tigers mostly inhabit areas that are 
densely populated by humans—
the truth is, the tigers were there first.

watched habitat rot into 
the open grave of an unholier beast /
walked into the center of the street
and felt a thousand gaping eyes / hungry
for an untamable show—
see, no one ever asked the tigers
where they came from.

fact: a tiger told me all of this
truth: the tiger was a person

tigers will claim expansive territory 
as their own / knows their whole hometown
open throat / scream for two decades and still
/ crawl out with their voice intact, so

this one buys a plane ticket to pace
the arena of my apartment when alone / 
breaks a mirror questioning 
where to put their new stripes, so
attempts to clean up carcass they did not 
mean to kill, but

tigers attack prey with their
entire body weight. throw whole self
against defenseless other, name
grave within chest “tender” then try
to tear it out. but

tigers are just big cats. you can 
mimic a mother cat’s sass in order to get
a kitten to chill out by grabbing
the fur on the back of their neck and
picking them up—

fact: there is a tiger face-down in my bed
fact: they are grabbing the hair above 
the back of my neck, or, 
doing their best to claw the grave
out of me also. i say,
what do you want?
they respond,
i don’t know. never before have i been asked
where i came from. see,

tigers are solitary creatures.
do not want to be tamed / just noticed
for something / other than their teeth.

fact: there is a tiger singing along to the radio in my car
fact: we are on the way to the airport
they say,
i’m glad i came here.

the truth is, they are really good at singing.
but they don’t know all the lyrics, so
the song kinda comes out like
who’s gonna help me… dig my own grave? 
and i’ve been tryin’. who’s gonna help me… 
dig my own grave? and i’ve been… help…

But it was easy—to picture
you cupping that
small phone so
gently, waiting
for the buzz that means
I’ve reached back where
you’ve reached in
again, waiting to feel
your gut bounce up
then down, plummeting
to that depth we call
a cavern, or love, or
the loss of air coming easy
to lungs that don’t
ask for it. Love, I
am asking for it. &
it is easy now, to turn
my head just so & behold
a plastic cup ringed
in burgundy,
to run my fingers
along the edge
of my own body & 
remember: I have drowned
before. Will drown
again. Will love
how an addict loves
& maybe that makes me
the dumbest kind
of woman. O, sweet 
morning, sweet bitter
film glazing my teeth.
I drink the wine. I
drink the wine. I drink
the wine—

Momma grew bad flowers
outta her butt cheeks
tak-a-tak rhythm
running a train track
though cotton panties.

She found me in the street 
the way Albertine found her
the way Jean Genet found her
the whole bastard ancestry 
of rock star poets going back 
to God herself

and now God is shucking oysters at the deli,
watching sweat hiss down salt arms
until it evaporates
halfway to the ground.

Momma I’ve got a belly full of poems
and a demon on my back, and all
the demons come with backups;
show them a cruciform and they’ll reboot.

Momma they raped me by the station.
Momma they chained me to the earth.
Momma my body doesn’t fit like it used to.

and
I went to sleep at night thinking I would die
and
I went to sleep at night hoping I would die
and 
I went to sleep at night, woke up in Père Lachaise 
breathing bone dust.

Momma where were you in the night?
Where was your holy voice 
and your wrists that look like mine?
Where were your wings when I needed them?

Momma I have seen the face of God
and she is awkward
Boy elbows. White shirt.
Sainted urchin. Car crash alchemist.

Momma thank you. 
You taught me rough 
and weird 
and urgent 
Momma thank you. 
Thank you.
Amen.

When I am not okay, I read my own poems aloud in the dark. It turns my body to a whisper (or a scream, muted by a childhood toy) and the clotted blood is a misplaced memory, remembered wrong (is hot honey drip dripping on the kitchen linoleum), the unreturned phone calls: clementine pulp, stuck between your teeth (fangs, resting gently against your neck) and I am waiting & waiting & waiting

And I am alone at a party where my mouth is too big for the room and all I can think is Where did all this glitter come from? Some man with scary big wings blunders through, he leaves funny little bird prints on the carpet, and my throat is raw & there’s ash in my hair, but I want to ask, do you think you’re God? Or is this an Icarus thing? But he’s squawking at my friend and I’m sick from big men with loud voices so it comes out, Fuck you, don’t talk to her like that, like We don’t want you here and my nails are caked in blood & my knees are all scraped up, all gravel and confetti and skin, like what happened here, did I pick another fight? With who? Which mirror? Like no I just need a minute, I’m looking for you and I know, I know, too much is too much, like who would win though, me or God? Like call a cab but I’m broke, we can walk the six miles, like the rain is only raining, like hang on five minutes, like please pick up your phone your fucking phone please be okay please pick up your body my body like please

Because I’ve been drinking about how to walk with my shoulders straight and my chin up tall. How to become numb enough to turn harsh rain to gentle fog and I’ve been thinking about bus tickets to Paris and catching the tube to Heathrow and we don’t say ‘I love you’ anymore and I’ve been thinking about free breakfasts and about we don’t talk anymore and I’ve been thinking about telling you ‘fucking isn’t fun anymore’; I’ve been thinking about describing the sun: it kisses so much harder here, like these European men, I’ve been thinking about airplanes and oceans and music, about the clubs in Budapest and I’ve been thinking about falling so far apart and thinking it on the Atlantic, not my fault, yours too, and the drug habit, you can’t get higher and complain so I’ve been thinking about never wanting to know you again, but I brought you home to my mother and I’m thinking about asking her how she got so fucking lucky, and I’ve been thinking about why I hardly think of you anymore; I’ve been drinking to think of you while kissing strangers and I’ve been thinking about how sharp some teeth are and I’ve been thinking about washing your hair in the shower, but we won’t do that anymore. I’ll land in Portland and we’ll talk about uni and jobs and moving on and you’ll say, let’s drink about it and I’ll say of course another round because I’ve been thinking about how to think about you, think of you, for months.

