there is a peace in exposure
and a peace in silence.
and I still can’t discern
where I fit completely.
sometimes I  flit about town
with my paper point tongue
and become the trap for them.
other days I sit quietly

rearrange my stones
to surround pieces of paper
with words scribbled;
a symptom of caution

 
when people say they are superstitious,
they usually mean they
don’t walk under ladders
or keep broken mirrors,
or if you’re Russian,
put your purse or keys directly
on the table.
when I say it,
I mean that if I think
about something too long
it  grows legs
and walks out 

so I can see it better.

I begin to line the doors
with salt and brick dust;
the tub with black tourmaline
and smoky quartz. I
begin to line the bed with
kitchen knives and then
I begin to chant the
names of lives
I want to enter me.

“1/1/2017”

when i asked them if kratom was
going to kill me, that night I had a dream
of a snake moving over a rock
in a creek. red, black and yellow.
I stepped over it unscathed.

when I woke I couldn’t remember
whether black was touching yellow.
so you have to see patterns
if you write them in your journal
cuz you’ll naturally finish the
rhyme.

“Dead Fellow”

you just have to begin.

you hold my hand
when I speak.
I am nervous inexplicably.
just existence is a trial.
count the candles.
set the rocks.
sip the Angelica root and
begin to drool an acid fire
into the bubbles.

I feel your chest behind me,
moist, throbbing.
in my waking hours,
I practice walking across a lake
with black boots.
it’s an icy sidewalk on
a ledge but I pretend
that it’s a long pond.

when he first comes around,
I notice my wrist,
then my jaw,
surrender.
I have an urge to burn the
house down first
but in a long quaver,
forget the nonsense:
the counting of the pulse,
the spotty mason jars,
my blood dripping on a red
throw blanket, laundry,
my childhood–effete,
mold speckled shingles,
my sullen dead father
and his one last breath
alone–we think–
sometime after midnight,
right before Christmas.

I begin telling you everything.

“the bath series”

 once upon a time
I floated
through rooms
draped in human furs and
red felt flowers
to keep myself warm. and
using illness as an anchor,
I was a grave when I really
wanted to be a stove. 

you
twirled to the sound of my fluttering
lashes: broken and
sloppy     untimed..
I could tell by the
way you held yourself,
the books and your heavy eye contact,
a light coat and no gloves
and no verbal complaint
about the term addict
being thrust upon us that
you were cold and you
didn’t just act strange,
you possessed it.

      
I sniff patiently.      sip hot water with
lemon and basil.
someone sang on a makeshift stage of
upside down milk crates.
you looked sidelong, gingerly,
an afterthought that led me here.
I played with my hem and revocation,
silence that halts
you make me feel young, I mouth
to the ground.
you returned the gesture with
a prepared grin and continued
accompanying yourself.
the ground fell away and
I was a picked thorn;
some perspiring flower,

I knelt in a corner
stem growing from a red plastic cup,
cowering and open
knowing this crowd rocked you
in her drunk cradle.
you walked by with a glass
and no one else and
a relentless apotheosis. first sight and I’m swallowed,
staggered,
swollen with ideas of our
first life.

come first light
I will be buried in drool,
wandering around squinting,
tiny eyes and barely a
move, I watch you pass
effortlesslylike my continual gap years.
turning to give each other one last glance
over our now bronzed shoulders,
I adjust my strap so you think about skin
                        (I’m swimming in it)
and that chilly way we do:
show a little set of teeth and move on.

I keep coming back
to the idea of meeting
you and I need that like a shark
needs blood.

“pool”

the first thing you notice about me is
the way I saunter to grab a ginger ale
from the cooler
              “it’s my favorite.”
brush you, smile at your friends
and kind of swarm them.
starting intense conversations but not
finishing them, and always alluding
to my prescience without
saying anything.
you’ll say if there’s anything I’ve mastered,
its the smirk  not the crowd.

but then I retreat.
linger near the exit the rest of the night
with the crumpled straw in my hand
and the temper.
the proclamations,
the poems,
the exits.

I like the way you held my hand
and said my name.
      my name is artemis.
and sometimes things  just catch on fire.
you say I always crouch with a
bow in hand.
            “I’m just nervous”
and that when I am lying I look away really
fast.
and you know I fucked your friends
and you know I’ll fuck some more
and you see me on the screen
  my name is Artemis.
parting lips, combing bangs,
practicing inflection as I said
I would.you said you’ll always remember
the way I laughed LOUD and so sudden
like you were the funniest man in
the room.
and I’ll always remember
the way the door frame dripped
and bled to one sorrel-orange
as I walked across the welcome mat
throwing matches as you swept,
the windows becoming a
nice carrot color and then
disappearing.

sometimes when I think back
to my fuck ups or falling down,
I come here and I see all these
women and I think,
whose answered prayer am I?
she said
and that struck me.

when women speak
I put my head down deferentially
to go back to past
but also out of my own
need to curl up inside myself.
It’s winter, 2015,
just past the new year,
I’m broken hearted
and knee deep in some fucking secrets
but whose answered prayer
am I? who called
the wounded shepard
here? It’s 2015 and I had
just been gifted three thousand
dollars from my grandmother
that my parents called and asked
for back.

I gave them two thousand and
used the  rest to move out of
the townhouse into a one bedroom
in the heart of Kensington.
embraced by the “Auspicious
Coin Laundry” service next door.
no one would ever miss my house.
I didn’t have anything left
over but I never did.
it’s worth mentioning that when I was
eighteen and just home for
the summer from college,
when I said was going out
my mother told me they had
cleaned out my savings account
so don’t count on that.

“family”

women are scared of their own violence
(because men are afraid of them too).