Lilies whose syrup keeps addicting us.
You in dirty diameter
and we circle hungrily
the winning blue wrinkle
realizes no no just under the surface

sturdy absence
the static washes someone in sun

Tears dry fluelike on our face fluelike because we are riding our bike
third person familiar dear eyes sparkling. She says okay, I’ll be your friend.
But she doesn’t put down her hatchet

I’m drunk and want to watch a movie with you and eat Chips Ahoy
on my bed on all my clean clothes that need folded

As though lemons
whisper snip, then blossom. Remember my friend Jim who wanted to marry you and you dated him for a few years and he was hairy

kisses through mesh we are pretending a jailbait
who distinguishes new shadows from old

You are glossy wet when sad

I say okay, okay,
ready a set of fetters.
Let’s make meaning.

Letters still trees, clink brinks, kneel on wet leaves.
An understanding ignores
all this moon’s advice, eats hot & sour soup
comes highly recommended

face noun or verb yours or mine
your legs and arms
among their roots I long to kiss
sure through you
time makes God sound like us
along sour neurons an outside silence I can taste constellations against the sky
once a chaser, always disposability. I am talking about
being in the closet here, Mary.
it’s so obvious Memory is a bitch no matter how green your eyes no matter how glittery
To me it’s an eclogue the way your mouth moves when I put my face there
to absorb your light crouch more
threshold than path
found a Polaroid of a naked black man his chafed looking penis swollen in his fist kept it tucked in one of my paperbacks of Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Cradle

let me twin and sprout wings
or horns like shells where wind spatters
I want to bet you fucked him now fuck me your guilt makes you harder
your having been in his scrappy body makes me horny
I can recognize me even in these ski masks
that oyster smiles
I recognize that as a man I blush
an aura
precedes my relapse: the smell of patchouli,
rust, an old red wine
time snapped shut across some depths of lake. cartographies of color that only you noted
this testifies to your character:
you call toilet paper bath tissues

I name my band My Friend’s Band
if opening for A Bridge, sway. if for
Little Stallions Under Glass, pretend you drive stick.
Who snorts rare silver transparence ?
As If Any Addiction Ends

Flying Ants Smell Like Lemon Until You See Them


You bend back the trees
to reveal the river’s
weakness.

I was always a sucker for sun—

I hurt all day.
Be more than I can imagine and take when I’ve done and future it.
Well my conduit is broken. Language doesn’t flow through me like a sieve. I am more a jar and sometimes I pour myself out
Movement implies
herring. Wet. where
they land. has all the hallmarks the man with the handsomest
of bad porn
you list in the sun
of course I am tomorrow’s child
the supple bubble butt
it became a lightning rod
I’m racist and I’ve lived mostly with other whites
and I’m white and male and gay and alcoholic


one of my students when I gave her portfolio back to her
and she’d earned an A in the class but didn’t want any molasses cake
looked like she was on speed
I like the sound of violins am in therapy
I heard people in the hallway and became ashamed
think about the phrase language arts long enough it will make you bitter
is just reason for us to band like geese
I wish I could fly through cathode ray tubes
and into your pale arms
I want to be large and delicious along this series of fences
like a bucket full of ice cream
dirty dishes on my dresser
it’s my job to write postcards
because I know that people suffer
I want you to look up at me saltily
feel a muscle in my back ding it tastes gray and shifty
your root smell like a snag
turns off streetlamps when we walk by
like a first roast duckling I want to feist myself on your hairy chest I want to suck your back I want to bite you I want you to rip me a piece of me out it’s all the salt reminder you’ll have
a dam beaver nest all blown up with hummingbirds
there are terriers in my pajamas if I had pajamas
me fucking me with teeth and green and yellow arrows that are aimed at snagging you because I’m unsatisfied Why would you bring awful soda into a library. Or coffee or your bad hair cut.
I wasn’t painting. Well, maybe I was painting whelks, but other than those yellow white contusions I was not painting at all
I am waking up again and again to myself. I can never remember who I am and that’s why trinkets rather than dead birds are coming out of the kitten’s mouth
believe in signs sometimes I do