where I am happy: where your heart sinks
quiet into my arms, where bliss is rain falling and white walls.
your mouth fastened to my future and I had always thought
that this was impossible, but here you are,
dancing. the white ring left around my finger after
a summer of you: after years: when all of me will full bloom.
so that, shaken awake at midnight by the ferocity
of my dreaming, there is a spotlight in the sky
at full posture, directing me: a white halo where your hands
will be again, come morning. what could be impossible
when your name in my mouth is a realized prayer?
since now that I can speak, I am a cadenced voice, a place
unto us both where your soul is structure and narrative.

the masters tools will never dismantle the masters house

her hands move over the branches and stems

methodical, careful, at moderate pace

she snaps off the browning buds, one by one

her eyes are narrowed in concentration but

her hands are so sure I think she could do this blind

I think she could do this without any senses

without any tools, without any assurance 

that the sun would rise tomorrow she would still

be crouched in this garden, making her way

down to the lower branches where she is 

surprised by one pale pink late bloom.

what I am now some nuisance some
half baked dinner left to rot in the oven
you never turn on
a spring birth, a simple child what I am
to you now that we’re done
a sty in your eye with elementary rhymes
a useless deviance, unprincipled slut
a candy tray full of ash, a vase of stems
what I am to you
now that we’re done

For all the ways in which I am already compromising
and have no guide, no instincts
to know how much is too much:
you could reach across all my borders,
stretch out stem to stern across me and I
would welcome you, Armageddon or no.
When was I supposed to learn these lessons?
How does it seem that all the others know?
I break cadence to ask questions,
and in these moments of my bravery I am
quite stupid, full of harm and fear.
I startle you with my ready abandonment.
I startle you with my cowering, groveling mouth
and low posture when I do, inevitably, crawl back.

introduced to an environment in which
I cannot lie any more—a chameleon without
color, a snake without camouflage—
I hope only to adapt, to not disappoint.
you will find me later, curled up against
the breakwater and boulders, seeking
the only comfort I am always sure of:
the buffetting of wind and water, the tidal fury
of natural forces, so much larger than
you or me, or the disease and discomfiture
that lurks in my marrow in this place of love.

do not sabotage

You are comfortable now; but do not forget
what hunger felt like. You are warm now
because you have been cold. You are whole
because you have been in pieces, and you decided
to rebuild. In a decade perhaps you will be
even more full, in need of so much less.
But do not forget the days when you were cold,
and tired, and alone. Those are the days
that taught you how to be alive.

I dream of children and fences,
the moon and a dozen hoarse geese.
Green eyes follow me across the dawn:
you measure me, crouched, silent, absent.
In you I have a treasure smaller than skies,
tangible, and hot in the bed at night.
Small voices that are not yet born
haunt my hips: what will you ask of me,
before the end? And, in the end,
whose voice will still be heard?

I have seen the end already,
in looking at you: I have seen the end
of what I am, fierce, and fiercely alone.
I have seen fire purge my scars and I know
the next step is being forced
to beat new life. You sweep through me
like an errant match, forceful wind:
it has been a long, dry summer.
I am readied for your coursing purge.
What is new growth but perpetuation of old patterns?
It is reassuring that my sins will come back to me
with harder shells and softer hearts.
They are food for the foragers, when they come.
Together we can break their fast.

Who cares if I
We have to go see
I don’t think they’d even
What was that
Have a half a quart of
Snap

The only thing more damaging than someone you love abandoning you, is someone who tells you they love you but who has never understood you  at all. That abandonment is constant, everpresent, and grates into your skin with every interaction you have.

Solstice + mercury retrograde.

I am grateful for the lessons I have learned, even the hard ones, because they have made me smart and fierce and quiet and true. I am grateful for my struggles because they have kept me honest. I am grateful for my traumas because they have shown me the measure of my strength.

