preserves
January freezes the beasts in their beds releases numb fingers accidental snows she takes nothing waits wants only firm frigid earth gray skyless seasons her breaths pump my lungs haunt my mouth’s dark corridors i keep them not quite on purpose warm like my daddy who canned the family in bell jars embryos pickled in tiny expectations salted seasoned slapped down stairs secrets catalogued in our looking-glass eyes he watched his hairline fracture shining balding meaty skin while he snored we refused hibernation attempted exhalation to crack (our cages) slivers of circus mirror to grow him to bursting our gasps to rot him palewhite maggots settling deep our heads' crooked carapaces is any air better than none
סֶלָה
candyheart
February loves lackluster breath shortness of days i scribble twenty-six valentines recount finish taping shut my box i hate versions of me inked to razorthin treebark once i watched paper made lathe & pulp fragile dripping hanged to dry after baths i lie alone in hooded towel damp bedsheets i never saw the trees they sawed my valentines are big tent animals elephantine loops i deposit cursive promises thirty-six lovely checking accounts banker eyes me through his nosebound frames offers mystery flavored sucker i plug my mouth hope to dry sew shut the skinny lids of my eyes
סֶלָה
piece
i am fire in the round March a carnival lion hopes to leap sans singed fur i believe in tame beasts madness hoop dreams creature sidles licks ringmaster’s ear with little affection tears it to tatters he listens to its gummy mouth like a seashell single jaw seeks married skull will taste ring too we become food for worms or thought we feed by default paper grass & paper trees we are devoured in all our lives only the mouth changes shape sometimes teeth ignite
סֶלָה
fool’s gold
street lights spasm i make a devil's deal slaughtered lamb & pentagram ghastly columns of flame he looks nothing like what i expected no withered horns spiked tales blue eyes blonde hair tall frame caged ribs trickster's gait he looks rather like me or a mirror image where left is right and right has left my features flicker threaten change my shadow skulks like a second hand around my body slivered moons fall from the sky my knucklebones look less my own my memories refuse return bury me in April's crypt before i become too like him build a church to my decay
סֶלָה
mother’s day
may the blessings fall like the phone he spiked to the tile when she tried to dial 9-1-1 may they shatter sprinkle our feet with crumpled plastic may we ever hear the line drop universal shorthand hang up & try again or don’t ditch the ampersand she & he the whole tangled curling mess mayday wire won’t stretch he leaves cordless she rings up St. Pete please hold cheap muzak blasts tinny on speaker sounds like grace canned from the church cellar a morsel but no bread definitely no beef angus or agnus all the same carnivores graze free in heaven when lions lay with lambs turned cheeks become feasts
סֶלָה
jejunus
knit my bones together fly me home house empty of hymn smells like blood i wish i had escape give her oh Lord i drive us to a monastery pick radio stations landmines tiptoe on the gas countryside pictureshow tree kaleidoscopes bloom maybe monks break silence only to sing their prayer has no words no tune so many men hold fast i start to see God is a leviathan greatest of beasts his teeth elephant tusks his voice rumble strip warning before i catch the car telephone poles powerlines crows carry on over music’s din can’t make out the word they scream farther? forgive them they know not what they are flaunting wings without regard
סֶלָה
seventh inning stretch
again i am light as a boy i commit tiny atrocities i throw a Louisville slugger at its hairy homonym flapping against dusk’s swallow instinct it dives stretches fangs vampiric dead wood brought flight misinterpreted prey he taught me good form step into the pitch back foot squishes the worms the bat swoops up last second swing & a miss i tire of this game choose another pick the wood off the lawn he bought me this bat last week a miniature replica of the real thing steady my feet smack lightning bug as it alights fire works burns brighter dead than its living soul could ever muster maybe i knocked its heart through its chest i find its corpse scrape its luciferin onto my face this i had to teach myself chartreuse effervescence on the tonguetip of summer a hunt a heat a creekside reflection lost to the dark night tossing back my primal bellows
סֶלָה
prodigal
