time to bind, it's here.

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scientific evidence of an afterlife

A white room. A light. The voice of a god,

yes, but what about blood thick in the heart,

oxygen, orgasms, salt, a hot shower,

your mother and you in a rocking chair,

virgin fossils, babies that your belly fed,

what about an image of a white horse

and a deep pilgrimage, a gut feeling,

some relic in a jar, fingers crossed, wet

words hot in the mouth, slices of meat,

a left hand, in it a cave, a goddess of mercy,

the moon, two people, a love story,

with a dress, the smell of spring,

the lace of a mouth, an island,

a face in the bathroom mirror,

little boats, the wind knocks,

your whole body, on the porch,

carrying the sediment of evening,

then the sound of a tree, wings, hair,

lights for miles.

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The Night I Realize I am in Love with You

I close my eyes and imagine a flowered urn.

I imagine holding you, broken-necked

dying. I will tell you not to be afraid.

I will tell you to breathe slowly.

You are sticky with blood, your tongue

swelling, but I will not turn away.

I will press my face to yours, tell you

there is nowhere else for me to go but with you.

I want to sleep. I want to eat dead stars.

I will say your name like an animal. I will kiss you.

I will tell you that mine is a melting,

unmerciful love, that there is no such thing

as disregard. You will taste like iron, like body,

like earth. Your hair, matted, thick with blood

will smell like you, like sprouting trees.

But there is only so long I can watch

until I will start to shake, until I will want

to be washed away. I am unwilling

to let you become a trick of light, one

afternoon, a heavy body. I will curl up

beside you, will the gunman to return.

I will kiss his face to hear his phrases,

to feel his dirty hands drain me, to set the barn

on fire and let me burn away beside you.

I will have the stillest kind of sadness.

But if he never comes, I will not give up.

We will be on our backs, left in the ground.

If I can drag you, I will.

The lake is deep enough,

the fence charged.

.
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[entrance to a school]

black stiff fabric
humid, rainy with
multi-colored
yellow,
blue,
pink.
f l e s h plastic.

can't see over
down is trafffic,
is trees.

stuck on a neoclassical stoop.
waiting on a way out, really.

take a couple with you.
be the first one out.
don't let the sticky stick you.

burn of polymer:
you smell a fake!

a fake willing to be so.
at least with a function,
a manufactured utilitas.

_________________
[reprise]

a door creeks and makes your cramped situation worse.
you don't feel it yet, but it's coming.
packed like atoms.
different than in rooms.
so close to outside.
(outside, in fact)
but the rain makes a curtain
a dressing screen.
you won't go out there.
until your momma comes to pick you up.
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I need a title please!

You are in elevator 41463

and you are going down

and you think about what he said

the last time he pulled himself out of you,

how your name slid off his tongue

and onto the peak of your throat

and beaded there, hot, still, throbbing.

You put your hand to your mouth

and you catch yourself behind a man

in a dark suit, his feet shoulder width apart.

You are both going down.

You imagine his body

pieced together, pinned

in the black dark of a box.

The man steps off and you

are alone and going down.

You remember the lentil soup,

dark wood, your mother’s coffee.

Sometimes you think you understand,

but his eyes were half shut

and it was a such short fight.

The doors open and two women step on.

They are talking about their children,

and you see a pit of bodies

light as breadcrumbs beneath a black soil.

The numbers flash above you,

you swallow, loud and thick,

and the three of you are going down.

They stop talking,

and you think about his socks

balled beneath the bed,

the screen door shutting after him,

the feeling of an entire day,

and suddenly you feel bloodless,

the weight of you like a wooden bucket going down.

When you are alone again

you sidle up beside yourself

but you can’t bring yourself to speak

anything but the names of things.

Dirt, cedar, ditch.

You smell a second person in the heat.

You both are going down.

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beandom accompaniment

Slow Death

People doing what needs to be done,

tread their tongues to mouth

the end of a lover’s name.

Empty sound escapes

as if they are screaming

at the bottom of a lake.

Saint John sealed both of my eyes

in the middle of the night,

pistol in his left hand, furious.

Night is for loving or sleeping, he said.

I can do neither so I let him blind me,

drive his fingers into me until I believe

every word he says about the long lengths

of men, that there are no flat surfaces in the dark.

When he leaves I see Mary walking on water.

She carries a magazine in her left hand

and its pages are open to clean faces

performing the functions of divorce,

foreheads split in two from a pale hand

forcing in a stripped screw. The holes

of their ears are hooked to the concrete

and drying up across the floor.

I know now that nothing can be rebuilt.

The ordinary man has to pay for repairs.

Mary holds my hand for longer than usual,

strange, turbulent, not speaking. I ask

if everything is capable of being broken.

This is a fixed disaster, she says.

It is both linear and circular.

You are both circle and line.

Ophelia became the swamp

and I wish to be her crooked body

kicked and torn and beaten.

What a romantic way to be,

fused with dark morning rain

death’s stamp on shining cheeks.

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a preview

We Rot Together

When you speak your first words

I will remember how

my fluids filled your airways.

How our dying bones hooked,

tangled in some divine love –

partly sharp, partly soft wool.

We rot together.

When you go to die

I will give you

paper gifts, combs, and jars.

I will close the house,

keep the rooms still –

every cupboard open.

I will love you dead.

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an early poem.

for you all.

FUNDACIO JOAN MIRO, MONT JUIC

Painting and poetry are done in the same way you make love; its an exchange of blood, a total embrace—without caution, without any thought of protecting yourself.” – Joan Miro

A homeless man pinched my nipple once on Nou de la Rambla

in front of the supermercat on my way to class, the same store

that the screaming lady with a splinted arm tries to steal candy bars

from everyday, a Voll Damm beer in her good hand, a glassed look

in her black eyes. I didn’t know what to say to the homeless man

and his dirty fingernails coming at me or the woman and her beer

but I wanted to speak in my broken Spanish, if only to say your welcome

for the feel and stop screaming, I’m trying to sleep. He probably would have

turned around and smacked me on the ass, and she’d have sat me down

with a yell and tried to warn me of the next inquisition, braced arm waving defiantly over her head. Dylan and I could hear her now as we made our way

toward Mont Juic to the Miro museum. We knew we’d miss her, her screams a lullaby we’d come to expect from El Raval, along with

the doner kebabs, the street we coined Tranny Alley with corners full of big,

beautiful men and women strutting their oiled limbs, locking arms with

young Americans stumbling home at 4 a.m. until they are pushed off the streets by the trucks with the long thick hoses, spraying water every few

hours, circulating, cleaning the city. From Mont Juic on this particular day

the shanties had a silver lining. Sagrada and the Torre Agbar stood erect, pointing skyward, symbols of God and water.

The kelp of the city will reach their fingers out and touch,

without caution, total embrace hands to our nipples, our heads, our knees,

as if to say go forward in one breath and you are never free

from me in the other. This is the exchange of blood, this touching, this hurt, this pulse

of the city, the falling down from 12 inch sidewalks into gutters, climbing to the top of art museums to see the shanty rooftops stacked, some

white, some green, some falling inward. One day in mid October Barcelona and I

stopped in the center of the playground and pricked our fingers with found razor blades.

We pressed them together. I feared nothing but separation. Living is like

making love, all that blood, embrace. We try to protect ourselves,

but how could we ever, with all those beautiful bodies running around us, their dirty hands, splinted arms, oiled limbs, thick hoses. The lark's wing ringed in the blue of gold meets the heart of the poppy asleep on the field studded with diamonds, 1967.

A black line divides us. I am black and blue. I am already lonely.

My bloody thumbprint, your diamond field.

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