At first it was spring rains, light falls that promised growth and renewal. We sent our children out to dance in it—see if you can get to the oak and back without your hair getting wet!—and we welcomed them back with fluffy towels and stories of the bulbs that would burst into bloom in the coming weeks. And the tulips did rise, but the rain did not stop. The summer thunderstorms arrived, with their sallow clouds that gathered into swirling, bruised epitaphs on the horizon, swinging sheets of warm rain down relentlessly. We measured how far open the windows could be and still keep out most of the wet; we learned how fast sundresses could get soaked through, a brief moment under the open sky enough to slick your curves so smooth as to be indecent. The year faded to autumn with no respite, through the swirling fear-filled tornado season when all rain felt like an omen, and into the bluster of the self-important fall rains. Grey raindrops filled the horizon interminably, fat and cold and pointed, each drop a reminder to get ready for winter, get ready for the cold. They eddied with the red and yellow leaves in the gutters, tiny bright rivers that washed color down the drains. And winter came on gradually, because the rain would not give way: we hovered on the edge of freezing for weeks, fogging windows up with our breath and noses and hands as we watched the frigid rain sleek down out of the turgid sky. Then the day came when the downfall seemed slowed, more meandering, and the drops paler and paler till snow finally arrived, a heavy and dense snowfall that gathered immediately in sidewalk crevasses and potholes and bricks. We wrapped the children up and let them wander through it, drunk with change and wonder, letting the crystals fall into their open pink mouths, melting in all the places on their coats where their bodily warmth seeped out. When we called them in an hour later, it was clear that the snow had no intention of abating, so we left the hearth burning and divvied up shoveling shifts. For weeks now the snow has been omnipresent, the management of it the center of our lives: frozen several feet deep, we have paths that look more like tunnels, from the front door to the street, each hole on the street a portal to our neighbors’ lives. I wonder what the coming months will mean, if it never lets up; I wonder if we will be sunk entirely. 

i feel like i'm relatively more mentally healthful than most people, more sensitive and sympathetic and self-aware. but i come here because no one can hear me when i talk. so i pay someone for an hour of their time so that someone has to listen to me when i talk. because ___ couldn't hear me when i expressed myself to the extent that me crying after sex became normal, right, and she thinks it's some kind of catharsis when really i'm just too strung out on whatever my brain chemistry is doing to not have angst pouring out of my face, and she thinks it's like an expression of trauma,  but the way my trauma comes out is fuck you not i'm sad. and _____ did the same, they all have some predetermined framework in their heads of what they think their lives should be like, and they're wondering why they can't just shove me in the box marked "girlfriend" when they never fucking asked me if i even liked that word at all. and then there's just the years of miasma with _, just fucking stagnation incarnate, all the ways i wasted the best parts of me in glorifying something i wasn't and couldn't ever have been just because both of us were too fucked up to say this shit is real fucked, this is never going to go right, but i'm too self-serving to even have noticed that when i was younger, too hooked on the possibility that someone would consistently say they love me and maybe actually stick around, i can't see my own hands in front of my face, he's both the forest and the trees. and the fact that i still feel lost? if i still feel completely and totally ungrounded and unwitnessed and alone and without family and without community? is that a peeling off of the assumptions i had about what love should be like? or is it a peeling off of the assumption i make when i say i think i'm relatively mentally healthful? why can't someone who fucked me for eight years recognize my needs? but everything is simultaneously too late and too early, you know, like i've fucked up so incredibly badly so many times, and i'm carrying around baggage that's not even mine now just because someone told me i had to, and maybe if i keep doing what people say then they will think there is some value in having me around. and i keep picking these paths sort of objectively, thinking that could make sense for me, outlining the strategic reasons why some decision about my geography or identity or profession or politics should make sense, but it's all totally objective, i'm just trying suits of armor on, one at a time, and none of them are actually mine. i stand next to people until i blend in and they think i've been that the whole time but really i'm already casting around for someone else to stand next to. like i'm gonna find any way of being authentic inside of that strategy. but  you tell me what i'm supposed to do, people want to be seen, they want to be heard, so i just stand next to them and say you're right, you're right, you're absolutely right, and then they think i love them? i don't love anyone but myself and i'm not convinced that sentence will ever turn false. how the fuck can any of these motherfuckers say they love anyone else when they are all self interested? and so am i, so why would i be different? except for that i look at what they're calling love and see the narrative they've built and laid themselves into neatly, and i'm not a character in a story, i don't have a single trajectory, i'm never going to stop experiencing cognitive dissonance, but if they never do, is that what makes it real? if when they say i love you, they're not simultaneously reaching for the car keys, is that what makes it real? because i know well enough to control my hands and my mouth and my facial expressions when i make promises like that, but it doesn't mean i meant it with my head or my heart. and he's gonna turn around to some girl with half my IQ, half my potential, half my talent, half my baggage and say yes, that's what he wants. that's exactly what he wants. why would that not be what he wants? why would that not be what anyone wants? if you could pick that, over me, of course you'd never pick me, and neither would i. there is nothing beautiful about being fucked up inside. there is nothing desirable about being the kind of person who writes extended blog entries to their therapist declaring that they don't know how to love anyone. so i will just never be enough, for that. small enough or accomplished enough. i will always have too much to say and too much to show for it, and also too little preferences and too little dedication. i am tired and i hate all of my exes.

