My dear phantom,

there is fire

where my skin

should be sleeping.

I swallow: there's burning.

I am haunted

tracing the trail

left by lovemaking.

Dollars folded between

breasts: my share.

The bassline

of his heartbeat

reminds me of the ring

on my finger, the sway

of indecision and homicide.

My dear phantom,

the skin remembers

what is missing,

a life amputated,

dreams outlined in chalk.

On Persistence

We are halved
caricatures.
I am the foil,
the copy to your
original.
With blistered skin
we wait for the crease
of night to fold us in.
Between measured breaths
I cradle my patience,
your damage. Perhaps
I will sacrifice you,
the forerunner, the magician.
Perhaps I will read your lips
while you are sleeping,
crack the code
of your indifference,
swelter in the heat of knowing.
Perhaps we are halved
caricatures of free radicals
in an open shell--
dangerous yet predictable, alone.

Curl a foot under.
A toe, a city.

I hide your stories, feed none,
write new ones in the dark.

Heel grazes Nevada, I
tumble over Colorado.

In a hot minute
I am tired of punching.

Jagged state lines
cut my feet,

well-traveled anxiety.
You will never get caught.

Precious and Invisible

I snap the necks
of those flowers so easily,
evidence of the red tape
I had to cut through.
I brand you
with a thumbprint,
fire breath, diseased promise.
I will flay you
fuck you
betray you
the dark you, mystery
you.
I gave her a bouquet
but she threw it away,
newspaper smile.
Separate sockets to plug you in
separate flesh to burn.
Saw your engagement,
public announcement,
random, left me raw.
I will flay you
fuck you
betray you
the dark you, mystery
you, the you
who knows not what she wants,
the you with tender secrets
stashed in mattresses, folded pamphlets,
scar tissue, wet birth control.
I will kill
the focus, the frozen stare
precious and invisible.
I will kill again

Re-visit

She steps into the shady swamp
hands twitching, soul folded
     where the long wait ends.
                     The secret smooth package
                     drops into the weeds, tender and small.

            She extends her swan neck and tongues it
            between breaths slack with frustration,
and after a while it ascends and becomes a creature
like her, tender and small.

So now there are two. They walk together
              like mist through the trees.
         In early April, at the edge of a field
         painted with daffodils
         I meet them.

I can only stare.

              Her child leaps among the flowers,
            the blue silk of sky falls over me,
          the flowers burn, and I want to live
        my life all over again, to begin again,
               to be utterly wild.

After Mary Oliver

Infractus

We are borne of the right moment
to be frail, a somebody, a nobody.
We are the loved.

Regardless of where you are, I am here.
This is the grief of the unexpected.
Love breathes between synapses,

in moments leading up to memory.
You said that your cancer was gone,
eaten by light rays and chemicals,

and yet I am here, the dirty cell, unbroken,
the organism only moved to love, to divide
contrasts, moments leading up to memory.

We are the loved. We are the beautiful,
created from dust, from each other,
from the war between nerve endings.

I am hopeful that the chemistry of wisdom
leads not to apathy, but to the moments
leading up to your memory, your front door,

my hands holding flowers, colors
sharp and pretty, just for you. You
cannot know you are this loved.

You are so frail, a nobody, a somebody,
a perfect cell, cradled in Time's perfect brow.
You are the loved.

Closed Medicine Cabinet

This is the one where the poet plagiarizes herself,
beyond the sycophantic, uber frantic, triple threat
of making it look harder than it is.

Washed up on the shore, the untamed imagination,
swaddled in seaweed--at last, we are afraid of the sublime.
At last, your tender throat can give.

I shower you with uncertain phrases, sprinkle your kind
with pages of desperate violence, the cold knives
of trial and error, the confidence of murder.

There is always an I and always a you and always the temperance,
the boundaries, the differance--the meaning deferred,
which is why the light is brief, a bomb exploding, then silence.

The structure has inherent purpose, determined before it is used--
a bruised attempt to make objects universal. I carry my voice beyond
the threshold until the language pops, threatened, broken.