Eden confounds me what nymphic garden taken he & she had no choice but to procreate punished for a broken vow overripe knowledge fiery sword defends paperthin petals roots from trampling feet fruits from lingering tongues crawling beast wants human flesh couldn’t have his meat tastes only a hissed syllable his mouth an endless fuse legless schemes on belly crooked the hooked staff of some good shepherd grappling sheep necks & collars little bells weathering woolen clouds tell me when you died did it hurt like childbirth like paying Augustus his coin like a seed cracking its earthen tomb for the sylvan knowledge is only metaphor but i have to ask when you found lambs beneath the soil did any want to slither home
סֶלָה
gas light
i’m not sure who’s who in this carnival cast metaphor lost meaning late last September i’ve reincarnated myself a hundred too many times dust to dust ashes ashes we all fall down they burned down my church built a Walmart parking lot on its rubble somewhere between heaven & hell people drive through lines shout behind windshields leave their pickups strad- dling two spots once i got a key to the city the mayor forged it special turns out it opens only one door down in some basement’s cellar i have to hold my breath for all the mold i’m no good at holding air in childhood contests i learned an art cheating subtle breath doesn’t work underwater or beneath the earth the lock always sticks once i broke my special key inside it i use its nub to scratch lines of haiku on bad parking jobs here you are again stuck between two fearsome realms just pick one, asshat i float away too scared to stay to say it in person my breaths obnoxious my lungs could fill a hundred thousand balloons
סֶלָה
timbre
October ghosts under sheets she strips the bed bites the fruit spits remembered words like seeds this pear he juggled from hand to hand his reflection distorted in its smooth skin the tree that bore it is no more cleaved by wind in last night’s storm to its roots i take a sparking pickaxe i cannot coax them from the earth i kick the dirt in hasty shroud fear resurrection he named this tree all the flowers the vellum beasts of earth's menagerie a father’s rite adamah or adonai i cannot reckon with names the distance between words grows like some unwanted harvest at dusk she paces his garden pulls his flowers their roots long as fingers such gentle killing hallowed be thy pain she feels naked un- ashamed our home is haunted fallen leaves stalk our walking’s wake churning echoes of bloom crunch skeletal underfoot their dust will feed some unborn son
סֶלָה
anamnesis
she told you once of our planet’s pirouette how we orbit no closer no farther how only god could hang us tilted petals gasping for a star what hell must it be to catch fire we drink or drop into tree-vague dust no vacuum earth has no space theoretical no branches but in retrospect you thought so you were veiny hungry worm moon seething against the hunter unless we’re only some shadowjoke fractional distortions worlds plentiful as seeds in beaks of crows imagine a clock ticked six past the hour your parents were to go blind that first date her disappointment fleeting as your never-sprouted heart or does forgetting always take its sweet rotting time when she nests every branch flickering and possible does the thought of you have skin a throat stuffed with soil murder circling cawing overhead your fertile mouth never lying except to thank god for every flapping falling thing
סֶלָה
daydream
i’ve sometimes wished for a virgin birth an immaculate reconception mulligan or makeover a different dad a different disorder a new shrink a new God we could all be close enough half-assed ain’t half bad bridge collapses for bad struts we’ll make a new year’s resolution please try to ignore our dead we’ll pitch them in a landfill empty carbs for the afterlife poetry doesn’t rhyme just call it free mix metaphors until they’re brown soil some old fart’s diaper look we’re growing younger when my daddy is senile he’ll think he was in the right maybe he’s senile now what do you mean i’m not the crazy one sometimes i pretend to tell him in this new world vision he listens before he speaks so do i i hear oceans in bated breath God waves to us with the sea my momma told me i was too young to get the joke i saw instead a dawning leviathan flinging foam casting rain i heard a lion’s tongue lapping all the saltwater in the world the mewling of a drowning lamb who’s who at the end of the world do i get a kiss on the cheek someone to tuck me in my white as snow linens someone to check for monsters under the bed