Dating queer femmes is hard, so here are some questions you could use on a first date that won't make things harder

Is this table okay? We can find a quieter place if we need to

Do you want a drink? Or if you'd prefer, I can get just a soda with you

Tell me about your first kiss, or the first intimate experience that you initiated or desired

Tell me a childhood memory, or if you don't remember any, tell me something you feel nostalgic about

Tell me about your family, or your chosen family

What's your coming out story? Or, who in your life had the best reaction to you coming out

Please disclose to me all the ways in which I might inadvertently kill you

If the state does not record your living or your dying, did you exist?

When someone I love hurts, I hurt too, she said, patting his chest and stepping away. That’s basic anatomy.

It is a strange kind of club we build, women
who have been grateful for death.
We steep bitter mint tea in tap water
boiled on gas ranges, we spend a full hour
talking around the point, and then
a lull. And someone will say:
he died in West Virginia. I’ve never been back.
Or, John died a few years ago, and now
I’ve finally made a photo album of my kids
when they were young; I cut his face out.
Someone will say, he got a quiet end, some nurse
told me sclerosis. It was too good an end.
This is the only grief circle I have been to
that does not cry.

Lately I’ve been looking at my face and seeing nothing worth looking at
I used to see a few pretty things, a few interesting things, something good enough
But these days all I see is flushed skin and empty eyes and uneven brows and dry lips

I wait, but I know what I’m waiting for.
I eat roses, dust my skin with amber.
The nights are warm and full of peace, and I know
there will come a time when I mourn the loss
of quiet, and candles flickering on my white walls.
I hunger, but I know I will not starve.

I dream of you, dead, over and
over and over. Not dying— i never see the
calamity, the bus crash,
the gunshot or the gaping wound. Only
your body, somehow tiny, somehow frail,
grey and chill and silent.
Silent and I am screaming for your voice,
for the lilt of your storytelling, joketelling,
historygiving lessonteaching heckling uncling loving
voice. I scream
and it echoes. I scream into
the pallor of your immediate body
and you do not respond. No
one does. I dream of you dead.

Sometimes it is the only thing left to say
When they are deep in their throes of ecstatic rage
Fuck me harder
When they are climbing over their own feet
To queue up to rain insults and trauma and ignorance
Down into your open mouth
Fuck me harder
When the individuals who comprise the system are
No longer distinguishable as male or female or young
Or old or rich or poor or parents or people
Fuck me harder
When my soul is groveling in the pit of my stomach
And the only tactic is to wait it out, to count
Each excruciating minute out in the syrupy
Small coquettish voice I  have cultivated
Fuck me harder
When I'm tired and shredded and congealed
And limp with sweating, sweltering tides of anger
Fuck me harder

What does being triggered mean? That I am driven back into my former self? That no matter how far I push, how much I learn, how hard I work, I am still drowning in the same old shame?
I am too tired to be unsuccessful. I have been ground down into my mammalian, my reptilian response sets. Because I must go down with this ship, I know I will keep it afloat.
What I would reclaim today: the conflation of love/hate with good/evil. Love can be evil. Hate can be lovely. Love can do unlimited harm; hate can be grounding, can be creative, can be catalyzing, can produce growth. Love is why I say it is inevitable that I am pulled back into old ways, old thoughts, old hurts.
My mother wore red and went to the church of her choosing and knew a dozen things to do with a potato, but refused ten of them. What is agency if not choice? How can I say she was not culpable, or directive, or integral, or the reason why?
When I am dead I think there will be silence, and an unending staircase, leading forever, slowly, upwards.

