​Nanny’s Georgia peach kitchen          Fog the same consistency
as one cup of half-and-half       My sweat congealing
in the valleys of my palms      Nanny showing me to slice onions
from front to back       Listening to boiling potatoes hiss
Sprinkling basil leaves onto lily pads of fat       Measuring off ham
into streamers of pink and white marble         Adding lots of cheddar
Locking it into tupperware       Carrying it home to my sick mother
Feeding her the medicine of her own childhood          Remembering
the recipe for my own children

losing my headphones in school didn’t feel very nice
but i like it now that i’ve gotten used to not having the endless
stream of sound i don’t ever listen to-
(like, really listen to)-
to fill up every second. there is so much empty time and
so much clarity when the buzz is cleared
and i never noticed it slipping through my fingers, flowing like water,
i don’t understand where i let the years pass by without ever
realizing where they went, the whirlwind  and commotion of
life engulfing me, time moving like waves back and forth
all i ever think about anymore is how the years move so swiftly
without a letter, without a call,
not a single text of warning to me like hey
                                it’s over we’re over
the next one is near, maybe you should worry less about me
maybe you should work on listening to this one,
maybe i forgot how to keep my feet on the ground and feel the earth
beneath me after so many years of being          
uprooted from everything that mattered,
i think i was so swept up by it all
 i forgot to watch out for the
birds warbling and the crunching of shoes stepping on leaves and
all the shades of the sky between dusk and dawn and
 all the sweet, wonderful words i feel like i heard only in my head
i think i needed to listen to the universe for once,
let it know i was
okay and things were
okay and that i can still hear it all i can still hear
the buzz in my mind that wills me to live
 i can still hear the humming of my own
heart. and that it matters.

i had a dream once or twice, i think my memory’s
hazy these days i still remember
every word you said to me like they were
etched in mind i remember your face
lit by the glow of the moon. first contact i’ve had
in 29 days 5 hours 14 minutes was
a mirage. even in the fog of my mind i
remember how you never keep your hands still
even in mine they tremble like leaves and i remember
myself wondering as i did so many times before
who took away your tenderness. i look for signs
where i shouldn’t and see gradation in glass as
clear as day and i’d trade in every vision i’ve
seen for this to be more than
                                       just
                                            brainwaves
i will the universe to let it
come true but all i hear
is radio silence
what is it about old hurts that
makes us always return to
them. what is it about old truths
that makes us always
forget
them

what do you do when you can see them but they don’t see you?  

sip the oil from the top of the vinaigrette through your labrum — quick, before it’s shaken
 
squeeze through the gap below the bedroom door into the early sunrise conversations, then whisper
           their secrets to the kitten
 
leave the spoon in the sink, handle caked with instant coffee powder
 
when the arguments start, push a can of tuna off the fourth shelf from the bottom. watch them jump at
           the clatter of aluminum. the French-cut green beans are next — exacerbate what you can
 
you don’t need their blood or the guts of the open sugar packets left out on the counter
 
they don’t see you — pull it all apart — because you can

cactus tongue 
  Or scooter Gang
radish-land calls.                  drive,   they the hive.                            Of Jacks & Jills &.              cheap Thrills. in                        so-Mo twEg. 
I go walking, in walls.            Great      Hands. That's.         what happens
when I stick 'round
 
as promised, the Castle
evaporates. i make a few
notes, fake cigarette
 
Maps guides me but drains 
coretto stuns.   come for
 
me.  now & drives the
   mulberry nipples
  
  All over his lithe vodka
  bubbling for/to the lights. ​

There is
something
stuck
in my throat
and when I cough
it swells
and when I swallow
it sticks.
I think
it’s made
of matches
or the little
plastic toys
from a gumball
machine.
It tastes like
childhood,
the years
between eight and eleven,
when there are
too many elbows
and scabby knees
and the future
hangs like 
a dust cloud.
But when I’m
sleeping
and the darkness
is two fists
over my eyes
it feels like
something else.
Something swollen.
Something to palpate.
Something that needs
looking after.
Something like
the drainage ditch
behind the field
where the flowers
don’t grow
and the deer
won’t walk
and the dog
always whines
and that one time
you went
over the fence
through the brambles
across the puddles
and met the man
with the
cement eyes
and the rough fingers
and learned
that things
in throats
don’t need sunlight
to grow.

