There was the year I kept forgetting how old I was
And what to do with my mouth

I climb into the fridge a blue hole
The girl I kiss holds my hair in her fingers

She walks behind me I don’t watch her face
She holds my ribs in her sharp hands like music

His fist held my wrist like creation
I wanted to puke but did not

Some girls get so sweet when they’re drunk
I yell into the phone like my father

I looked like him when i was first born
Black hair slick with the gel of placenta

I used to think there was lots of grey area
I used to make a list of pros and cons

The bruises on my body look mean 
I take a picture of my tits in the mirror

I told this one ex about what had happened
He talked about girls who used to reject him

He said it’s like we have opposite problems
It’s not like that I still let him cry

This is about to be the hottest picture ever
Can sex please be a really good joke

We can laugh at our sorrow like candy
We can roll it tight into a bill we can breathe

They wanted you to believe it was the ‘50s
those ‘80s purveyors of Teen Beat, Tiger 
Beat, Bop, and other idol mags replete with 
pinups of cherubic porn stars in popped up 
collars posed against the ubiquitous woodsy 
backdrop every mustachioed photographer 
knew and loved, or in front of perfectly 
manicured lawns with the perquisite white picket 
fences and blurry blooms of promise. Action 
shots of standing up on rolling bicycles or 
straddling unscuffed surfboards, insipid 
interviews mentioning their favorite ice cream 
flavor was vanilla, always vanilla, or they were 
saving intercourse for where it belonged—
the glistening future of marriages, mortgages, 
and malcontented kids. These paragons of bygone 
virtue always grew up to be queers, drug addicts,
and other things McCarthy wouldn’t like,
but as a rapt child lying prostrate in my upper
bunk bed with my feet crossed behind me,
I savored each PR morsel as if it were manna
fallen from the suburban summer sky. I hungered 
to pull out my transistor radio and swoon to some Elvis 
or rockabilly hits, while imagining each celebrity 
in turn would swoop down from Mt. Olympus just to court 
me at next Saturday’s sock hop right after I sewed the poodle 
on my skirt, padded my bra, and promised my mother
I wouldn’t allow any heavy petting in the front seat
of his overpriced, fresh-off-the-lot Cadillac.

Those fuckers had me hook, line, and picture.

First thing’s first. I want your body. I imagine 
a door. You are in the room making jokes 
about how absurd you look in a plain t-shirt.

We haven’t seen each other in over a decade. 
I want the Danube to part and reveal our bones,

delicate curves of mollusks. I want the Black Forest 
over us, canopy of dark where we lose the voice 
our mothers gave to us. Every wound unfurled, wet

foxes out of our throats, tenderly at first then full run
toward the door. I move. You’re ever moving away

from me. You’re not one for chances. You
stay right where you are. The soldiers prayed, 
too, for this transport to happen. A man

lifts his body over the creek one last time 
to walk toward the desert mule that carried him

toward a lover that died two years prior.
His journey was spent with her & she was with him 
eating olives he picked for her. She laughed at his jokes,

his hands steered the mule continually west. 
His heart would give out later that year

before the onset of winter. He knew it before 
he knew it, remembered his brother falling off the roof

while making patches for their father. The impact 
broke his neck. He couldn’t see what his brother could

see. We tell ourselves stories to keep sane. I know 
God stalks me. I want the village of Gengenbach 
to gather for a banquet. I want the unearthed bodies

of our anger to ask forgiveness from everyone 
we’ve married, then set you, unhinged, under me.

Maybe it’s the caffeine,
but when you speak
to me, you look 
into my eyes 
and I notice.

You point out the sky,
say there’s a storm
brewing. At first, I think 
I am the storm—
but when I drive home,
the lightning strikes,
and all I want to do
is call you and say,
come find me.

I fall in love 
everyday, but
not like this.
Not like this.

I built your brother wings:
wax and feather they were,
white as cloud they were,
and he flew away from me.
Until, sun-scorched, he fell
taken by the sea.

For you, my son, I built a cage:
wire and driftwood it is,
white as bone it is,
and you will remain with me.
Until, time-withered, you fall
taken by an endless sleep.

Little boys are made to burn;
they blacken their parents’ hearts.
I am sorry you missed my paler youth.
Your brother took that from me,
as he took your flight from you.

With what little kindness was left in me,
I hung your cage at the edge of a sea cliff.
So, should you feel like flying one day,
you will fall into your brother’s arms.

borrowing a line from Walt Whitman

because there’s always one week where there is a nightmare.

because the boundaries of a city are the friendships we made

along the way.

because i don’t like my thighs. you do.

because the vending machine gave me an extra missile.

because someone kisses my cheek at night and i know they’ll be there

at dawn.

because dinosaurs had lovers too, before the asteroid settled in.

and what are you a doctor of, archeology or physics?

the trauma, or the blunt force?

because god gave me hands to squeeze, fingers to mouth.

because my twitter timeline holds a secret only i can find.

shhh- don’t tell.

because on maps, the distance has a way of seeming surmountable-

the topology of loss doesn’t want to be a line.

because i’m singing, all at once and right on key.

because the temple, the grandeur, the slicing of the tendon.

because the tree turned upside down,

the roots turned branches, all the leaves crammed under dirt,

suffocating.

i’m writing trees because i’m sick of trying to make corpses

lovely.

i guess i’ll just song of myself again: I wish I could translate

the hints about the dead young men and women.

because maybe this time i will find only the one corpse beside me

at dawn. his lips latched onto my cheek.  

dinosaurs, the both of us, waiting for the end of everything.

That taste of sour-red-sweet

            as

seeds stick                      to

                                    teeth:

sun hazes

over naked legs.

You eat more,

flush,

the ripe

burst

of summer.

Outside my therapist’s office, three men are planting ferns,

pruning bushes, cutting back the tangled vines          

that twine across the building’s bricks, covering them in green,

and when I reach the door one of them has risen,

and nods his head, and it seems a nod that verges

on pity, as if he’s seeing

into the room I’ll enter to empty myself of grief

       and wants to offer

one gesture before turning back to the roses,

a projection I should share

but never will. Inside, I settle

in the chair across from her, the woman

I see each week despite my fear of being seen.

Have you thought over,

she asks, what we talked about last time? She’s trying

to get me to forgive

            myself. She wants to free me

of the song

I play over and over

            in my mind, which governs

every part of me: nerves,

veins,

            fingers,

ego.

I sing

myself my sins:

Clear, dry gin.

The man I loved (my roving

heart). The fringes

that I occupied. My father

in his hospital bed and I

            too late. What severing

it must take to let this go.

And now she says, moving a little closer to the edge

of her chair, really seeing

me, or

wanting to, I had a patient once,

in a place far from here, who,

in the impenetrable fog

of her disorders, and guided by some sick version

of herself, killed her three little sons.

And when she came

to see me, after the fever

of her sin

had burned the memory to fine

dust, she didn’t even

know what she had done.

And I had to decide—do I

tell her what she did? And now an ambulance goes

            by outside. I follow the noise

of its thin siren

dragging itself down the street until it’s gone,

and those men, I suppose, are finishing

their work, satisfied by having given

life to that garden, and the garden, content

in being tended to, everything green

and free

to bloom. She says:

I didn’t tell her.