[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 night and danced amongst
a clutter of bakeware and frying pans. we became
lamps bobbing in the street throwing off our permanent
glow of adolescence. with windchime mouths we
crashed into the new year, the moon a cracked
china plate, some dish like shaved light.

[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
over your mouth. the motor inside your chest
sputters and leaks oil until you cough up
exhaust. 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 the chanting of om off in the distance
like the moment between dreaming and waking.

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 ceiling afterwards, a glow-in-the-dark
picture of what could have been.

iii. close the world like a light

i will fold my hands into a brown bird to 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

[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.

Lewis’ General Theory of Love

it could have been worse, you say. you could have
been sucking on the remote trying to taste milk
while the channels flicker somewhere between a
horror matinee and a sitcom. building sculptures
of what your life was supposed to look like out
of wooden blocks and bendable wire, you turn
the dial in the middle of your mother’s face and
fall asleep listening to her sing softly in static.