We joke endlessly about the hyperemotionality
of female relationships-- we are crying, constantly
confiding, craving of reassurance and absolution--
so that the crime, to you, is my grief or my sorrow
but not the ways in which it was created.
If I am obliged to confess to you all
of what you'll term my sins-- including
propping up all men, and other failing systems--
then so be it, since the men are not going anywhere,
and your favorite pasttime is overseeing
and overhearing all of my Hail Marys, full of grace.

once, a girl sent me a photo of herself.
in it, she is twisted half away from the frame,
a lamp opposite the mirror throwing her silhouette
back onto the lens. she is naked, and stretched
full length: tip toes, taut calves, hands up, arms extended.
the knobs of her elbows make flat whirls
in her golden skin. the round of her hip
breaks the linear tableau.
i do not know her well; perhaps
there is some exhibitionism in her, perhaps she seeks
the intimacy of being viewed this way.
it is a photo clearly meant to catch
the eyes on her curves, on the slick rounds
of her breasts and her thighs. but if you look
at her face, where the dark eyes i grew to love are
narrowed in concentration, you will see
the conscious ire of it: is this what it takes? she asks.
is this what will make you see me?

To the gay community:
how many women do I have to fuck till I get in?
Or really, how many
noncisgendered heteronormative men?
(If academic language is your gatekeeper's test,
tell your angel that I have studied.)
Closeness to you has been my version of heaven:
attained after great personal struggle,
growth through destruction. I have shrugged off
the inquests and insults
of so many people I thought I was loved by.
My karma is strained but smooth, perfect in its imperfections:
I have seen how many mistakes I can make,
and I have paid the cost.
I have told my whole heart to the sky
and its stellar dieties: the firmament in its many domes
holds the sum total of my ability, my honesty, my blood.
Still the garden does not open for me:
still Eden finds me at fault.
What would you have me do? Whose daughter
would you have me raise?
I am not asking for the seventh house
on the seventh hill; I would make my peace
with being allowed to visit your home, on your hill,
to bring you tea and to listen to your stories.
How many hearts must find me open?
How many times must I break?

I have written of you so many times:

I a gull and you the wave,

the dance where the horizon splits us.

I have eulogized you as you live

for all the selves that split off behind you:

I witness your journey.

I stand in your shade.

I have read you, too. I have read

the stories of your stepfather, and read

the bloodlines of your escape.

I have read the lines you wrote

of snow on someone’s plate, of nosebleeds,

of the aching silence that remains.

Is it secret-sharing if neither of us

acknowledges the tracts that bind us?

For everything we have read and written

and reread and revised, there is not a single line

of poetry or prose

or late night emails or drunken texts

that could wrest you

from your corner

of my heart.

Psalms

I am privileged in my love for you.

To see you stirring a pot at the stove,

to watch you greet someone, to see your shoulders

and spine and arms curve down to stroke

the uplifted face of your cat is a blessing.

Your stories are my blood. Your tears 

and your smiles and your easy laugh are

my wine. The skills of your hands:

I watch you braid hair, chop parsley,

adjust the needle above the record, press

the front of your dress down taut against your belly.

I knew you from the tomes of my childhood,

knew immediately your grace and beauty

and cunning and strength. I see you now,

battered princess, as the benediction of us all:

your quiet ways and brilliant thoughts 

will keep us all from the lurking edge. 

You wanted me to be sweet but you let me walk home alone
and I had to learn to give catcallers a death glare
You wanted me to be smart but when I spoke
you scolded my ideas and my tone
You wanted me to be virtuous but you gave me a dating culture
where men expect to swipe left for a one night stand
You wanted me to be kind but when you taught me to give
you didn't tell me to preserve anything of myself
You wanted me to be safe but the mace and baggy clothes
and buddy system didn't save me from him

The politics of who gets forgotten

Anyone who is incarcerated
Anyone who was incarcerated
Those with chronic illnesses
The children of someone with an addiction
Anyone with an addiction
The homeless
Those in public housing
Veterans with medical issues that we can't easily see
People who live in food deserts
Pretty women, unless they die young
Ugly women

How soft do I have to be
to file into place and not stick out
to sink myself willingly
in the mire of your needs
to find the quicksand ready,
and be willing

How soft do I have to be to earn
those minute praises that are
all I will ever be due
those hissed whispers in the bell
of my ear that is all the affection
that I might attain

How soft to slip a mouthful of mud
down below the tongue, a tablespoon
of mold and algae and matter
into the recesses of my throat

Join there my voice, what is
left of all that was primal: now coat, coat,
dense with murk and carbon,
that the voice can stay hidden
and not be found out

How soft do I have to be

Pliable, pliant, no hard edges because

What's hard will be broken and me

And my soul are no exception.

