with all that flash.

My brothers kiss their bullet

in a dark cul-de-sac, in front

of the corner-store ice machine,

in the passenger seat of their car,

on a strobe-lighted dance floor.

My brothers’ bullet

kisses them back.

My brothers break and dance

for their bullet—the jerk,

the stanky leg. They pop, lock

and drop for their bullet,

a move that has them writhing

on the ground.

The worm, my brothers call it.

My brothers go all-worm

for their bullet.

My brothers’ bullet is registered,

is a bullet of letters—has a PD,

a CIB, a GSW, if they are lucky

an EMT, if not, a Triple 9, a DNR,

a DOA.

My brothers never call the cops

on their bullet and instead pledge

allegiance to their bullet

with hands over their hearts

and stomachs and throats.

My brothers say they would die

for their bullet. If my brothers die,

their bullet would be lost.

If my brothers die,

there’s no bullet to begin with—

the bullet is for living brothers.

My brothers’ feed their bullet

the way the bulls fed Zeus—

burning, on a pyre, their own

thigh bones wrapped in fat.

My brothers take a knee, bow

against the asphalt, prostrate

on the concrete for their bullet.

We wouldn’t go so far

as to call our bullet

a prophet, my brothers say.

But my brothers’ bullet

is always lit like a night-church.

It makes my brothers holy.

You could say my brothers’ bullet

cleans them—the way red ants

wash the empty white bowl

of a dead coyote’s eye socket.

Yes, my brothers’ bullet

cleans them, makes them

ready for God.

From the Desire Field

I don’t call it sleep anymore.

I’ll risk losing something new instead—

like you lost your rosen moon, shook it loose.

But sometimes when I get my horns in a thing—

a wonder, a grief, or a line of her—it is a sticky and ruined

fruit to unfasten from,

despite my trembling.

Let me call my anxiety, desire, then.

Let me call it, a garden.

Maybe this is what Lorca meant

when he said, verde que te quiero verde—

because when the shade of night comes,

I am a field of it, of any worry ready to flower in my chest.

My mind in the dark is una bestia, unfocused,

hot. And if not yoked to exhaustion

beneath the hip and plow of my lover,

then I am another night wandering the desire field—

bewildered in its low green glow,

belling the meadow between midnight and morning.

Insomnia is like spring that way—surprising

and many petaled,

the kick and leap of gold grasshoppers at my brow.

I am struck in the witched hours of want—

I want her green life. Her inside me

in a green hour I can’t stop.

Green vein in her throat green wing in my mouth

green thorn in my eye. I want her like a river goes, bending.

Green moving green, moving.

Fast as that, this is how it happens—