Original Medicine

suck the venom from the wound

and I would summon ancient gods

stories, my body craves

stories that only forests now can tell

all other bodies 

drained of the words

puncture wounds

conspicuous and silent

my grandmother says

I would have been a water witch

mutilated

my deeper forms

muted

my older prayers

mutated

my original medicine

in the caverns of my body

where the stories once lived

I etch deranged on the walls

    

                                                who will burn stephen miller at the stake?

alone with the language of rage and snakes

my grandmother says

I would have been a water witch

Figs

I am in the kitchen eating figs

Today is the day they decide

Whether to lock my friend away

She is still upstairs getting dressed

I can't taste the figs

These Days

Melancholy as pleasure.

Relaxing into the seams of my own spirit,

Savoring words the way ice warms a tongue.

Languid threads of the mind reveal themselves

and return to the fold. 

Touch and taste reign supreme.

These are days well-salted. 

please. (II)

you're not allowed to die.

there's still so much

we have not. said.

so much

we don't even know

we have. to say.

There's still so much oxygen in my lungs that belongs to you. 

Rusting

rust and oil

we make our bed

refuse and paychecks

we whisper in the dark

gout and empire

we fall in love

in the strangest places

fall in love with me

as much as you need

as little as you want

if it proves anything

about why we carry on

my grandmother still whispers

secrets of dust and clay

how will any soil be fertile again

when she is gone?

The Sea Instead

what's that song

where a lover begs the moon to pull her away

rather than admit to the man in front of her

she has fallen out of love?

how does it go - when the moon drags her

into the sea instead?

I'm no coward,

But tonight my eyes met the moon,

When I decided to feel everything,

Instead of one thing,

With my lover in front of me.

Woman After All

as ambivalent as I may be about this

perhaps I should be a woman after all

if only

because I have learned the ways of

lamentations

please.

 please.

please,

fall in love.

find her.

find her who can love you

in the disquiet madness of every. day.

I can only love you when

I writhe from my harness.

only those high holy days when

I am least tame, most sane. 

she may forbid me from

touching you ever. again.

it is her right,

I bow, madame. 

but tell her.

you tell her. 

when we talk

ALL OF the oxygen in your lungs belongs

to me.

AND I

to you. 

a sacrament not deserved but

needed,

needed.

pts

 the letters of my name

confer amongst themselves

quietly, at first

deciding how best

to rearrange

it is time

I will never be the same

and now

there must

be proof

which vowel should glide

to show the path of grief

which consonants can stand

shoulder to shoulder

fricative sentinels

of despair

the letters, jostle, louder, zealous

to make me choke

on my new name

North

sun over right shoulder

tread north

water calls

sun over left shoulder

stop where you are

night approaches

tomorrow

the black snake

greets you

sun behind back

water beneath foot

upon turning twenty six

 distance between heartbeats lengthens

distance between birth days shortens

I am in the time of ripe plums

steady pace of noon approaching

stride settled somewhere

between quickened and longed

and yet

balanced ledger of time

means

time to risk it all

the year

was it not enough, to

muddy boots outside door

wind rifling through hair

yours is so long now

gust teasing out

new greys

like our hands did once

was it not enough, to

breathing honeysuckles

with eyes closed

inhale silent memory

was it not enough, to

showing one another

the year's growth ring

we are still here

a remark between crow's feet

deepened

since last conversation

between our eyes

when they cut us down

they will see the hardened lines

but will never see this softness

was it not enough, to

go another year?

ex sanctum

 search for a red door

his mouth, perhaps

her fingernails

you wander so

morbidly

some would say

who will open for you

a sanctuary

search for a red door

slightly off-color will do

a maroon leather bible cover

(discarded)

a hollyhock head

(trampled or otherwise)

you are not

beyond all welcome

search for a red door

red of stop

red of stay

red of mirror to wound

 I see an old lover tomorrow

I forget the exact taste

although it may have changed

by now

is it impolite to ask?

we have both shed skin and names since 

I fear it rude

to bring up the scent of someone who no longer exists

they

 I require they

not for its neutrality

but for its plurality

all my selves

are inevitable

unto themselves

and can no sooner be

evaded grammatically

than they could

corporeally

or shall I pluck

each hair on my head

one by one and tell you -

man, woman, or child?

 what I lack in vulgarity

I make up for in aphorism

both accomplish the necessary task

of holding present moments

at arm's length

Rules of War

 I want my children to know

That I stood naked beneath waterfalls

Carried spicebush leaves in my pockets

Smelled the onion grass from yards away

And knew time of day by song of bird

I want my children to know

So that in the wars to come

They will never kill a tree in battle

"Perhaps a forest was once here,"

They will say

Eyeing a lone beech

Or perhaps poplar

"Our mother told us of this.