How soft, how sweet, how 

Well tempered? Temperate, charming,

Taut and tired: keep calm, keep bright 

But be mindful of the light, show

Only what you are allowed to present.

Be present, but not impactful. 

Be helpful, but give no direction.

Pliable, pliant, because the softer you are

The more the world and its grubby nails

Gloss your skin instead of tearing it. 

The face a man makes when he uses the word "vagina"

It is universal.
A not-smirk sidles around the corner of the mouth;
the ones who are more practiced at it
(but even, once, a male ob-gyn I went to)
squash it more successfully than others.
It comes out like a foreign word,
(I can hear them trying out "ennui" in a
tenth grade book report) or
like a first run at an expletive,
fuck, you know, just, fuck?
Even in written language the most jaded
or misogynistic fuck of a male author
can't fail to not-quite-smirk
when he writes it (Burroughs is the worst).
The smirk is integral for feigned gravitas, or
to lend a medical air, to insert a space
between a woman and her body
when a woman's body is the subject of scrutiny
which, let's be honest, is always
and is why the expression is universal.

She kissed me in the cave in the putt putt course because
a guy was watching, a guy she liked to flirt with.
I guess the logic at that age is that all attention has potential.
Her hair was brown and her eyelashes were long.

Three years later I visit her on her college campus.
I fuck a friend of hers, a devout catholic boy who
was told by his momma to marry a devout catholic girl
and to keep it in his pants. He was a bad lay anyway.

We were close for years, we shared every passing event
until time and distance got the best of us, or at least
that is what I tell myself. I do not ask her what she tells herself
when I visit her and her husband in the suburbs.

Why can't you give me back to me? Like the necklace
or the house key
or the book for when I couldn't fall asleep
or the slippers for your cold wood floors
or the mug
and the box of mint tea and

(you did forget the tea. I imagine you
finding it
some months from now. A memory
that smells like longing and discomfort)

somewhere in your dresser drawers is my mouth
and the webbing between my fingers.

I inhabited every corner of your house, thinking
if you would find me anywhere, it would be
there

among the art that we bought and the
protest signs we made and the letters
and the postcards and the photos.

Face to face across my kitchen table
and I with tears in my eyes am being forced to explain
why having a new sexual partner makes me nervous
because you cannot understand
what would make me nervous
about you
and I in my worry have made you sad.

I stood in full sunlight for you and was not visible.

I feel ungrounded. I used to say fallow but

now I think only barren.
The diagnosis is that I am flawed, deeply flawed, and
Mary Baker Eddy says the fault is in my soul.

The fault is in my soul, the rows
have been poorly plowed, the weeds
spring up in verdant abandon.

If a soul can be pruned, I missed that Sunday school class.
If my soul needs to be pruned, I have planted my feet
in the wrong garden.

What it takes for you to notice the hunger:
Repeated rumblings, storm clouds, the beat
Of an army's march. The high descant
Comes from gulls, dumb and startled out of
The waves as they rise. When finally
You glance up out of your evening paper,
Your stock ticker, your cup of earl grey,
The mass is at your door, taking shape.

Look at this tragedy cherry red and well
glossed look at this tragedy a child's face the eyes doused
in old folks' chemicals look
at this tragedy the wheels still spinning under
broken pine the sap rising the gas pooling the blood
falling look at this tragedy she's crowning she's alone
she's screaming look
at this tragedy the dog pulls but the iron holds and the
water rises the hurricane nears look at this
tragedy one toy gun in a park three real bullets no
CPR then a dead kid look at this tragedy her fists
again at her head she can't process anything but her
fists look at this tragedy look this
too can be yours

I feel heavy tonight
I feel like you left me

That I could stand in front of all of your mirrors and not be seen

I am tired

Why can't you give me back to me? Like the necklace
or the house key
or the old t shirt
or the mug
and the box of mint tea

(You did forget the tea. I imagine you
finding it
some months from now. A memory
that smells like sex and discomfort.)

