Prayer

Deep-fried memory slide.

On this bass ackwards 
fucked-up road trip. 

Backseat shrine to blackouts
& strobe light lucidity.

I cling. Seem to 
fuck up everything. Serpents slide 

between the sockets of my eyes. 

When we get there
I hope the weather is good.

Toska  

The afternoon I dressed in your softest flannel we drank Sprite & vodka out of paper cups. There was a gossip of lawn chairs, a funeral procession of ants, the sky straight monotone, grey as teeth.

Other languages have single words for feelings. In Russian, the word Toska means sadness. Nabokov writes on the subject, “No single word in English renders all the shades of Toska.” Goya is an Urdu word for when fantasy feels like reality.

There is no single word in the English language for I want to live with you inside the beehive latched to the plastic slide in your backyard. No word for the reddish color of your shirt is now a part of my body. I had no language for the way time felt when I was with you, how the corners of the afternoon seemed to curl up like an old photograph.

Polaroid

In my underwear, I dragged my body through the week. 
I unclogged the drain, binge-watched The Sopranos, 

accumulated empty bottles on my nightstand. 
Watched Kylie Jenner peel the dead skin 

off her daughter’s toes. Dogs are wonderful creatures  
because they understand love without language or assurance. 

Today, purple lipstick, earrings that don’t match, 
tangerine segments, on the webcam my ass 

looks totally amazing. I wear Grandma’s mink 
& my Chuck Taylors to the supermarket. I drink blood 

orange mimosas at brunch. Later, M drops the joint 
into his soda cup & the sizzle signals the end.

imaginary farmhouse

in our imaginary farmhouse:  goats, 
chickens, too many dogs 
to name, a darkroom, a library, his lips 
pressing yellow blossoms 
on my inner thigh. we’d go out 
into the backyard & sit 
in the tall grass, we’d slice into molecules. 
we’d be ice settling in a glass. 

I arrived in this dream rattle-boned 
dog-hungry like I’d never 
seen the sun.  I scoured the porch  
for our matching blue
addictions. I was wrong to believe 
in love. what we did not 
account for: the upkeep, the mounds  
of shit, the clumps of hair

Homecoming

The Long Island Railroad gently rocks me back to the suburbs,
where spring means tentative opening 
of front doors, pollen, clean gutters, & wet tar. 

I think about the impermanence of driveways, how if you were to lift 
away the asphalt you would leave scars in the earth. 
The Long Island Railroad gently rocks me back to the suburbs.

Tentative opening of front doors, the sounds of lawnmowers 
& April rain. From Penn, a beer larger than my head as salve, 
I put my anger where it belongs, try to unplug 

my hometown from my heartsocket. I am gently rocked back 
to the humming coma of air-conditioners. 
The lights of the old train car are tentative & flickering.

I did not realize I was bleeding through my sock. 
Time sprung from the opening. My hometown. 
My heartsocket. I bleed through my purple sock. 
Back to the suburbs the railroad gently rocks me.

Hideaway
After D.A Powell 

his body was hideaway.    tasted so beautiful in the lamplight.   I tongued 
his inner cavities.   his soft corners.   I bottled his gestures in a recycled tomato jar.  

his temper.    winter bourbons.    his smell of bergamot and mandarin.  his blue jeans 
with the hole in the crotch.   I wasn’t the dog I was the collar.   our laughter 

spilling viscera.   we wanted to do it  better than our parents.   I only meant 
to keep warm in the broad bay of his shoulders.   ugly and infant.  

what was I to him.  a fifth of vodka.  an acne scar.  a loose button on his shirt

Safe Haven

In that dry land of suburbia.
In that dull new underworld
of tampons & stained bed sheets.

The mouth of the cul-de-sac 
gaped open, houses 
glittered like teeth

in a blue fog. 
That immaculate winter.
That place 

I carved for myself. 
My mother became a finger print 
more & more visible. Her voice  

a yellow song I nailed 
to the door, stirring in the wind 
like a string of fluttering stars.

Cul-de-sac

The term Cul-de-sac means dead end. No through road. No Exit. It derives from the term derivitculum, meaning ‘an abnormal pouch or sac opening from a hollow organ.’ From the Latin Culus, bottom, or bottom of a sack. 

By these standards, if the neighborhood is a living organism, then the cul-de-sac is an abnormal growth. The cul-de-sac has a fine skin of freshly cut grass. It has been said that the cul-de-sac is “a suburban treasure left to die.” The cul-de-sac embodies a period more than a comma. An ending to a thought. Something you circle around on a bicycle in the heat of an afternoon. 

Gently

Today, with you, is a fat saccharine pill. 

The air in your car wet with whiskey 
& spring murmuring 

pink light, you remove 
your hand from my leg 

& the ghost of your fingertips 
leave small opals 

on my thigh. We touch 
in orange swaths 
of sunlight. We arrange rock gardens 

on the beach at low-tide, linger 
on fields of dried sea grass & exposed 
muscle beds. 

From you, I learn 
to draw myself more gently. You kiss 

the blue tunnels 
in my chest, my inner ache. 

From your wrist, I fish out the most beautiful 
& unusual. 

Porch Song

August nights turn themselves over 
like criminals, wrists skyward 

in submission to cuffing season. 
On my back porch, Emma & I still 

two doe smoking cigarettes & doing blow 
out of a tampon applicator. Animal alert 

to sounds of my mother in the kitchen.
Mulatu Astatke’s Tezeta woven into dark 

& teeth soaked in red wine party.
Emma says, winter is sexy  

when the trees get naked.
I’ve been in therapy 

for ten years & I still 
can’t get shit right. 

Especially winter, especially 
hunger pains. Xanax eyes 

and fast food shame. 
Summer is the loneliest season 

which is why I love degradation.
I take off my kimono, 

my animal parts visible. The truth is 
when I’m drinking

I almost never use condoms. 
The truth is Georgia O’Keefe 

says my uterus looks like the skull of a ram. 
Does this mean holy? 

Aren’t rams meant for sacrifice? 
Maybe it’s God who drinks dry martinis

& sends late night booty calls. 
I am the God 

of my own functional depression. 
I live for scar tissue, for honey whiskey, 

for the moment, even when the moment 
grows arms & tries to hold me.