OBSERVATION

rot lies with me in bed clumsy stinking beast
who threads forever through my lips
and pulls puppeteers
there’s no place for me here prove me wrong
i should fear my heart both
beating and still prove me wrong
(here a gasp shocks me awake)
only pain
prove me wrong—

the sky does when through a yawning
grey wound it delivers
a baptism then
flecks of sunlight which glint off the canal
like diamonds for no
reason

FOLIE À DEUX

she winces at the kitchen table
nails in thigh to bury the sting says you know,
i don’t think i was scared of death until i met you.

i’m telling you, her blood’s not clean,
and if you drink it you’ll catch the same sick
(her honeycomb’s sweet but your judgment
is sweeter)

no need to panic, but in panic we trust
it always gets the job done!

if one of you plays tapeworm,
the other is the sheep
and you can lead a sheep to answers
but you can’t make them think

here’s the hot-lipped truth of it: everyone’s sad,
don’t think you’re special. everyone’s sad and scared
and everyone carries it around with them wallets
spilling over with wilted daffodils and finger bones—
everyone’s got their own sludge. mix and you get into
the dangerous stuff, and this is bona fide
alchemy.
weave thread through fermented pulp, wait for one violent
night to set the corpse waltzing then here’s your new monster,
frankenstein—appears it won’t let you leave the house.

she eats the unlucky flies because she just wants you safe,
says i don’t mean to project, but i’m pretty sure we’re the
only two people on this wretched planet who aren’t on fire
so

why catch? it’s so dangerous out there—
why go? we have everything you could ever need
in here. pull the blinds, darling!
they don’t need to see

IN ANTICIPATION OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB

in the worst of the hack-nasty visions
the walls are a stiff electric blue

and there are speakers which crackle
but don’t tell me how to leave

you. after i choose to go the only way out
is through crooked circles of sterile hell,

and even the daisies turn away, and i’m crying
nylon wires, and i try to speak to the survivors

who don’t know they’re survivors but when
they open their mouths it’s the horrible tinny

speaker-crackle that sputters down their clothes
like sick. everywhere a rotten siren follows me,

forewarning an inevitable event with a wail
no one else hears. if you made me, i’m all of

you. how do i repurpose every memory into
a memorial? i’m bad with my hands. i fear

unanswerable questions of self; like, what if
i ever muster up the courage to ask why i love

like a tourniquet? make the way i am make
sense. and this may be the secret of loss,

that despite my own continued presence in
the world i suspect that the slash

of a tether, more often than it frees,