It was my mother who taught me to buy clothes in the size
I wished I were. She called this motivation. Like the time she
promised to take me to Disneyland if I could lose ten pounds
in a week. The guilt of spending her hard-earned money on
ill-fitting dresses was supposed to make the weight drop.

If I donated clothes that did not fit, she would either yell
at me for not going to a consignment shop, or stage a
rescue mission, hanging each piece back up in my closet.

I see glimpses of my mother in my almost girlfriend.
She never texts first, not even on my birthday. She cannot
touch me without being three beers deep. When she wakes up
next to me, there is always a glass of water waiting for her on
the window sill, a makeshift nightstand. She never questions
where it comes from, only knows she is thirsty. That it is here.

The day I let her go, like a blazer too tight in the chest, she spent
the next three days hemorrhaging excuses. She asked if my inability
to tell whether she liked me happened all the time or just in person.
As if either is a viable option. When I pick up the phone to call

my mother, she asks why I have not called in so long. I remind her
that when I last saw her, she said my pussy is all I had to offer.
She corrects me: “All you have left.” As if either is a viable option.

I was taught at a young age
that my opinion
would never be important
so long as men occupied my space.

I never had a say in my own household,
testosterone a force I could never win against.
My father – more often than not –
made me cry on the way to school
with chastising remarks.
My brother snuck out at night to teepee houses
and underage drink,
yet I was the black sheep of the family,
always met with disapproving eyes
for being too weird, for being too loud, for being too me.

So I learned to hold my breath.
I discovered that “I don’t know”s and static silence
would not condemn me.
I choked down anger, threw away sadness,
shook off irritability
in the presence of others.

Suddenly
everyone wanted a piece of me.
People found me more interesting
when my mouth stopped moving;
I became pleasantry.
Who doesn’t like a nice, temperate, quiet thing?

So when you ask me
where my voice has gone
or why my birch wood tongue
has forgotten gravity,
please understand
I am trying to unlearn
the only way I’ve ever known how to survive.

It has been eons since my
emotions last cracked the surface.
Not the pretty ones –
the guttural, the damned, the raw,
the feelings I believed best left
buried deep in my gut, in my throat.

I will dig them out of my anatomy
with trowel and scythe.
I will cleave myself open
until every emotion is on beautiful display.
I will come to you,
gaping and unhidden,
just as I have always dreamed.

It may not look like I am trying most days,
but believe me, I am cracking bones
with every waking thought.
Slowly I will peel away the muscles and skin,
until we find enlightenment.

I will unlearn the silence for you,

just give me time
to remember how sweet
sound can taste.

From our table, I watch an old man walk
to the shoreline, strip
off his bathing suit, and dive
deep into the water. He starts
to swim, stroke
and stroke and stroke
and stroke

until he’s a wave
until he’s salt.

James and I
talk about the water, ocean
where he threw
the watch I gave him for our anniversary.
It had belonged to my grandfather, a man
who drove reckless and smiled a young,
Marlon Brando smile

until he counted loose-change teeth.
I think I’ll have the fish, James says, and a glass of white wine. He was drunk
when he threw grandfather’s watch into the ocean.

I think I’ll have a glass
of water, I say, and a cigarette. Lately, he’s been drunk a lot.

To him, the shore’s
no concern. It’s
salt. He’s thinking
of another man

– a Mike or Todd or
Brad or some
other –

I know this,
because after he orders
another glass of wine
he tells me

he loves me.
I try to pretend

the ocean
didn’t eat
the naked, stroke
and stroke old
man
just to spit
him out

like my grandfather’s rotten teeth
which made grandmother hate
his smile even more.

A seagull stares at us from a wire
hangs overhead. I wait for him
to lurch forward. To land
in salt. James laughs

as the bird
pushes off wire. His caw
and caw to escape feathers. Throw breadbasket

at James. Then, I fly toward
the old man’s body. I
fly and fly
because it’s the only
good thing left
for me

to do.

Hello, Future Boy!
Did you get the sup? nod
from the Priest today? And
did you parlay that into
getting the high
sign from the communion server?
To gulp down, the last of the back-
washed blood?
Gold, Future Boy! You are Gold!
Get a little juicy
buzz on you
before you
high five the guy throwing leeches!
D.I.Y. or DIE!
Bloodletting 4 every1
we scream at the show! Throwing
punches and blowing dudes
kisses. But you’re in
the corner all like,
“I have nvr feared da bomb.”
But you’re always right there
when the shit explodes
and glitter goes everywhere.
You slide up to me,
flip your shades down, send vibes
through your fingers and say,
“Don’t hope, cope.”
Meanwhile, our friend Francis
is out on the floor
doing, like, toprocks, baby swipes,
turn arounds, bust ‘em ups, swing
dives, flares, Buddha spins, deadman
floats, penny caps, bottle drops, pin
jabs, Chinese get ups, jackhammers,
and head slides and
I’m all like, “I’m just a dirty painter.”
And you grab my red nails
And lick the polish off.
And I’m all like,
“That is NOT holy stuff, Future Boy.”

