AUTOPSY, PERFORMED GASPING

i would have never forgiven
myself had i stepped on that stag
beetle. stark maroonish bullet
hole, pincers scratching against
the pavement gentle as a whisper,
in the city!—

i tel you about him and vow
to start watching my feet.

there's no time to gasp before
before you save me from the drop
and haul me the rest of the way
over the fence. today i’m convinced
by my own humanity, so much
a person. maybe i’ve fallen for a trick,
my mind’s protective char doing its job,
but hey, am i evolved or what!
meanwhile, the oaks ahead of us
unfurl like surgery curtains.

i’m thinking of a boy i remember
nothing about except his crime
when he, despite the girls’
pleading, slammed his awful
foot down onto the head
of what was once the praying
mantis, who popped like a berry,
all of this for no apparent reason
besides his having a foot
and her being there and our delicious
horror, and i never recovered
from the quiet racket her body
made, how substantial she appeared
at odds with how simply she died.

the daisies make space for us like a womb
and i keep telling you i could fall asleep.
what that means is i feel safe enough to lie
belly-up. what that means is this is unusual.

so it’s known, that first night
i slept beside you, i didn’t stir
a lick, not at all—

you untangle a branch from my hair,
clumsy and fond, and i know you weren’t
supposed to see me like this. the breathing,
i mean. bacteria making a real show of being
bacteria, of the pins stuck in all my one
hundred thready legs, understand,
it’s alleged that every eight years my cells are made new
and so how will you know
that this me is the one you love?

(alternate ideas: me greater,
draped fleshless round forever
or just the ripples born by the skipped
rock and not the rock herself—
instead, in the underfoot brambles
unskipped and pathetic / everything
soft and chewy-pink / like this syrupy
grapefruit we tease apart when we
speak / like i want to rough anything
with you until it spits acid / your lips
curl around my shoulder and it snaps
like a cicada / how mechanical
the processes to accomplish tender
things / you scribble at the silky
spider bite i can’t reach / i want you
to know that my hands tremble
like moth wings in a killing wind and)

there are still so many good
and steady ways to touch your face.

TELL ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT

before the worst of the red synapses cracks,
you remember the walls, and that no one knows
what it’s like in there. you’re trying to write

everything down. lay it out. endless three-card
solitaire, the canyon-gorged vinyls, every cursed
word you’ve let inside you which began safe

then grew, you’ve written them all, stony in the face
of obsession and rage, cuffed to the pursuit, lately,
of hobbies which promise to break skin, or slice