centerpiece: small, and deft,
an arrowhead from the creek at the bottom of the yard:
flint, and pockmarked, well-used and weathered.
the asphalt stretches for miles,
yellow directionality, a rough demarcation
and the track of an arrow, shot straight up,
from the hands of a man who doesn't know better.

21 things

are you hard, are you strong, are you
willing to work hard? when you are intimidated
will you identify and conquer your fear?
are you fierce, elemental, and aware
of the heat and spit and clay that made you?
do you feel the hands of god and the world
at work inside your soul?
when you are lost, will you break new ground?
when you are abandoned, will you let the loss
teach you, will you let the pain build you?
when you are cold, will you build a fire
on the bones and the kindling of your past life?
are you careful, are you deliberate, do you watch
the path your hands take across your lovers' bodies
to see the signs and sighs that you create?
do you listen, will you hear, can you compose
a response for the elegies they will write for you?
when it gets bitter, will you swallow?
when it is dark, will you be a lamp? i am oil,
slick and boundless, and viscous in your hands:
for a lamp, i am a wick; for a path i am
a guidepost, and if you are willing
we will go together, hand in hand, light in dark.

Alone again, farther from love and closer to the center of the world
The heat and the churn of it, the soles of my feet grasp for that core
Seeking greater stability there than what I experience on the surface.
Alone because I couldn't tell you, because there wasn't space to say it,
Because even what little you do hear, what I do manage to spit out
Is still less than the weight of what sits on my heart.
Do you misunderstand, do you twist me, I feel so malleable
Wrangled and wrestled and dominated by how you look at me
And what you decide you see. I am tired, so tired.