2022 Poems
{ Rupture }
There is a pounding from the inside.
Like harsh claws against solid steel,
Like harsh claws against giving flesh.
Again? Already?
Maybe a softer creature will emerge.
Almost never a softer creature.
Soft ones – they have to be torn out, by force.
They are scared, and they must be brave.
The cool air stings their tender skin.
But the cycle, and I see it is a cycle,
Demands not the wet blood of animal,
But the black spit of thing.
Almost never a softer creature,
This rupture through the skin.
{ Sleet }
You come in like sleet –
Pages launch of the table
And warp in the wet,
Making printed ink haloes
With clear hearts in the middle.
Everything is weathered, everything needs oiling.
The chill is fine as silk. Drip-stepping woman, she
Wants nothing but to trail her hands over the walls.
Watch a mark bloom there in no less than three decades,
And it will hurt just as soon, just as deep in the plaster.
Somehow, that cold light makes the room darker, softer.
Not inviting like a hearth but inviting like a cave.
Somehow, if that’s all we have, all it is –
That’s better. That’s better.
You come in like sleet and I’ve had just about enough
Of blinking you away and of holding my arms against the wind.
Enough of swooping out of the deluge and then here, alone,
Opening the window to you once more.
{ Shoulder }
Soft body who I hold
For a minute or more,
If I recall – or if I dream,
For maybe I never felt
Any need to touch at all.
Your mother warned me,
But even so I took a second
Pepper and felt my ears bleed –
They must be bleeding, I felt,
Such was the burn. And surely
I will never see her again either, but
Good luck with the garden, ma’am.
I said,
“Something crawls at your shoulder,
It rears when I am near, and by my side
A dagger spits back.” Well,
Wasn’t I the crawling thing? Injured,
And no cover between us for the bled edges.
What love can live on such a wound?
You are always yourself,
True and all the way through.
I am not who I was,
But I love you still.
2021 Poems
{ Bear the Starless Night, 2020 }
I'm waiting by the window while starlight falls like soft rot.
I shoulder the walls smooth and watch you press against them.
I've carved all the graves I can give, and I've buried teeth out back.
Piece by piece I offer a new home in the hollow.
I lay back and listen to your whisper-knocking hands.
At night I hear your heartbeat overhead, and I stare.
If the light would reach past the plaster,
If you would eat your way through,
If you would reach my body,
We'd be hand in hand in house.
2020 Poems
{ Bear the Starless Night, 2020 }
I'm waiting by the window while starlight falls like soft rot.
I shoulder the walls smooth and watch you press against them.
I've carved all the graves I can give, and I've buried teeth out back.
Piece by piece I offer a new home in the hollow.
I lay back and listen to your whisper-knocking hands.
At night I hear your heartbeat overhead, and I stare.
If the light would reach past the plaster,
If you would eat your way through,
If you would reach my body,
We'd be hand in hand in house.
