it starts like this: 
glitter-slick solidarity, elbows in my ribs in the nightclub
and hysterical laughter loud as a distress flare in the night,
the smear of lipstick on my teeth you rub off, your thumb in my mouth and 
your hair in the light, and the light is good here, it gilds you into an icon 
something other and terrible, a martyred saint with a bloody halo 
glimmers your skin to cheap gilt 
and i wonder if i put my hands on you if it’d come off on me 
if i’d be golden by association

it goes wrong like this: 
you voice going evasive on the phone, hollering at someone who i don’t know
who’s that sweetheart and you go oh just someone and change the subject
and what can i say to that really what can i say 
and you stop smiling when i hand you a cup of tea, 
tension ratchets up your spine so i’ve stopped trying to trace it with my fingertips
oedipus gouged his eyes out to unsee something terrible but this isn’t greece
this is nothing, this happens every day, this is a tragedy in minor key
and it goes don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave

at night, when you make me out
by the lights of my eyes
in the shadows,

you will think my irises are sparkling
with happiness.

it is only
electricity, reflected.

I will try to concentrate my sadness
in the muscles of my face,
so you ask
if I’m okay,

and you will have seen me
sad
so often
you don’t notice.

you’ll forget to ask me how my day was;

I’ll remember.

I will wish I knew
how to start conversations,
but you won’t pause,

and I won’t learn.

tonight, you will touch me,
and my silence
will encourage you.

I come plummeting / smoldering / into the hate song / the hate song / is rising / past all lies / all crossed lines / all memories pledged / to hate / and I say to you / bring all the pain / that moves me forward / as my anger / makes itself known / unfolding / and yes / you’ve no idea / how deep this feeling goes / nor how proud / that used to make me / and yes / I may step too close / and yes / I’ve spent most my life / imagining each way / I could mutilate / the man who molded / my family / in the reflection / of his hate / and yes / I want a great deal / and I hate myself for all of this / as I find another dead end / as I find myself / walking into a wall face first / again / back into the hate song / and I take / another drag / and become the smoke / in my lungs / as I try to halt an image / as now a door slams shut / and a man approaches / inside my head / and I’m his son / and I’m young again / inside the hate song / and I take / another hand / to my face / to my groin / and I just can’t win / inside the hate song / the hate song / is my father’s raised / voice / his doctor’s searching hands / beneath my feet / as beneath my feet / I hear / my mother’s silence / as the hate song carries on / knocking you aside / baring teeth / as the hate song / carries me on its shoulders / like a wounded creature / like I need it / like the hate song / and I fall deeper / into its asthma / into its humidity / like the South / and its hurricanes / and fire ants / and fevered tornado fury / as even the earth admits / its hate song / with every warped tree / hurled through a building / and me / just wanting now / to be the tree / as again / I find a new focus / as I see all that persists / and contradicts / within the hate song / the hate song / is asking you / this one thing: / please / don’t leave me here / inside the hate song

i’m sorry
i gave you
a brain parasite

it just felt
so tingly
squirming around
up there

sort of
like
the touch
of ice
on the dry tongue

or the prickle
of a stranger
looking out
from a darkened
doorway

it felt
gentle
and just occasionally
harsh
like a trusted
brush

i thought
you might
want it
too

I catch the shape of the table lamp
and its light mirrored
in the blackened television screen
and I’m jarred back to a long ago lamp in a long ago room
when the dog turns one full circle, as dogs do,
as I approach the door to let her in out of the drizzle.

The piney smell rises from the ground.
Matted needles steep beneath puddles
that reflect the grey above. Distant wood smoke edges in
from beyond the city’s limits
as old timers in the county burn their leaves and debris
in backyard bonfires, orange glows against their faces.
Then the sun begins to set behind the shroud of dreary clouds
and casts a sheen of dim yellow over the gold left dwindling on trees
and bathes houses to the east in an eerie, diffused spotlight.

Like the time you drove me home
and said the green sweater I wore,
(itchy around the collar,
pilled under the arms)
brought out the green in my eyes.
Like that was no big deal
and you said those sorts of things all the time.

