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I keep you in my palm.

I keep you in my fist;
squeeze you in my
palm and write my
name with fingerprints.

dotted drips like lines on highways,
designs with influence:
personal meaning
but lazy.
afterthoughts marked with

drops of you

you say:

afterthought?

you built a town and

stuffed me in it.

my coltish way I fidget next

to you on the bench.

lick my dry lips

without looking up and

pull the hem slowly

with my stubbed, teal nails

to point to the tattoo of

the north star on my leg;

it’s black, sharp and fresh.

and

boy

you

better

run.

“The gauntlet”

my heart was a brass bell:
frozen,
staid,
caught between two
hungers, and I’m asking
you if anyone ever told you
there is no time.

you demand cogency,
a nightlight,
me at your bedside blowing
ardent lullabies.
here I come in linear order.
in the end my gown will be
doused in the close shouts of
someone you love;
I will be draped in
the slow and constant drip
of her;
the residue of
skinned bones rouging
my cheeks with their sudden
red cries that blossom into
spells I tie into crown,
rest on my head
like a prize
as I am laid against
my slain and coffined
in confession before I
rise but you should know
so I’m writing it.

I would pluck at my
backbone to charm her
into weave, into
conjure her discordant euphony
that produced a mild shock
of light to remind me
I contain some very black
nights but a
torch lodged deep in
coccyx, and a dream;
sketch on marker web,
write the titles
in my thrumming patient way,
my hum,
my black belt bullet tongue
of song rising with summer,
and a damn stitched in
spine ready to synthesize
in crescendo
downward like a flash
flood and

you should know the truth
as it happens and the
past as it really
was and me, risen
growing full of hell
with each new moon,
full of part
with each new
sun.
you should know
what I mean
when I say
my hands contain a deluge.

“the flood”