I feel ungrounded. I used to say fallow

Now I think only barren
The diagnosis is that I can't be diagnosed and
Mary Baker Eddy says the fault is in my soul

The fault is in my soul

I dream my teeth are tan then brown then rot
till the whole top shelf slides out
like a junk drawer.
All gums, no bite. Rotted.
The rot is in my soul.

I feel the deaths pulsing between my hands.
They rot too, in me, for lack of air.

Look at this tragedy it too can be yours 

I have needed to fall in love with a thousand femmes to find anything in femininity that I could love in myself
So there is a debt that I owe to the femmes who have loved me, healed me, fed me, soothed me, heard me, and let me love them back in my lopsided and clumsy way.

in limestone, granite, sedimentary blocks
we built the channel, ran the course.
the green of the water, hemmed in
and dutifully moving us place to place:
the braying of the labor, side by side,
broad backs, grey spines, buzzing flies.
where i refuse, you insist, and years from now
we may have built a world for that.

here we are in the place where stones are built
particle by particle, long monuments to time.
here we have come to find equilibrium, even footing,
and a sure sense of each other: as climbers
on the great limestone crags we become nimble, sour, quick.
i take you in my mouth so that you will remember me.
you push into the heat of me and i think i cannot speak.

here in the old growth, the trees are brown giants
that speak with the wind throughout the night.
they spread up and out to build a canopy, a space
that would be otherwise empty now holding life.
beneath their many-fingered arms i reach too
toward the sky, your face, and possibility.

nights later, when i am restless, you invite me
back into your arms, still smelling of resin and lime.
i crawl into your heartbeat, wet and waiting.
with your hands on me, what i can be
is so much greater than what i was before.

among all the quiet violences you visit on me
the ones i do not recognize are most dangerous.
your dissatisfaction begins to lurk in my own skin:
i press myself smaller, starch my own edges,
bleed quickly at night, bleach in the morning.
i have never been so whole as i am with you:

a real woman, trademarked and branded, with
accessories and behaviors to match. i am
every trait you have wanted, interchangeably.
you put me on and off like a kitchen bulb.
because i am not authentic, i am valued. i am owned.

the cup of heat that rests in my palm because
my hand is not quite flush against your skin--
I think you can hear me swallow past
the lump in my throat, a pebble compared
to the monolith of my fear that you will leave me--
you will leave me-- because I cannot
tell the truth or be a truth in my own body--
you will leave me-- to do the dishes
and talk to your mom and brush your hair
and maybe, if I am very very lucky,
you will come back to me again, and shore me up
against these rocky cliffs-- with your eyes
and your words and your faith

I am not worthy of the love you give to me
but this does not prevent me
from asking for more

Introduced to an environment in which
I cannot lie any more-- a chameleon without
color, a snake without camouflage--
I hope only to adapt, to not disappoint.
You will find me later, curled up against
the breakwater and boulders, seeking
the only comfort I am always sure of:
the buffeting of wind and water, the erosive fury
of natural forces, so much larger than
you or me or the disease and discomfiture
that lurks in my marrow in this place of love.

for what your gestures are:
but also for the assumptions you make
when interpreting me:
I suppose you cannot be blamed
if I refuse to speak.
for all the ways you heal me:
and for the furrows which your expectations
dig from my skin.
I am fallow, uprooted, overturned
but still, untilled, dormant.
I am a paid down cavern of possibility,
a darkness you cannot conquer.

The memories begin to blur.
Who said which thing, which terrible
epithet or storming out belongs
to which emotional tempest?
Named, my holes are immense:
it is clear I can neither see nor hear.
You are a hush against the trees,
the gap before the terror.
Like the Lacanian sublime I feel
mesmerized by the ends that you are:
I welcome you, beautiful heart,
into the swirling columns of my mouth,
the gathering greenness of my flood.

for all the ways in which I am already compromising
and have no guide, no instincts
to know how much is too much.
you could reach across all my borders,
stretch out stem to stern across me and I
would welcome you, Armageddon or no.
when was I supposed to learn these lessons?
how does it seem that all the others know?
I break cadence to ask questions,
and in those moments of bravery I am
quite stupid, full of harm and fear.
I startle you with my ready abandonment.
I startle you with my covering, groveling mouth
and low posture when I do, inevitably, crawl back.

