“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.”
                —Luke 12:6

      Night’s dark cadenza fades. To wild
              applause of birds, the moon’s cornet-
                      bell ducks behind the blue

      curtain of dawn. Now, from cracks
              and pools that waves have gouged
                      into pahoehoe, hermit crabs drag

      scavenged shells after the retreating tide.
              Gray-barred doves ocarina soft alarms.
                      From green palm trees, yellow finches

      screech, “Retreat!” Yet, in a round breach
              in the black rock, one small orange fish
                      delays too long. Trapped

      in a pool that slinks away as daylight’s
              hard, hot hand slams down, it’s just
                      a fish: no plans or projects

      left undone; no friends or family
              who will mourn. Still, it fears to feel
                      its circuits short out, its liquid

      rhythms quit. Like the prayers of a rocked
              boxer, trainer shouting words
                      that he can’t understand, the fish

      zips back and forth across the ring—
              enormous once; now closing in.
                      Flashing side to side, flipping

      through the air, the fish finds only
              that all escape-routes end. No life-line
                      opens to the sea six feet away,

      its gray chop bluing in the sun,
              its surface surging up and down,
                      forward and back.

Pulse

          June 12, 2016

Us and blindfold
in delicious dark. Done deaf

by bassline, scouting heat
with bladed tongues. Breath

a scream spun in reverse
and Lord don’t we holler

wet down each other’s
necks. Rapture and rupture,

every sizzled bead
of black sweat

spit swollen out
our skin. O God

make naked a flaw
with climax steeping

our glotted throats.
Give name the hollow

wont to fill fat
with blood. Sing us

a lie: our hearts
fed thick with thrust

and rhythm, sacred
fist made habit

the gasp and surrender
of living this soft.

He Who Helps Drag Queens Descend the Stairs

You in the Abercrombie half zip
made for someone who knows a decade less

kindness. You who doesn’t smile at dick jokes
or a queen tonguing her cheek to phantom

a blowjob, but who still offers dollars bookmarked
between fingers or resting in your palm

opened like a leaf. Who taught you this devotion,
the unassuming necessity of a single spotlight,

of the glue behind the glitter, the links above
the chandelier? You, patron/saint of

the naked, unrolled ankle
strapped in a high heel. You harbinger

of a spandex pantheon, you gel-tipped
trumpeter. Here, background music

is heralding. Take up your brassy horn,
press it to your lips and blow.

COORDINATE VISION

There may not be a whole world, just
             the hole that I know of it.

Though I scale up, ever-after a vista
             that will hold. Water for whatever

dialect of thirst, or map from where
             it flows. Of playground rocks

tossed at my heels, heels cracked like alpine
             contour drawings, drawing

a placebo in the final stage—I’ll proclaim
             nothing. My ache is addendum

to laments long-tenanted in blood less faulty
             than mine; which quakes

when I survey the timeless plates, how
             boundaries shift to constrain.

Equipped with legend and no dead-weight,
             a face of freckles constellating

spangled ways ahead—I toss out the old-
             growth compass. Ask

for small dippers of what is not:  capital,
             settled, primary color; try

ripping perforated paths to let our borders
             bleed. Holiest

of holies. But who am I to approximate
             a shrinking eyelet of hurricane

when every storm I manage to out-wait
             takes another girl’s name?

At last the globe tilts, swiveling my gaze
             from the well-charted path

of my own gale to zoom out, diffuse, so
             dilate:  the Aida, the Boone, the Cate.
 

CARE/FUL

I don’t think I        could care

   less      for the buy-one-/  get-one

           free unless the bye    is some re-

prieve and one     my getting full-/ly

       how       less is all      that I need

besides that TV        left beneath

the olive tree             w/a shaky

 sharpied sign   free

for-all       is saying      all

of y’all—

      please—      free me of this

   broke machine     it is easier to un-

load to free      load load up on

               those free samples

   ample      space           than to make

        a place    and one’s   days full/-y

               of care    as you said     I was free

       to go    away         free to walk

from the curb            take no/thing

with me care-     free        but know:      I never

                     was       or was—

           every day                I chose

The girl sets her pan away
from the house, grasps the branch,

pulls from the crown a wash
of its apples. She breathes loudly

into her swollen hands, pulses
the pan for some thin company.

Miles out from the main road,
streets turn to lanes into stone

into woods. Discarded stalks
and collected decayed return

to the bucket, or are scrapped
to pile in heaps. As a swarm

of monarchs arrive in their color
to wheel down together, each year

the girl bows also to the shapes.
Winds deeper into unorchared

grounds where unplucked weight
breaks branches. This year

her prints go farther in.
This year she moves faster

than her gathering pace: no pan,
no pail, no jar. She is out there.

Where trees teem red with ripe
fruit, wild fruit, the tree line

collects as one bridge of branches
no person looks for, or after.

And so the living spoil
in it, under it, because of it.

Microsatellites

Great-grandmother dreamed there were
two of you inside, two scorpions locked
by their tails, exoskeletons on fire, one
wearing great-grandfather’s face, she forgot
the other but remembered two mouths
exhaling water, I kissed them, she told me,
all four cheeks, she saw both of you split
the sky where you hunt the hunter and burn
eternal, felt both of you move, siblinged
under my skin, but in waking, we heard
one heartbeat, saw one skeletal outline,
more water than body, more animal
than arachnid, all you, untwinned, I was stung
twice, she said, and I asked her
if it hurt, only the first time, but the stars
never stop hurting.  


Other women don’t tell you

you will forget
someone’s birthday
your son’s         winter coat
at his grandparent’s     when the weather turns    cold
his fingertips     and they aren’t blue
but a color                 for which there is
no name         like the pain
of childbirth     which they say     you will forget     
but you remember        every splitting        of your body      
and instead      forget the way       your people suffered
saying      there is            no language        for the cold    they bore
no language for                              forgetting
and yet you manage it            so easily
the way you fall asleep     the way
the crescent moon      hangs in the sky
like a closed eyelid         the way its sliver
sunk      snuck in      even after      you’d forgotten it      
the way you forget              forgetting
keep using                        the same word      
despite its lack          of meaning              and you tried
to go and buy       a new coat
one that would fit     your son’s     long torso
his arms      stretching to his knees
but other women
didn’t tell you      how he would grow
immeasurable    the black sky      at once     
everywhere and nowhere           the full
moon and the new         and everything
that you’ve forgotten     of that cold and night
of language      your people’s      birth-
and death-days     frozen in his bones     
though already      the days grow longer now     
by minutes only             like his legs
more ready to walk away