Tiny Evolutions
okay so let’s talk
about the exes we mythologize
for the wrong reasons like leave
a toothbrush at my bathroom sink
and call it love and baby
I’ll promise ring your heart
to my heart and name you
in the spirit of a most perfect thing
HELLO MY NAME IS
the dreams you have in that deep
sleep on your back
HELLO MY NAME IS
the hands that reach for you
do you want to kiss them
like I do good news cake
is still cake after war it’s not
bad luck to fold that favorite
photograph I wasn’t drunk
when I cracked those eggs
I’m watching the kids
with the plague in their hands
turn it over like a soft yolk
now knowing it’s not a question
of intent whether or not
it makes its way to us
I get sad thinking about fish
when homo erectus learned to swim
I find a purple crayon
in a parking lot still intact
not everything is the miracle
you asked for
from INSOMNIA
I am thinking about process
how to spend my time
and not be afraid
deciding how I feel about pain
and going through
then going through
the sun our greatest antique
and I am hiding
in a closed room eating snacks
throwing money at a cool grape
fine for a little while
choosing bees over all other
short-lived creatures
look how incapable I am
to speak casually about death
every day I learn more
of my body to worry for yet
tinker most with the unwalked path
and it feels good
a bear could yield
a farm if not for hunger
a tree will grow through rock
if it finds no other way
the line between two points
is not always straight
sometimes just one wind
and another
from INSOMNIA
let’s talk about birds
not this crisis not how
there’s debt for a reason
not how we hang from it
like empty coats
I am growing
one existential moment
after another
and I can’t tell
is this grief puddled
in the street or am I
just a woman
holding your wrist
once a beating yes
quite full after dinner
now mother the sick muscle
I keep pulling at
this womb ornament
in my starchy middle
when is what if
not a reckless body
when is it too much?
keep trying
you told me
when I couldn’t stand
this tarp around
my heart is it a ghost
or just calloused
what do you call
the ones who forgive you
what do you call
the ones who don’t
Rebuilding the Titanic
“Australian Billionaire to Rebuild the Titanic
for 2016 Maiden Voyage.”
-International Business Times, 24 February 2013
creation only a myth of the hands I beat
my chest take my fists and push them deep
reaching for the manual that says how
this thing should work look at me so tidy
by accident no purpose but to exist long enough
to know nothing is for sure for instance
it is not impossible a black hole should puke
a ball of matter that a desert should riot
a million yellow flowers that building a boat
or horse or lover and naming it UNSINKABLE
gives any guarantee nevermind I’m breeding
my ponies for a quiet tired crying feeding a habit
of putting water places I don’t need it I want
that heat a glacial narrative to maintain and lay
my face against when I wake up too warm
and kick off my socks there are other distances
to busy the hands with we a people so prone
to devastating take me the honeybee too drunk
on an unexpected yellow field even rebuilt
we are not the same will not can never be
Ocean Between the Waves
what does it mean to say I am pulling my own weight that I find breath for some seconds in a day and consider this an accomplishment or the avocado my stomach quietly accepts a reward I made these breasts to hide a reckless heart my magic sits in a cold clean light in the thick of it so easy to forget where I forget I feel a laughter impulse and let it pass I consume every color with no apparent thrill and yet keep eating I come up empty yet continue casting two and three lines that one song on a long-distance car ride I listen my hands buried in a sweet dough melting the butter pulling blood oranges into individual segments just to kiss them away you catch me often in this book looking you ask why have I spent so many hours under a pink sky on this beach holding my weight only to sweat it off later the wind dies and drops my hair to my back standing before the ocean I can’t fathom forever