I sneak among the stalks, pale and flighty
for all the ways you will be my end.
If you see me, I am cornered;
if you say my name, I am dead.
The recognition is the end of me, I know.
Your gaze sweeps these well-tilled rows
like an expert estimation of what is verdant,
what is struggling, what is dead.
In your gaze is my own estimable worth:
what can I produce? what fruit
can still be culled from my tired bones?
If you see me, I am cornered;
if you appraise me, I am dead.

With doubt and self hate as continually in bloom in my skin I need
the pressure of your hands to keep it at bay
where words or daylight promises fade out into the loneliness of night
I might forget the drive of your desire,
if you left me here without reminders. when in the highest vaults of night
I feel your hips push toward mine, feel
the breath of you like grace on my skin, you are the dissolution of my
doubts and all my fears. Touch me now
like you could heal me, drag me out of the swamp I have dredged with
brackish self-loathing, pry me sticky
with contempt up into your arms: where I am whole, or seen, or loud, and
where I never doubt the truth of your hands and mouth.

I am worldbuilding in the roof of your mouth, cozened up
between the moon and the taste of your tongue.
In ochre waves we wash each other's hearts, hands tempered
by the faultlines and flaws we know we bear. In this midnight
you are pure, a sluice of hot blood through an empty vein.
Dear heart, under my gaze you are blameless, a salt
and stillwater dream of all the ways we will heal.

grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
and the penance that will let me make it up to you.
grant me the peace of standing still in your heart
and the lurking fears that keep me eager, restless, pacing to prove myself.
where I am tired let me become strong, the fiercest champion
of your heart and your body and soul. where I am blind
let me see all the ways you bless me. where I would go silent
lead me in song, let me show you the wholeness of my voice.

He said take photos for me baby show me
I want to see

so
I took them
a series of images that are
my body, the way I experience the world,
my physicality, the being of me

He was confused by the veins
in the crook of my elbow (I like where
the red lines run hard against the blue)
He couldn't make sense of my knuckles, ragged
and bony and shoving up into
such a thin layer of skin
He looked vaguely interested at the pink
of my mouth but what I showed was
the stem of my tongue, the heat
of my throat, a deeply rooted ability
to speak or stay silent

He said these are cool I didn't know
you were one of those art type girls
But you know what I want baby why can't
you just show me

Your name has its own life
in my mouth:
it roosts, heavy and warm, blinking
slowly in the grey then blue morning.
When the stars fade
I fear I'll lose you, I fear
the lapse of nocturnal desire, I am sure
you will leave me someday, but
this morning I cling
to a faint pink hope that the last time
the sun rose, your voice
in the distance called me home.

I daydream of you and I
in places neither of us have yet been
in bodies we have not yet built
with history we have not yet lived

I will love you there, beneath that future sky
I will taste your mouth and bless your tongue

Under stars that are older than
the stellar hope of us, brighter than
the burning in my blood for your gaze,
there in the dark calm we will find our fears
and conquer them wholly

Such safety in being unseen
I have been so visible and so unknown

I have been a pillar of clouds:
A signal, a leading, directionality and hard work
I have been a pillar of clouds in the sky
Over a desert with no rain
And I have not fallen

You find me now, crowded
Along my edges with unsung desires,
Full up of fitful dreamings:
Oh catch me crass and crestless and tell me
That I can be yours

Know me here in the trenches of the world
Dark red ridges where you and I
Could dredge our sins entirely:
Let me put down
The burden of this rain, the weight
Of renewal that it brings.
Know me here where dust is springtime
And fallow land our home. Know me
Here in the red mountains,
And take me back to the lakeshore
Where I have always belonged and never been.

You find me now, a pillar of salt
Shredded with grief. Anchor, grounding, castaway,
In each other we are beautiful
And I would let you take me home.

your teeth tear everything from me--
leave me shaking, curled like a child seeking shelter
from the green-grey funnels that twist
and scream in the sky-- my voice
a counterpoint for these worldborne furies--
I am worthless, no longer waterbearing, but still
I beg, leave me the land at least-- leave me
the heavy clods of dirt, root clumps
retched up among the worms, I beg you
leave me some earthen bed to cozen
my wounds and whispers in-- leave me at least this
when you leave me aching, bruised and begging.

the angle of my knees opening for you, two long
slow slides of a triangle completed by you:
primal, slick with all the ways I need you.

words in my mouth that have been yours, my skin
a baring of territory that becomes yours,
where every inch is charted and blessed.

here in the dim purity of your white bed perhaps
I could be whole: where your hands and mouth
grid safe paths, perhaps I could find peace.

with gods blessing I find you
out in the world, a pattern, a fence along the horizon:
a manmade calling out for home.
I follow you.
you are the wind between the blades of grass,
the keening of my soul along the plains.

animate hunger drives us both forward
on a curling path past the ledge:
where the sun sets, I find you, take your hand
and drag you over.

