a thing i can touch, a voice i can call

a shot at the bar, a shot at making it big

but didn’t you? didn’t you make it big, fam?

aren’t you all of it now? i call for God.

i call for God but out comes your name.

//

i call for God & out comes your name

& then your blood next, wraps its weight

around your christening. next, bone-

colored seeds plant themselves in you

& become bones, bloom fields of muscle

& organs from orchids, little dandelions

that dry into skin. next come seeds

for your eyes, a seed for your voice

a seed to makes you dance, a seed

that looks like your mother & a boy

comes flying right out my mouth

burrows root & prayer into your chest

& had he always been there? the boy

beautiful & waiting for someone to see?

//

beautiful & waiting by some sea

purple with the waves of your laugh

your frequency somewhere between

sound & light, bright note singeing dawn.

to arrive to you would be heaven enough.

somewhere, you’re a city with a boy

in every window calling down to me.

i call back. our voices fat the air

with nectarines. you laugh so hard

you become the wind & every ribbon it holds.

your body is all silk & all air, you are in my hair.

you’re an opal braid, an amethyst twist.

give me that eternity—i’ll breathe

you in, you nourish & strangle.

//

i breathe you. in you, i nourish. strangle

your name out my mouth if you could

but you are a smoke i can swallow, fire

rich with something thicker, honey begat

by flames, the wet of burned skin.

your name is honeydew glass. i hunger

& bleed for it, cough up burgundy mercies

for it, but it’s always true the same way.

my nigga is gone. he took himself away

from himself, he flung himself higher

than the oldest light i know, light so old

it’s gone from where it started & is seen

only years from here. it’s true, a star

withers here, blooms up in a farther sky.

//

“withers here, blooms up in a farther sky.”

pretty right? but wasn’t shit cute.

i was ugly with your going. i had its bad teeth

& scabs, heaving up dark, my skin clotting

then becoming like black tumbleweeds.

i was a hollow block, a ghost hood

where liquor tips itself sideways

bleeds out in memory of hands.

over the toilet, nothing left to leave me

but sound. i was not ready to be your witness

i broke like champagne against your vessel.

but to see your mother, to see her see you

settled into a jar? what’s it like to lose all that?

your child? your ark? your lil friend? your summer?

//

your fat cheeks, your ark arms, your summer

everything, your royal radius, your bleeding yes

the verb your name makes, so much

to smile about in spite of that final data.