Category: Poetry
Pesticide 2
ants grow their fungus
in my ears
confuse my eyes with pools
they touch me, expand
get used to me
not moving
I try to see their whole bodies
in a way I’ve never seen
my whole body
but can feel it
I am up top, pressed
against glass
I am standing too close
to the moon
It goes down my body
to the planet
I try to see its whole body
in a way I have never seen
my whole body
but can feel it
Battery Effect
tonight it has been red
then yellow, then luminous white
I think coral, copper, cotton, rattle
at one point it was below the water
before that it had never left
now it’s here, and I know instantly
that I know something, just not what
maybe I feel the moon’s knowing, or I
heard something, the stars
discussing the moon’s politics on the Earth
children in their adult poses
doing mounted police, doing plumbing
doing queen and king
they do bullhead, water-bearer
they don’t play the root, as you have
or me, the stone with a root in it
we are fixed to the hood of the Earth
the sun does a firm bounce off the moon
it goes down a corridor before
coming back, unlocking the next
entrance, and the next, perhaps everything
a baby gate opens, the milky way opens
we are ferried to our rooms in secret
swept in by birds, to be checked on
later, though they know we will be gone
in their wisdom they can see themselves coming
as I have seen myself coming, and you
our mouths open to the same phase
your blood a belt of red, the candles yellow
my reach a luminous white
Vision at Fallen Home
we took his couch, some
tools – to help
evacuate belongings
we took his cords
the garden too
has been demolished
though hummingbirds return
for the turk’s cap
along the fence
they go from stagnant
to blistering
which feels familiar
one transcendence
to another
a tourist in each
starting to head back
then pulled out
by color, certain
red objects
brilliant against
old footage
a poppy
a war
in many ways I feel
that we knew each other before
we must have done
the way you identified my mouth
like a plant from home
and I know your hands
and I fear so capably
your loss, as if
it has happened
Candida
your heart will hurry
to the places it’s been
a note tied to its leg
what if the quiet place
in your mind vanishes, or
worse, is given to someone else?
for now though, this is us
this is a city
that tells us about spirits
that calls when the grass
is too long, stops calling
when the grass dies off from sun
where the ice cream truck
does circles, donuts
do your ears hang low
til the occasional BOOIIIOIIINNGG
or HEELLOOO?! we lay
in its sound, having just licked
each other, perpetual lawn mower
I guess the gears of the world
dairy for the diligent whackers
and every house, broken in
on champagne, with its windows
smiling through a baby
under expansion, like most things
built to withstand fire
bison, winter, crop
shortages and floods
termites, outages of power
the way things are
underneath, before eventually
there is a die off
a long low moan without
complaint, the REMEMBER ME
of life that has taken hold
bugs in two dimensions
a flattened Earth holding
more of us, all at once
if she is trying to say something
we wouldn’t know
she is collapsed upon. so
we move forward
in the old way
in which
you’re allowed to replace yourself
Thirty
I was standing in line with you
when I passed out, fainted
I guess, and woke up
on the floor
I remember feeling
guilty, like I had overslept
and how different
you looked
appearing over me, like
a god, or its mother
perfect
and impatient
my elbow hurts – I realize
I must have fallen on it
you say I may have fallen forward
if it hadn’t been for you
how lucky – I am grateful
– I am weak – I am
let down gently – I am
long to see
the security footage
in which your reaction
plays out like a silent film
in which
the faces of the embarassed
become everyone, black
and white, at each moment
assigned a time
SWAT
woke up drenched again, not
dreams, not raining
who knows
there’s a resiny
imprint of me
on my mattress, laid over
countless others
like days
I go through what I ate, when
the withdrawal symptoms of
things like caffeine
pot, what I’m wearing
sleep positions, if
I should shower before I sleep
maybe my mattress is a valley
my blankets roads
I overheat, sweat
become cold, pull them up
to wake unsure
where the water came from
if it’s water at all, or
just salt
if while sleeping, I’ve
been swimming, and
barely made it back to shore
How to Release Dead Animals
it is hot and windy. your face
is probably covered in hair
your body out
I am reminded of the animals
I’ve kept, some of which have
died in my care – snails
toads, spiders – clearly dead
(some had been melted
in tupperwares in which
I had also caught a star)
now back into the wild
unable to throw them away
unsure of their use now, as they
no longer moved in my room
unsure of where it was
I had found them
running away, around
this whole time, open
mouth against clear
sloped walls
even the rocks I’ve kept, like
tears hidden up my nose
or in my ears
I’ve wanted to keep forever
my ultimate stubbornness
to be an everything-sized cage
to be your whole world
suddenly my mouth is full
I set the dead on the knape
of the Earth, an armadillo
rooting its vast, known circle
flinching, closing
the dead to skitter off one day
the Earth to have rings
the dead to die again and
again, having lived
again I am unsure about
the size of the world
where the color goes
on captive animals
why they feel different
how they could have died
if I can love something
without having to have it
Orion
If you lay in snow
and I lay in snow
even with the same moon
as headboard, the electricity
wouldn’t travel, the water
too densely packed
I feel that way today
both in our underwear
separately, in the city
you walking from Planned Parenthood
to yoga, me having worn
the wrong clothes to work
now bathing in the spillway
we have no gas for water
we named a cat Fuel
each man presents
his best self, the
6-month awoken blood stem
you unlock something in me, he says
it was not there before
you make me want to be a better man
a star falls on the roof
of the Whole Foods
by definition not that great
of a star, but close
men burn their tongues
try to recall
what they were doing before
just to have you say it
have you pull it out
the long steel draw
approachable temperature
a star just being friendly
holding it
lighting their eyes
but stars are forever away
maybe they have already died
Harvey
the cab drivers
pull into gas stations, enticed
by the light of zeros
such brightness
meaning nothing, all out
I pick oil off the water
I pick oil
there is always some left
at the bottom, or
stripped up the sides
fucked and left stranded
like the coast
its beautiful lazy
endless versions
I’m trying, but each time
fucking is like flying – There is
more or you die
there is oil
it makes boats of birds
I flap
What could happen any minute
and the minutes lost
probably off somewhere
the drive up coast
its bolted down furniture
no walls
or else these paper thin ones
tonight I dreamt a jaguar
too hungry to hunt, was drowned
by the heron
lifted away and
eaten someplace quiet
on the rocks
down the hallway
until the heron was stretched full
of hair and bone
holding its gut
sloshed to sleep by the moon
her great blue stomach
the sea
& Countless Other Things
in my room there are four praying
mantises, two tarantulas, one puppy,
two people
matter is neither created nor
destroyed, but some things are small enough
not to exist until culminated
sex flicked off tables,
fingernail plate armor, dust bunnies,
the occasional bird
squirrels who gnaw
the owl box
back into the trunk
the tree that fell so we
could stand before it, thinking
through tunnels
addressing dead starlings,
the consecutive order of ants,
whether or not
we should have seen it coming
upright decay on which
we strung lights
instead we watched it going
wilting & sopping
but still holding up dinner
for us, as much as anything
to get drunk & watch come
creatures returning with tape
inseparable to the earth
as if nothing could be greater
than to be put in its misery
