beneath a camouflage of summer-
leafed trees, stanchion parking meters
hold rigid their lines, ticking off
minutes until cardinal-colored semaphores
flash one after the other
above the pale night-clock rolls on
rearranging weightless shadows
that barely skim the silver
tributary threading its way
past vertical terrains of glass and block
as bullfrog-bellows wheeze out
splashes one after the other
The whole place smelt like pig slaughter.
It got worse the longer we stayed.
Dirt and fear and dark night that laid
in our chests in ways that felt
violent; ways that violated.
You kept asking if I was okay
as if to say my not being so
got in the way. You’re embarrassed
and I’m trying to be brave—
Remember names, stop smiling late.
I want all the pigs to be okay.
Knowing it’s far too late
What we taste now is a haunting
It sits between us in the dead
of night. Blood in the streets like
it’s normal to breathe in such pain.
Some things you can’t take back and
they sit inside your interactions like a hazard.
Who cleans after the slaughter? I imagine
Red tinged cement that foreshadows to
innocent hooves unexpected permanence.
Tonight a blood moon hovers patiently
While I corner a stranger for something
worth killing to eat
worth dying to love.
is awake early because the light is too stubborn
to stay behind blinds, birds already so loud
I’m squinting, June is buzz, whirr, the window AC unit
full blast but still, June tosses and turns, awake again
and June smells like swamp, like sweat, like little bits of armpit
hair stuck to the razor, the sink, the elbow, June spits
dry shampoo but nothing can swallow the grease, June
reminds me of my younger years in the minutes before
work calls, June wipes the makeup off my glazed forehead,
bathroom mirror glare, water cooler stream, June sun
shines through my office window like a greenhouse, June tells
the coworkers get out it’s too hot I can’t think and June
walks me home past the gas station, stomps
styrofoam slushies into fresh grass cuttings, haunts
my stovetop, slips through the brita and ice tray,
stalks, showers, salts, and whisper pricks my skin
until all I feel is slick behind my knees.
you cut out the flower at its stem
and planted it into your hair where it grew in, like it had always belonged but got lost so you put it back again
you remind me of like little hints of heaven hymns, the point where Iridescent colors blend, the smell of Crabtree and Evelyn
oodles and oodles of other synonyms, a cold happiness like winter and cinnamon
after Dan Gottlieb
Everyone has a big black thing that falls
from the sky he says, like the truck tire
that came flying through his windshield
he hardly remembers when he could not
lift his head, when it took two attendants
to drop him into the wheelchair
but he remembers fits of anger
when he was not able to reach for a cup
when his fingers could not grasp his pen
he wanted to shake his fist at God –
but even that he could not do
Ah, in time we all learn
to do what we think we cannot do, he says
I am more than my body
he says, quoting Ram Dass
I am more than the one whose house burned down
more than the one whose job was cut, whose partner left
more than a diagnosis, more than a refugee, more than a victim
we learn to manage what we think we cannot and we survive
wounds, once raw, turn to scars
scars, once purple and thick, fade and flatten
leave a prickly numbness, invisible to others, that help us remember
