your mother told you
that the clouds were milk
& you could drink them
through song.
when she died,
they pierced your lips
& padlocked them shut.
they said your heart
was a jukebox.
that music’s not allowed
in a town like this.
even so,
the girls swung their hips
to the sound of the keys
that shut you up.
they raised their arms,
collapsed onto couches
& let your music
slip those sweaters
right over their cheeks
& their hot-roller curls.
bobby pins clattered
to the floor.
I’ll wait until you tell me
the end of your dream.
for now, the horses remain buried
up to their sleek stomachs
in the darkest tar.
I woke up standing
in the kitchen.
I imagined glass
shattered at my feet.
No blood, no slices
between toes.
I must have heard
your horses whinnying,
calling out for someone
to help them out
of place so black.
there’s a light about
your eyes that I thought
would never
go dark.
as they pulled your hair
away from your neck,
I saw a glint of backbone
white and warning.
I thought of tying
cherry stems into knots
with my tongue.
I thought of everything
but you and your neck
craning away
from your body.
I bit straight
to the seed,
pulled the strings
of fruit from between
my teeth and
called it a day.
the sky is not
gold.
the streets are wet
with night.
I heard you singing
in a nearby house
and I wished
I could slam
all the shutters
closed.
this bruise is a home
I’d like to live in--
those soft violet walls,
the colors beneath
everything.
is this what it feels like
to have bones?
to look the sun
in the eye
and not go blind?
after you kissed me,
I pulled a four-leaf clover
out from under
my tongue.
afterwards, you told me
that I was an absolute frontier.
this felt like a way
to reach the prairie
and never look back.
we walked across the river,
against all that current.
you are nothing but
heart & tongue.
no. really.
your heart & tongue
lie in a box in Rome.
I can go visit them
whenever I’d like.
but without a body,
there is no beating,
no lips licked.
are you happy with
what you’ve been
reduced to?
your instruments
lie silent.
I knew you
under that fig tree.
only with our
mouths creaking open,
our sunburned ribs.
there is a way
to trace ourselves
back to the start.
first, a seed.
then, a miracle.
this love
has no weight.
God shuffled his feet
leading us back home.
We kicked the rotten apples
in our way, stepped on every
crack in the sidewalk.
He looked at the sky and said,
There are errors in this stitching,
something wrong with the way
you hold your needles.
Our only instructions said
to make it bright, and
to make the clouds tremble.
We didn’t know there
was a way to fail.
you are an abandoned house
you are a tractor in the front yard
you are a chipped mug of
cold coffee, you are the reason
I tore everything up.
I took all the photographs
out of their frames
and before I could
cut them to pieces
I found them wheezing
under my bed.
this is what
it feels like
to flail.
to reach for the
hot heart of Mary
and come back
empty.
he hooked our song
with one long claw
and looped it
up and out
of our throats.
I have already
forgotten the chords
I use in bed,
what to hum
when I get
so close
to your ear.
I wanted
to soften you up,
to peel you
like an onion.
I held your skin
up to the the light
and it turned
my whole world
warm.
brittle.
I would call it brittle.
everything snapped
in an instant.
my life
unrolled.
you are nothing but
bright desires
and I can’t find the
doorknob out of this place
with my sticky fingers,
my lungs full of cobwebs.
you’d think I never learned
how to breathe.
I had no idea
that if I sliced
my skin open
cherry blossoms
would flutter out.
I’ve tried to play
this game before.
flutter these lids,
leap beneath
the cloud-cover,
open up.
someone put a cross
in my heart.
it catches fire
in the heat
of the moment,
in the midst
of your kiss.
tomorrow is eventual.
if you’d only hold me
while I’m dreaming,
I’d forget about these
poppy blossoms on my knees.
there are these nightmares
I have about the wooden stairs
about being chased,
about the windows
turning to water.
they will drown me.
I know it.
seeing you
rise up
was an
unknown pleasure.
I slumped
on the bleachers
to watch.
under wool blankets,
we knocked knees
when you left
the ground.
that was the sky
we towered against.
our plan was to marry
those freckled twins
who owned the orchards
we dreamed that each day
we’d come home,
throw back the sheets
and find so many pink ladies.
we broadcasted our desires
over the airwaves, but never
heard anything back.
the nearby lake was
the deepest thing I knew.
it took our words
down to its rocky center,
lapped them up with
gentle waves.
we told ourselves that this,
this century, must be
the difficult one.
the only thing in the room
that ready for us
was the bed.
sheets tucked at the corners
two pillows
& one round, red sun.
your mouth is my oyster. scratch that.
your oyster is my mouth.
this is going
in an unexpected direction.
when I press my ear
to your chest, it gallops
like so many horses,
like a night on the plains.
the fire creeps up &
catches the hem of
everything I wear.
I made a skirt
out of photo negatives.
hold it up to the light
and see what you’ve
been missing.
they’ll melt
so quickly.
all those canoe trips,
sagging birthday cakes,
and all those bow-legged
first-days-of-school.
to put out the flames,
I can walk into the lake
heart first.
