
tall and dense like a pillar, just for a moment. i jump
down and we walk home in silence.

[i am an apparition...]

for shawn.

i am an apparition in your dreamless mind. clouds
drip, saturated with memory and you pull your hood
up, blink your eyes that are the color of television
glow at 3am, when you lie awake in bed with thoughts
that loop like a bad techno beat. i am the many-
faceted diamond of your insomnia and i cut away
at the basalt of your heart to find lava on the inside.
sleep finally comes like a power grid black-out. i blow
you a kiss. you will wake with a bruise on your face
in the morning.

[the sea was not a dumb stone…]

the sea was not a dumb stone
its soft moan called to me here
on the shore with heavy heart
the water will part, oh seer

under the stars, glimmering
light shimmering in the night
nothing more than the stark sea
adrift and free, soul apart.