Wraith that I am, I slink slowly
over the windowsill, the spillage of me
piling into your bed like detritus
washed up on the lakeshore. I am

unseen, unheard, a catchall of
others' thoughts and deeds: a harsh netting
that leaves a taut patterns on your skin.
Reject me. I am heartless.

I sink my teeth into your thigh:
what pleasure, what dense cacophony
in the red rending of your flesh.
You taste of sin and hunger

and the salt that smothers my bones.
Loose my tongue: pry me up
out of the jagged wounds and let me
feast instead in your honeyed heart.

If I could sculpt your hands I'd shape
each finger, quiet in its arcs and ridges,
outstretched in the way I want for you, too.
I'd trace the lines of each knuckle
from memory, shape the curve of each nail
and it's elliptical path to match
the orbit of me around you.
I'd complete a model so lifelike
that it and my cunt would beg for each other,
that the palm of it would rise
in the heat of me till fingerprints
pressed in on their own. If I could sculpt
the hands of you, I'd be obliged
to fill it with the physical memories
your hands carry: a thousand moments,
ten thousand tasks that keep me
(the skin and mouth and whole of me)
taut, seeking and gleaning.

Damned as we are there is still space to sing
Or howl out under a raucous moon
Take me to the snow and the open land
And let me breathe the cold carbon air

Curl my hips toward yours, drag me
Hot with protest to your mouth
Where I am barren leaving me bearing
The perfect rings of your teeth

The earth may die and us with it but
We will go out screaming, as we came in,
Petulant with vigor and desire and calmed
Only by the skin of another person

Ode to the palms of your hands

For where your fingers fling me, I am never prepared;
but I know that I will be caught, breathless and spellbound, in your palms
holding the world of me together while you whisper,
catch your breath.

I am a house of possibility

A cavern of cacophony, the richness of guano, fertile soil 

Fetid fetal remains that never scrub clean

What does his "love" matter when 

The legs come out first, the neck gets stuck,

She'd be howling but she can't pull air? 

Where are your male gods now? 

I am a house of possibility but you are itinerant 

And I am never allowed to leave

What if your top half was only ever made of lemon
Sour and segmented coming apart at the seams
What if your bottom half was only ever made of salt
Granular and dissolving in the distemperence of your heart

In the grate and groan of your old southern rock I find myself, conquering and conquered, fearless and full of night

It begins with an image
Hands mouth eyes nose mouth hands
A coffee cup, a kitchen table, worn out shoes, a sweat-stained shirt

I place you: the timing of you
The mountains and valleys of your shoulder blades
Where you are young and I am eternal

I run the cycle through with you
All my women and I know so well each step
It is our own hearts that convince us men are possible

We heal each other wholly
The institutional memory lapses
And we begin again

The night your lips first found my ear 

And my thighs slipped down the old wrinkled leather seat

The curl of my hands on your waist

You breathed beer and sunset and heat in my mouth 

The shape your headlights cast on my moms garage door 

As I told you it was safe to give in

You gave in

I married him
I had a lot of booze first and was smoking in my wedding dress
We had everyone at a makeshift bar and he lent me his lighter
The ceremony was some huge production and my dad didn't walk me very far
I married him

i met her beneath a harvest moon, but
very far afield

the trenches of the atlantic opened up and
she walked between, or on top

she was no colors, no sounds
and every color and the rushing roar of wholeness

she was not surprised that i came
she did not have eyes, she said

you do not have to look forward, to find the new
you can look backward just as well

center yourself in the richness of your own blood
it has a taste that you should know better than anyone else

i am the sea, the sound, the life
and none can escape me

and she walked back into the surf
leaving russet footprints to be swept out and away