That sweater caught the scent of smoke and pine,
held it in the fibers,
and when I walk through this room
and catch the light just right at the close of day
I can still breathe it in.

I need to shut me up, need to pull the mandible
from its muscle and cease my mumbles.
I put my foot in my mouth

and stomp while I hold me by the teeth. Jaw
unhinges. cheeks rip down the middle,
tearing the tendons that mold me.

I kiss what’s left of my lips, and make this mouth
beautiful. Replace the umms with mums and daisies.
I make my mouth a vase:

fill it with flowers, stuff stems
of orchids and poppies
down my gapping throat.

To make room I pull out my teeth and tongue,
rip my Adam’s apple from my throat, and plant
seeds in my stomach and lungs.

They drink from the bile, flourish
and flower with tendrils
that grow through my veins,

Roots plant deep in my intestines. Sprouts
blossom from my eyes and nose;
a bouquet to honor the death of noise.

I’ll become a garden of roses and I’ll build
a bench on my forehead so passersby
can sit, and enjoy the silence.

It’s like this weird time when everyone sees you as a meal they can help themselves to, but not like a good meal, like, a sugary, stuck-in-your-teeth kinda thing. I don’t know, the way I remember it is like a steam-colored dream. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a special kind of lonely. All my life I’ve seen the hollow in everything. I pick up the house I grew up in and throw it over my shoulder like it’s nothing. But the girls I was girls with, there was such a tender ritual, even in our sleep. We practiced putting on lipstick. I held Sarah’s hand and painted her nails and her warmth felt to me like a hot curling iron on the back of my neck. We practiced kissing on the backs of our hands and slept all skinny limbs and heat and wanting something we could not name.

I. When the beta fish died
His body floated to the top of the bowl.
It swayed next to the bamboo,
a ghost caught in the current
as yesterday’s vibrancy
faded into a pale complexion.

I took the bowl outside
dug a small hole
and poured the contents
into the 
dirty coffin.

II. When we bury 
what is too painful to remember
the earth somehow feels like
home again.
The soil beneath 
worm-like fingers 
and my hands two shovels in the dark
reliving their body count.

III. The first child I lost
I couldn’t bear to flush down the toilet.
I left it in a hole beneath a rosebush
still wrapped in its amniotic sack
like a seed
I prayed could still grow
or a fish
that had just stopped
swimming.

I hopped onto the Metro.
The water pickpocketed his swimming trunks.

Her boots reflected the Northern lights.
My spear leaned against the ancient tree and had a catnap under the shade.

The accordion is on its last wheeze.
The vending machine isn’t really out of change; it’s just greedy.

The subway pole likes being held by strangers.
My fingernails tease my toenails about their looks, but they’re just insecure.

The leather backpack has dreams of grazing in a pasture by a red barn
but always forgets its dreams in the morning.

The salt and pepper shaker gossip about the bread basket.
The cup of espresso is addicted to heartache.

Most people mistake it
for silence without realizing
Silence is the mistake in us.
We are watching the composer
Agitate. Hand on his sternum,
He conducts an ocean
Of nothing. He is wanting
Something from the orchestra,
And the two of us are participating,
In a way, enlivening this nothing.
We could have done this
At home, I say, and you shift.
It is not the sound of nothing,
It is the room absorbing,
The sound of your jeans
Bending against your knee,
The feel of your fingernail,
Lessening. Can you hear
The litigation of our bodies?
I can’t. The point of art, you say,
Is to burden. I always assumed
It was to bury. There’s a difference.
It’s our job to exhume, to dissect
And do so wrongly, to be right
In our wrongness.
The only truth in art, I say,
Is vulnerability, though
I don’t mean it. Can’t you hear
How vulnerable this is?
As if the answer to the question
No one asks, no one cares about,
Is surrender, is helplessness.
I don’t know what this means,
But I want you to answer.
Listen to this, you say, listen
And decide what part
of what part is no longer divisible.
How the silence feels like a division
By zero. How it feels like you
Have populated me
With your open hands.