I force myself to take time like a pill that stops my pulse

but just for a minute. Time collects around 4:30, refusing to move.

I leave the dog for an hour & she chews up

her bed, a blue blanket, her cage door

& I say You can’t keep doing this—

& I say What am I supposed to do—

& I say You don’t understand

I need to leave you EVERY DAY I need to leave.

THANK YOU WHEN I’M AN AXE

I was a list    a rainy incident    an axe    & a pact with contagion.

Autobiography: storm                    thunderstorm                    tornado        November.

Yes, all of the major stages are rendered in code.

On the left, an emotional field.

On the right, ho hum, some circuitry.

Remember when I was a young axe

making promise after promise to the young trees?

Stump speech in the mode of hypothesis. Bravado. Cue to the fall.

When I lay flat on the floor with him & said

A relationship doesn’t end with one person running.

I am not about to die loosely jacketed among the burr oaks.

Together it’s dark-starved chlorophyll burning. Tell him to pick

me up. If I say marrow, if I say caught.

If I love cedar & thistle & curve,    I’ll keep it so quiet.

November is wood-notch, frozen dirt, rain.

I’m working for light. I’m bleeding for lightness.

Society of the tomahawk, I defend my speech

on the nature of secrets.                I marry mine to a yoke.

I want to know if two years are the measure.

What they are the measure of.       Cut once.

If a woodpile is reason when brambling.

If the dark if the dark if the dark.

Thank you for doubting me so I swung hard.

IV: BRIGHT LANDSCAPE

hell must break before I am lost;

before I am lost,

hell must open like a red rose

for the dead to pass.

—H.D.

NO, I DO NOT WANT TO CONNECT WITH YOU ON LINKEDIN

Of all the washed-up terror prodigies in all the Underworld—–

I need you especially to stay the fuck out of my iPhone.

So you’re still king of that shot-up little roach house on Cat Piss Ave,

still hung up on that time I didn’t let you stay my dearest

threat? Look at you. So mad you’d @ anything.

Wanting me taken down, taken out. Lolol, rage-cake. You tried.

In the years since I was last light-starved, hell-bent on your half-cocked lure,

I have kept the moon on all night in my own way,

by listening, by not forgetting it is there. Small witchery.

And by the way, your shit is not a secret. This here is girl country.

Trust me when I say we know all about your kind in our ranks.

All you motherfuckers make it easy—you wear the same shitty face.

Rude to the end, you missed my victory scene. I wore blue lace