Category: Poetry

Square teeth gummed

with grey filament,

cuspid and bicuspid,

cleave open my clavicle &

peck out the heart like a wet pip

sizzling. A glut, a guttering, head

engorged and swelling like a tick. Santé.

 

It is our own fault, really.

Diligent hands decode our bodies

to a riddle of bone, leave us segmented

in painless pieces.

 

Can you stomach me

now? Stripped and stippled . . .

On the phone, she didn’t have to call it

danger. We all know how to flirt our way out

if you have to. Watch your drink, park under a light,

walk so you can see between the cars.

 

We held hands to leave, though they hooted

at us to kiss when they saw. But how else to

hide the shaking. Bruises on her ass, her

wrists, her thighs. She called them geography.

 

Bad joke. Lessons they . . .

In the grove of trees there is total darkness, shrouded

by the curvature of the hills and concealed by the community

garden, the back of the baseball dugout, the stone wall

around the stone house. Why bother parking the car

when seclusion waits right there out in the open for us?

I teach you the practice before you learn the words.

I have dirt on my knees below the skin; . . .

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys & desires.

—William Blake

 

At first, laid down on clay tablets

like the footprints of a slender bird,

then, progressed through dried skins and pulp,

burgeoning past parchment

to a flood of writs so numerous

as to be incomprehensible—

mulled by the nine

in their archaic robes, . . .

Not so long ago, my baby floated in amniotic wai.

Oceans within oceans, and beneath them—wai.

 

Kunawai spring makes a way through concrete,

beneath streets, alongside apartments, burbling wai.

 

Double the word for water in Hawaiian and the sum

means: goods, value, worth, wealth, importance—waiwai.

 

At Red Hill, the US Navy stores 200 million gallons of fuel . . .

Oʻahu in May

the island

 

Red

 

 

 

none of it

water . . .

the peas are in the ground and maybe it’ll work

this time. I kiss your shoulders and crack jokes,

one day on, one day off, just like our doctor said,

and when the clock reads 11:11

our fingers twine, and we hold on so tight.

 

downborder, they’re stealing bodies: put her in the dirt

and chant the words, she’ll do your furtive will. a million

Murder Legendre brides reduced . . .

*left eye* the moon/chewed and spit across the sky

 

*right eye* a slender girl/leaning on a lamppost/her body newly claimed

 

*neck* hands/uninvited/ !

 

*nose* seven starlings wheel across the sky/bear her weight

 

*hair* wild horses/meandering attention/the half-life of respect

 

*lips* curl of waves/a flag/or a siren

 

*ears* silence packs its bags and disappears/the . . .