but that's all about to change. My murder ballads, well, they prefer to terrify. I want to talk more about titular heroes. About what it means to kiss a goose. I mean, kill a goose. I want to do

chipped finger

nails the door shut         a swastika

earlobe   an appalachian woman

swollen & eating dirt       coercing

tiny white knots      you

Greek Yogurt

my daughter and I were watching TV
it was some show where a group of overweight women
lose a bunch of weight and wear bikinis in front
of their families and significant

where’s my dark booth damp panties mid-day fluff and relief

THE HEART OF THE MATTER

If I had any money I would leave the country. There aren't any people here and I know them all. I only want to express myself, but you can't say things like

That thing I scrape against every floor.
That thing, that thing keeps betraying me.

I knock on wooden bones for good luck,
but the splinters in knuckles act as omen.

I fold it with

everyone leaves the party

and I'm still at the party

I sleep on the floor some time later, leaving

a half-drunk Miller Lite within reach

there are mattresses

The first time i took an Adderall I fell in love and was in love

for four years.

father, son, and holy void

i no longer care
whose fault it was

which probably means
it was mine.

i could drive my car
into lake michigan

and wake up where
you

The past kept living inside me like a cheap Timex. “Where are you going?” the store clerk said. But I heard my father in my head, practically dragging me from bed to bon voyage me out of Newark when this terminal was merely stairs, no moving sidewalks...

For the thousandth time
I am describing our arms
and how they are
the perfect length

I built a Ferrari inside my white mouth
The shape of it was blue  and up came the sun
I said hey, Ferrari and with my white mouth   huffed it good, huffed it pretty
The throat of your pale moon heartscape contained me

You scare me kind of           your admission of an emo phase  

And it is easy, so easy / to welcome them into the poem.

I didn't imagine you could grow into your harness, that it could embed in your skin, that you could plod one circle for so long that actually stopping would open up the ache in your body.  

Yes, the girl says, / thus entering into an unspoken agreement / that a black shirt with prints of golden parrots and martini glasses / is the only requisite balm.

When God is sleeping with his eagle, / we are like a woman with a peacock / under her arm telling the river hush. 

The vet said that the humane thing to do would have been to let it die, to continue
doing whatever it was that I was doing. 

I come to you the way an animal finds a quiet place to die.

Are you Beyoncé? My daughter says.

I am holding a pair of Nike kneepads in my hand.

No, I say.

I am not Beyoncé, I say.

I think about how the flashes bouncing back from selfies seem really ‘cinematic’
and how shia labeouf seems very alaskan
alaskan with hard fists, and lonely

Iggy Pop has a rocket in his pocket and he shore is gone pull it out.

At happy hour he compared you to Carrie Bradshaw and
you thought this was funny.

Yes,we are parasites of the sun, but refuse to say so. We never mouth the same words twice. 

Call me sensitive but if you dealt with a toothache
that made a destroyed country out of the left side
of your face, wouldn’t you cry your ass off