EARTHLY PLEASURES!

hysterical lightning thrashes across taut
nitrogen-skin, instantaneous yellow rivers
reflected in the wetness of your face.
i imagine the quick veins sticking in place,

the fractals seared into the atmosphere,
which, if we’re lucky, might break apart
with a flash, tangy and deliciously irate—
fine, i understand every wretch who’s fallen

in love after seeing me angry. we’ve been
watching for ages. another marvel ruined
with overindulgence, aggressively consumed,
like unearthing a plot of oxeyes and junebugs

with a toothy grab-crane—but i can’t pull
myself from what makes me a clever animal,
addicted to the snappy brag of what’s above us
and the next bite of fear that sends me giggling

like a stream. i recite reality in preparation:
if that’s the last strike then that’s the last strike.
later we spell need on the other with our hands,
me your external racing heartbeat,

and with my head thrown skyward
there’s the biggest crash yet, a real glass-
smasher, skeleton-wringer, so near that
the room goes dark and the smoke

alarms cackle like courting blackbirds, so near
that i wonder if it had been birthed from me,
and i’m howling at the thought, and all the while
you’re watching, parched and expectant and wanting

more, and i’ll tell you until those white-hot stars
split that there’s always something more.

IMPACT

i can see it already: us pressed between sheets
of paper towel to draw out any remaining moisture.

iron on low for fifteen seconds, careful not to burn
then slide us into a deathless album of your choosing. you

taught me that, how to crush pastlives into wrinkled
husks. this all started because your dad had a boat docked

in super-sargasso and i can’t resist the sea, so i tag along
and spout my pretty gibberish. muffleheads multiplying,

behold me rolling in the dizzy loaming peaks, clothed
in only green foam, attention afforded from infinite tongues

icy-hot with cinnamon gum wound around your pinkie
until circulation cuts. let me show you my soft company.

i want to be your girl, in the same way you hold the glistening
body of mars in a telescope’s lidless eye and say she belongs

to you; swivel the lens and she’s gone in the dark, thirty
million miles away and blushing. my earthly familiar,

my medicinal dose of casual serotonin, you’ve answered
the big questions: can i be even more alive? can i love

even less? we leave once i’ve seen all of you, palms
upturned, your edges as blurred as our planet

from pre-space, then take the highway home where
the lamps loom as if they’re the growths of enormous

anglerfish and i’m thinking, somehow, that this splinter
of time maims deeper than eternity, and i’m too scared

to tell you i don’t know what to call this thing reproducing
between us, like the deer who doesn’t know the name

of the roaring and luminous beast flying through the black,
only that it’s getting closer and closer and closer.

LOW-LEVEL ANNIHILATION