There’s a pillow on my bed that reminds me of you,
so each night I press it against my breast
but the heartbeat I feel comes from my own chest and the heartbeat I feel
is the heart that I left inside the cage
of my chest and not inside of your mouth. I wish
you swallowed me and had the sense not to spit
me out. I wish you had held me there
on the roof of your mouth. I wish I could leave
stains on your tongue
that will never come out and the taste is one you can never get out.
Your mouth is a house where the rent is past due, where it stinks
of me inside of you, where
you wipe off your shoe on the bottom of my lip,
where you scrape me off your tongue before bed.
There is a bottle of water next to my bed;
it reminds me of you.
So each day I press my mouth to its cap and my tongue
wraps around the neck of the bottle like the bottom of your neck
and I wrap around my pillow like it’s the middle of your neck and I hope
this is a feeling
you find hard to forget.

Tsssssssssssssssssssss-
My words come out slurred
and it seems difficult to live when
everything you say is misheard.
I have great thunder in short amounts of time
That clashes with the oceans and rocks the ships of my mind,
With roaring rivers that travel every corner of the rocks of the mountains,
But my words get cut short,
Thrown into a jumble,
Cause on paper they’re powerful,
But when spoken they’re humble.
And the rivers run only in to puddles,
Because my voice stops abruptly
And my togetherness scatters from it’s huddle.
And it’s hard to respect yourself when told to repeat everything with an ‘s’ sound,
And symbols clash in my mind and panic arises,
Because speaking to someone is my fear,
Because I feel that everything said isn’t clear,
As if that isn’t enough I’m put down by my family,
I’m put under spotlight because they don’t understand me,
And they say: “Get over it, don’t let them get to you”
But how can I do that when you’re the first people I knew?
So I’ll let the storm calm in my mind because I just ain’t someone anymore,
And they say words are powerful,
But not when they’re slurred.

It’s so much harder to love you up close
As if some ethereal abstraction could embody anything that remotely resembled a real body

Or your pressure washed eyes

Because what you own, owns you
And my objects have obtained the flaw of possessiveness

Because absolute freedom means owning nothing
And the future of Amazon drones has already lined up my orders for the next 60 years
They’ve got the precogs working that shit now

But the choice to love is being blind when your guiding cane is a woman who won’t look up from
her smart phone

And I love I love I love

Because saying that makes the chemicals in my brain surge into place
and I would rather die pretending I love something than have to acknowledge
my favorite moments are only being alone when it is an exception

an outlier
to our modern day slave exchange of time

And your pressure washed mind.

From now on, I will 
tell people that you died.

I will say it calmly, without tears. 
It is not that I want pity 
or take pleasure in lying. 
I have simply grown tired of mapping 
the perforations we made, 
intolerant of questions 
concerning who-broke-what.

I officially excuse myself from this exercise. 
I am not interested in people’s opinions 
of my victim or villainhood.

The only thing people should be allowed 
to say to me about you is 
I’m sorry for your loss.

And when they ask me 
what happened to you, I will tell them 
without hesitation that one day 
your heart just stopped.

The earth weathers the numerous isometrics of sexual rejection.

Who delivered this pulpy cantaloupe, or if you will, this melon of dubious fragrance?

Even the strongest radio channel flirts with the jagged frontiers of static; every exposure must penetrate the scrim.

The cold, quiet synapse-spaces that once conducted pain—as music—to the hemisphere.

Either the tree or the man might grow crookedly, the man rooted among the poverty of other crooked trunks.

A project dubbed “Move the Hillside” indeed moved the hillside to a secondary location dubbed “Secondary Hillside.”

The number of rusty vehicles the number of dormant vehicles the rusty dormant corner of town.

Light presides the percentage of light presiding the percent of impotent radiation.

Where ample sustenance coincides with the outcry for sustenance: reveal, to me, this arena.

Animals that would never contact one another—shrimp and bacon—assembled in the same sandwich, every day, in every city.

Oh, there are deer, but no woods; the deer idle at the outskirts.

A moment of astonishment before brute force, brutes applying tourniquets, et cetera, prevails.

Will the world evict us? Will you think about my hands?

The greater distinction hinges on saying Yes.