The bougainvillea in our garden are wild,
their pink petals a most somber cliché.
A rigid knuckle of sky stamps them down,
splaying, splitting, plundering.
Guts and obscenity flood the yard. Cat piss dog shit beautiful day.
We begin by discussing Asger Jorn. We end by debating who is the bigger cunt,
while the dying dog sleeps at our feet.
We speak in rhyme and unreason and sometimes un-rhyme and excuse.
We speak in permanent dissolution, dissention between periods;
semicolons between our legs.
Poetry is fundamentally unappealing. Alienating.
I don’t remember if you said that or if it was just implied when I took my notebook and went to sit outside beneath the spangled clouds of ugly nothings.
They bloom even when we forget to water them. Fertile fucking rebuke.
The pages of my notebook fall open and I finger their edges,
searching for a paper cut. 

✱✱✱

why do we hide under blankets
why do we hide our feelings
why do we hide easter eggs
hiding is the pragmatic response to fear of losing something
i hide a 73%
seventy-three percent of the time we are not what we project ourselves to be
seventy-three percent is the amount of time i spend trying to retain consciousness
seventy-three percent of men talk down to me when talking politics
in that 73% i also include hiding
- pretending to like eric clapton
- imagining having a threesome in which i didn’t feel insecure or "worse than the other person”
- not feeling part of a generation
- the dream that who we were on mdma was the real self
- our relationship having network connectivity problems
- fake orgasms
- and every time i have felt unnecessarily exposed
i am afraid of the time spent in a station, right before a train approaches and it feels like
the air it carries is going to hit you in the face
i always stand close to the platform because i want to find out how much of it i can feel
i am afraid of the insides of a plant
it takes a much larger amount of time to kill a plant than to kill yourself
every cell in a plant is independent to its other cells
every cell in a plant is unaware of your existence
every cell in a plant dies alone desynchronised with its co-cells
but every cell in my body will die holding hands
i am afraid of babies
i am afraid of babies feeling sad when they realise that
at one time nothing will be new or astounding or special
i am afraid of not covering their osmotic heads with bubblewrap so they can’t be
penetrated with hurt
i am afraid you will think this is stupid
i am afraid that people can have opinions on other people when they will never live inside
another human being’s head
ihide my fear of walking home alone at night
and my nostalgia for what never existed
most of all i hide that
​i don’t want to be thrown away

my blood is sin entering the world
my blood is a ravenous animal leashed inside me
my blood is a living painting
my blood is a city with no men in it
my blood is uninhibited abandon and hormonal cattiness
my blood is victory
my blood is a thousand witches chanting around a pink fire
my blood is like spitting in someone else’s mouth
my blood is what you are afraid of
my blood is not made of glitter
my blood is made of every time i have been raped
and every woman i have ever met
it makes me daring
it makes me solid
it makes me strong
my blood is the only real thing i am
my blood is an ocean
​you don’t tell the ocean to behave

we drive apologetically while
i place myself in the center of a foreign place.
this place speaks. its voice offers no consecration.
it says many things about nothing.
it says: “this feels warm in the way setting things on fire feels warm”.
it says: “i am so scared to lose you i can’t feel your body next to my body”.
it says: “i no longer feel like a poem. i can’t live inside you forever”.
it repeats everything i always say in a way you’ve never heard before.
i tried to push through the waters of a lake instead i ended up here.
you were the sky before the sky was a sky of unglued ghosts.
i am looking at your body reflecting the moon.
i am recording this.
i am thinking:
“i exist i exist i exist”.
i am thinking:
“say something i will remember”.

there are two hundred dogs dying right now.

our hands have engaged in the most vulnerable connection.
everything is happening so much.
we are two tsunamis of nostalgia
splash-fighting each other with baby-sized dinosaur arms.
we are an abandoned fair, left untouched for five years,
its lights still painfully lit.
we can't be together lest we eat each other.
we wish for painless separation,
for our fingers merging with the sky in the middle of a rainstorm with thunder,
and for the way we could sleep before we knew things about each other.
i will draw new eye sockets on your face.
​staring at me will feel infinite.