I do not drink from the muddy water
even though I know just where the faucet is
and I feel so thirsty

what is the name for that
that gut feeling
the one that tells you
to do the wrong thing
it wants you to drink that
that muddy water, lusts after it
and how do you kill it?

do you remember those girls
who told you your shoes were too clean?
they were right
even if they were not gentle

you’ve got to get dirty to get what you want
you get dirty by climbing out

One day my mother went through my garbage and thought I was doing a bottle drive.
Because “bottle drive” is a lot easier to explain than “I’ve been drunk every night since I wasn’t
enough to keep him sober” I left the trash bag in my room for two weeks.
When I couldn’t sleep I’d empty it onto my floor and study the labels.
Tried to reach back into my brain and pull out the memories of what we had in common.
All whiskey.
Jack and Jim went up to him and told him not to love me.

Six beers told him that distance was too hard.
Held us by the throat.
Miles hung over our heads like the blade of a guillotine.
There is so much space between us but no room for mistakes
and I am a messy drunk.
I fall down a lot.
It is hard to drive five hours to pick someone up off the floor but I wanted more
than to wake up to that message on my machine singing wish you were here.
We have bellies full of beer.
We have bellies full of coal.

We talk about killing each other when the pain doesn’t go away
in the morning.
He gets quiet before saying that he would kill me first and then
drown himself.
I don’t answer because I would have placed my lips on his,
one finger on the trigger, one hand soft on his neck.
I would have shot us both
through the back of my head because if the grim reaper
comes to take my love away, he’s gonna have to go through me.

Instead I say this: 
“I love you too much to ever think about you dying”

Every day, I talk to people
who never threw glasses against walls
in an attempt to free a creature
they couldn’t name—
I only realize it sometimes.

I could leave California 
just to wear jackets over sweaters
year round, piling layers on layers
of cotton and wool around this sarcophagus.

My significantly older ex texts me:
I still read your blog sometimes,
if that’s okay and 
I just want you to know 
I think you’re wonderful.

It’s less creepy than it sounds.
Maybe it’s the circumstances,
swear to God. Maybe it’s remembering
the Coke bottle full of flowers
and not the sweat dripping on my face.

Each day’s course is set in the time
it takes to lock my door, if I get that far.
Watch part of me stay in the lighthouse
at the back of my skull, waiting.

The stuff around my skeleton
gets thick and sloshy with the words
people might think about me.

When I imagine people
thinking about me being wonderful
it makes my eyes and throat sting.

It feels like stories my sister told me
about the worlds behind mirrors.
How inside them, there were people
exactly like us, but just a little smoother
and brighter. At night, I thought maybe
I could barely make them out
behind my scabbed-over pimples.

The hammock lies with me tonight, comforting
as it spoons me like an ocean does a drowning boy.
I lay, musky green forest storm finding a tunnel 
through my nostril-like caves; a chaotic wind that 
perhaps makes me feel a little more sane as I walk through
this castle of golden spoons and chalices. The admissions
officer gave me a silver hat to wear. I dream of violet genesis.
The kind that is like the end of the world, but beautiful.
Wake me when roses char. Ashing petal drifting into
my hot sauna godforsaken skull. Brittle bone, fleshy 
stomach full of rice.

In the event of my demise,
there is a place you will need to know about.

I am telling this to a tree,
or to an empty playground.
or maybe I am washing myself in the neon
of a liquor store sign and telling this to the bars on its windows.
My shadow and I circle each other.
4 AM is the same no matter where it takes place.
It will always yield a dead street where my newest confidant
waits silently for me to deliver my last will and testament.
One of them has paper, one of them is taking this all down.

In the event of my demise, I tell them,
There is a certain mountain peak where lightning
took a fire lookout down to its foundations.
I have a need for symmetry.
Lay my broken body on the highest stones,
among the globs of melted glass,
the place where there is nothing between me and the storm.
Take down this arcature of ink,
the bare walls beneath, this heavy henge of bone,
and wait.
A sweet cedar breath will rise up from the valleys and lift what is left of me,
all moth wing, all buzzard feather, the tissue of a hornet’s nest,
and carry me off.

My drunk bleary brain knows that there is only one exit from which I will leave.
My soul must screech out of this world
from the top of that mountain,
into the howling sky, into the pelting rain.

Other times the call was downward:
to step off the bridge into february waters;
to supplicate and offer up the disgraceful contents of my guts,
at the altar of the toilet, to the gods of bourbon and vitriol;
to see my reflection in the busted stiletto heel I left stuck in a grate.

But now I am certain I want to go out the same way I came in,
when I was born someone lifted me up to inspect me in the light,
and I should die under the same circumstances.
I have a need for symmetry.

Weaving between soup kitchen sinners and the fortune tellers card tables
I wind my way to these trusted sentinels,
and beg them to lift me.