She used to bath there

Although she did not bathe us

There."

They will let the tree live

And the birds

Will add their names to the sagas

When the time

Is right. 

virgin forest

 'virgin forest' is an absurd phrase

no forest is a virgin

every forest is in the midst of sex

and of each tender, brutal moment

before or after

every forest you call 'virgin'

is simply a forest

whose children

you have not yet murdered

cremation

 burned a tree from the roots up

not because it deserved it

I don't know which place its

soul was sent

but because it died politely, intact

and the scavengers were too respectful

to do much of anything

about that

this being the case

better to go all at once, I said

no hacking of limbs

no embalming fungal blooms

(not everything needs to be paragraphed)

just erasure of continuous capillaries

tip to tip

home country

 my grandfather is buried in

TSA packaging

ready and waiting

(on paper and in person)

until my grandmother dies

perhaps the packaging

will be a different color

then

and they can be returned to

home country

I drive alone

wearing only clothes

that came without

packaging

south, mostly

until I reach

my home country

abbreviated, really

more of an acronym

than an origin

no one ever told me

what it stands for

stands, the forest

refuses to sit nicely

in a cardboard box

(understandable)

to be shipped somewhere

to bury me

wherever I die

 I felt certain

I had wandered far from God

And then

The moon through magnolias

I whisper

"There you are."

Nosce te ipsum

 Pain of distance

Coils upon itself

Ever tighter

Until

It only feels close to itself.

How

To be intimate with myself again

Playful, unreserved

Inspired by mere presence of sunlight

Unblinking within my own mind.

I need to work the garden.

Virtue of putter.

Until the garden lets me

Rest my head on her belly.

I need to find a place to pray.

As long as it takes 

For the moon to rise again

Behind the magnolias.

As long as I need.

I need to tread some path in

Some forest.

Even if 

The flowers are strange

And we make only small talk.

I need to dance between my instruments.

I need to wind my body between 

Every configuration of wood that makes

Sound.

I need to punctuate with silence

That stretches time and

Pulls body along with.

I need to feel my every sound

With naked feet.

I need to play as a child.

I need to stack my thoughts just to

Knock them down.

I need to cuddle with my intuition

Fall asleep with it in my arms

The sensations of the day

Still lying scattered at the rug by the bed.

I need to forgive myself.

For abandonment, mostly.

And for growing up too fast

While I wasn't watching. 

With these words I uncoil

Unspool into a long thin thread.

So that I may be only

A hair's breadth away

From myself

And approach God, asymptote. 

 shiver of his body

I catch him

falling upwards

soft tumble

hard landing

somewhere

between his hands clutched on

between his hands clutched on

my hips

For Pharaoh Sanders

 But tonight I feel gentle

                        swirling

                                    amidst

                            playful dappled light

                                    chasing shadow

                             in water

        I am poetry, I am peony

        I am fingerprints left on tall 

                                                grass

            tonight

God is rosewater

                        God is the color of dragonflies

 what is the word

for the grief of knowing

the soil is too toxic

to eat

the dandelions

 not to be too precious with my analogies but

my mind has some deep waters mostly

I'm content to swim them alone sometimes

I haul a bucket to the top to

try and give someone a taste and

end up splashing them in the face so

all of this is just to say if

you feel, like,

doused by a bucket of cold water after

we talk I

see your point.

you ask me how was my week

 I don't mean to take all these burdens off

of my shoulders and place them into your

hands

I do not expect you to hold those

I want you to hold me

please

help me hold my rage, my grief

just for the moment

take half the corners of this quilt

let me unfold

into your hands

Of Men and Stones

 am I man or stone?

if I am stone

I could not dare to hope

to be cleft asunder

and birth a flood

perhaps I can still pray

that I will be a stone

who falls down in fear

and finds the piety 

of avalanche

The Man Across The Table

 I love my man

he is keys forgotten

in the door of 

home

he is every day

ease around the edges

he is the man across the table

in silence

I watch him cut fruit

with whole satisfaction

he is the man

who catches my running, trembling hands

tells me it is time to kneel and pray

 shiver in 

small of back

spreads slowly

fills bowl of hips

wish you were 

here 

to drink

 i think

if we share a bed

again

we will make love for a 

very long time

many things

will be needed

to move fire

under water

teacup

 you are a pattern of promises

I know you'd keep

if you ever made them

teacup would rest firmly

in your hand

shunning all fear of shatter

were you ever to pick it up

why the empty hands, my love?

of course we all pass to death

bare-handed

but promises kept

are all we can leave behind

you are alive now. pick up the cup. 

fill it to the top. leave it when you go.