mother moon stop calling me

Dogwood 

I knew the blossoms. I caught 
them all. My mother
won’t let me forget this.  
But really, what’s so bad about 
marking this way?  
The tree saying she was this high
the summer she

 between what is love and what is fixation of 

I live my life by white lies.
And poetry is white lies.
Second language is white lies too.
As well as the first.
But language is the only way 
to hide love.
White, black, transparent,
or

I engrave myself into the floor

what a creature I would make of myself if I were able
to be known to be close to anything to be grounded

as always, my resolution

is to get a Guns N’ Roses tattoo

//
i wish i
                    can fly
                    was in dixie
                    could quit
                    was on vacation
                    was taller
                   

I told you to stay right there and not move

LONG DISTANCE CUNNILINGUS 

hi near stranger 
I want to impale 
myself on you

you little wolf-cry
your nostrils flare your eyes flare
you ask me 
am I pretty
with your pretty mouth

your

I know god is real because persimmons exist.

He paints using the ashes of the towers in his watercolors.

i mean, i was black before too.

The air before me
is the flavor of
an oat cake popsicle.
Or a shoe box. 
Or the water sports
I’m not doing. 
So I sign for
a prescription
while all the world
is water sporting
in

Fifty cents for tickets in the bleachers—then. Fifty cents a railroad car to Pittsburgh.
A “marvel” they’d called it. Three tiers of steel, the façade terracotta, the balls off
the deck, bouncing.

It was a slow curve—a big bender,
spinning against the trajectory
of the ball. It hung

Letterman wore khakis and the camera angled up his crotch. I watched every night or set my VCR to record on the rare occasion I left my apartment.

I ended up in right field, ponytail eschew, cap falling to the bridge of my nose, shadowing my freckled cheeks.

I don’t think it made a sound.

Feels impossible
like trying to slice
a tomato with the
Wrong Knife
like trying to heal
with the Wrong Love

-

I am the evening flower
bloom at night
you are crows feet
crocodile eyes
a

Catch fire overtaking

I GOT NOTHING      I HAVE / NOTHING     I HAVE

CHLAMYDIA I GOT FROM

WHAT     YOU / THINK I HAVE

EVERYTHING AND THIS I DON’T

HAVE / NOTHING      I GOT I

GOT I

so of course let it greet you fully in the face of your body
and tackle that which sent it into the dust
and rejoice that a body can chill and still chill back.

I fear being buried alive, but I insist on being buried when I'm dead.

Self-guided tour: Exhibit #9 from the National Museum of Broken Marriages

A medium says to channel the late wife through beloved objects. I press my ear to a mug, a journal, my husband’s chest.

Whatever: molecules transform / and become part of my arms, my legs—that’s cool.