Seeing the paper bubble up brown, not even righting the

bottle when I had the chance I cried with my mouth open

and no sound coming out. What a fucking mess I’d made.

At that time I thought mostly in curse words. What a

fucking goddamn fucking fucked-up mess.

THE CUT

THE CUT

Without you to hurt me who will hurt me? Oh but you know

how, even a thousand miles away, you can do it: I thought I

told you not to call me, never to call me here and I hold the

phone beneath my cheek and dig just above the vein, calm

as clipped grass, and it’s your hand, it’s your hand

SICK

SICK

How was your trip my mother asks, holding a bag of

burritos; I have gained weight and she is thinking how to tell

me this and I just look at her I don’t take the bag I don’t say

your name and I don’t say Fine I will never say your name

out loud again, not even to you, and though I don’t know this

yet, how could I know it, I start to cry. I tell her it’s about her

cancer, how I don’t want her to die. She says It’s nothing, I’m

fine, I’ll be okay, what is this? What is all this? Meaning my

stained shirt and the dishes in the sink and the filth on the

floor and I say cancer when I mean him and we sit together

on the sofa, the food going cold, the brazen death-cells

tripling

INCANT

INCANT

I forgot to say—there were not even electric lights. So light

means something different now. When I got back to the

city I wouldn’t touch the switches. Dust grew thick on the

bulbs I burrowed into the bedclothes broke my pencils ate

erasers—

is it as simple as putting on clean underwear? Discarding

the old doughnuts? Chopping new collarbones from the soft

body of the caterpillar—choosing a new moisturizer?

I spent such a long time helping you find the best way to

make me gag. Learning which plants wouldn’t kill me a field

guide propped beside the stove what mushroom to eat what

spider to kill. I stare at a dish of venison trying to remember

what the deer looked like tearing ivy from the trees I weep

over a wedding present of expensive yellow sheets—

this is the ritual. Casting the sad spell. Drinking the old

blood. It’s you, every time, but less, and less.

PLAINS

PLAINS

I pulled over, hopping the old fence

and headed for the goats,

fruit against my chest

in the dress you said you loved.

I watched their mouths

chopping the apples:

chipped teeth pitting

the innocent

skins. Green. They must have been

sour, those apples, but they were

eaten.

I kneeled in the dirt. The goats

closed in, lifting