does it matter, really, for what reason
the matches are struck?
sometimes i light them only to snort

the ceremonious sulfur as transport
back to one of the few-candled birthdays,
of anything being worth celebrating,

a nascent year, outrageously long, stacked
like a wreath instead of a breezeblock.
i mean, what’s the most important

fate-pawn i could have burned,
or the most wonderful aftermath
as a result of its burning? or maybe

the meaning is the licking flame
itself, young and orange, a wriggling
newborn. or, no, not like a newborn,

sorry, i’ve just been thinking about—
or an empty prism, you say, from
the negative space. right. without

the activating glint it may as well
be any other glass. or anything else
at all. if purpose is a moment

and not a monument then all
there is to do is keep writing
things down. i want to make

something with only my mind
that glows well enough to warm
you. fireflies, you’ll find, are cold

to touch. tell me this is what’s intended:
this brief parade of stubborn
heat, this dream of sparkling light.

EGO

mom tells me if i keep up these stormy episodes, my face will be stuck like that, an unending tempest.

i’m wrestling with myself in the fireplace when
i realize i don’t know what i look like. not really,
not under duvet or water or lousy
with moonrays, and i don’t know which is most me:
to be daughter or lover or god to dependent plants.

at home, i’m weaving together my most vague
and delicate twine, whispering every word
that could set the buds burning red with need,
try me try me try me.
lighting the candles with only my mouth.

i want to be the sum
of only my most beautiful parts. this is wrong
of me but i can’t decide why. i guess i’ve never writhed
without awareness of the writhing—

try anguish, then. try crumpled fly-girl throbbing in poison
ivy. but even agony has dimples, and if the face is too honest,
who would admit to love what’s left, the bare and groping
creature of legs or light or unspeakable mold?

if the wounds won’t heal, become a wound.
i undress and expect to feel more naked,
or to reveal something before unnoticed:
a harvestman’s nest. a wormhole
in the eye.

imagine becoming a girl ordained,
some bilateral symmetry slicing
its way through the unbroken immorality.
i want any scrap of proof
i’m supposed to be here,
acting ridiculous.

there’s a sensation i’m after: myself
poured both into and all over myself.

if i still went to confession, i’d admit
that sometimes when i flicker so full
of volatile want between your eyes
in midmorning, sun at its most relentless,
i’m just looking for my face dunked
in the oil of your pupils, the only place
i recognize her so well that my mouth
parts slightly and stays there.

ME, BAREFACED, IN THE SYCAMORE

i’m smiling in the picture. that’s the end of it.
but i’m picking the scab: swaddled in the knotted hammock
big enough for all three of us, my eyes are skewed and small,
jaw wobbly and missing, biggish shoulders hunched,
mostly unlit and sheened with sweat, like a grey sort of glass
smeared with the greasy bruises of our fingertips. i am my own
obscene cloud. i immediately hate myself for the thought.
after all , that was just one second, one imitation face.
and do you know what we did that day? we slunk through
blue wildflowers and tall grass, spoke of revolutions
and inconceivable faraway epochs and outer space.
it was summer again. daisy chains for everyone and i mean
everyone. peace and ball games. a sloppy bumblebee slept
in a pollen stupor. abundance in abundance. sweat means
the body is at work with the sun. when i look again i’m different—
unthinking of how or why the muscles move, just happy
that they do, able to climb. and if there was ever a place
i didn’t need to be beautiful—