Untitled 1975-86
after Alvin Baltrop & sam sax
i have yet to mention semen
in a poem, although, dear reader
it has always been here. it is not
that i failed to, i just neglected. but
while we are here, let’s speak
to failure. i have failed to
mention crying here, not the tears
but actual deluge. i have not
failed to talk about the grief of sex.
there are other griefs i wish i could
have mentioned in these poems but i do not
grasp the ability to hold it in a healthier
way other than by fucking
a man. i have mentioned a man
in each memory. like most men,
their relevance is very little. i am unsure of
how to relate this to the dead
animals in each poem. i have
however, mentioned the sandhill
cranes, their glossed wings
skimming the river’s out stretched
tongue. i think the dying around me make me
question how does one have sex when the air
reeks of old bones? how is this
sex still relevant when i am
watching a cooper’s hawk
carefully make incisions
down a rat’s stomach? why
do we need men when we have
been given such beautiful birds?
The Mechanics of Dying
I am trying to rewrite the ways I name blood—scarlet ribbon dancing in me; a hex of summer tanagers who refuse to silence. It is hard to make pretty of what America makes sport. It is hard to know my blood wishes to exit my body. My mother calls, says her brother has a cancer that sleeps in him, like her father did and his father before, a small seed blooming in us, singing in between the cells. It is hard to die in ways that are unknown to us. New assassins, lying in the field of our platelets. From what I understand, the blood is a script. A myriad of scrolls unrolling themselves within us. A play we are never to unlearn. Some call it by its god-name; fate—I just call it a murderer. This not to say that I have met death and bested it or understood its blades—no, I have just befriended the only eventuality to ever exist. And this makes me no better than you, one who believes in god and love and the way the light falls from the illuminated cheeks of a disco ball just after a three tequila midnight. We were meant to break, that is the purpose of nature. The red in me now twinkling with new toxins. Or were they there before? I do not know. I am out of definitions and yet, here I am trying to still breathe. So what if my blood is just a skulk of violent foxes racing towards an unending forest? What are we to learn then, in the heat of their noise?
Every Time I Start To Fall In Love With The City Again It Starts To Rain
The voice of Brooklyn sits heavy; holds
the jazz of a baritone, unfolding in their
last note. Even in this rain, listen
how bewitching that sound can be, the night-
hollowed gut; a torchsong refusing to
go out. Many times, I have called for the rain
to be a lover, but oh how I forget its face
when it comes. The rain is often
whatever memory we grow sick trying
to outrun. I cannot blame the city
for being the city, holding wet in
its crystalline lungs. I am not lonely
because I live here—in this downpour while
the sun is sitting flirtatious across the horizon
beckoning me west. There are pears I greet
in the morning when I am sad, I kiss them
until they untie their skin for me. They, too, will
bruise their flesh to please another. The wind
this evening, pushes rain against my neck,
another small kiss, another inevitable betrayal, tells
me to trust the crickets more. A stupid orchestra
we pray to, I pray to the most. These puddles
are welling at the throats of the catch basins.
I do not wish to step through their spilling
so I find a way around. I could leave this city—
and one day I might, but for now, I’ll catch the rain
in my mouth; for now, I’ll choose to drown.
loneliness catalog: hix park
it is not always a lie i tell; my excuse
to wander the backwoods behind
my old house, i say i wish to capture
the trees in their undressing during
the mid-thrust of fall. today, i
photographed an old black cherry
tree starting to lose its bark, close
to collapse. today, two deer danced
in front of my lens long enough for me
to document it. today, i followed a man
for miles into nowhere, until i was
completely lost, no longer sure of which
direction the sun would set. the man
asked me what i am doing out here so late
in season, and i pointed to two swallows
circling each other in what I presume
was in lust to say i like to find things
when they’re unknowing of their own
heat. he nods, he understands but the words
are caught in his throat like a brush
of leaves. a third man followed us through
the forest in hopes that we will lead him
to his unraveling. he says, he found a
mushroom so orange, it could be the sun,
told us he would take us to it if we wanted.
we nodded without questioning his intent;
we are all here for the same thing, but none
of us are willing to admit it.
notice theory
i start every story with
noticing: what i can touch,
who i cannot. i take survey of
the room, question who is
alive, who might be a figment
of my false reality.
often i do not believe someone
is dead until i call them and
they do not answer. when i was
a child, i thought everyone was
dead until they appeared in
front of me, risen from the
grave.
what vast
variance i’ve created for myself
through this learning of
deadness. i tell a friend to text me
when you make it home and they
do not. in my mind they are
gone. i find a dead hen in the
pond knee-deep in ice. i am not
sure about the protocol of dead
things. i do not touch it.
i believe in omens. i believe in the pith of
mothers saying text me when you get home,
chile, i believe in the dragging of the “L” in
“chile” to emphasize how tired we have
become at losing kin to the night air—i
answer every message within seconds, to
prove my existence. i speak invocations of
survival,
place runes beneath my
tongue in prayer. let my grandfather
be okay when he misses my phone
call. let my sister be okay when she
forgets to message me back.
even for my father, whom i do not call, i still
pray. i search his name in the toledo papers,
wait to hear from his wife that he did not
make it; that she sat, phone in hand, waiting
for the text that would not arrive.
on the other hand, my mother texts me every
morning just to prove to herself she is not a
ghost. i answer every message seconds after
i receive them. on the days she does not
respond to my response, i spend the rest of
the day waiting for her eulogy.
