What wouldn’t I do for twenty bucks?
Rivets
I cannot help but sing survival by stumbling
Slick-chested along the river, each floating can
Promising an avenue of catfish. Dark
Wheat of gilded water—the cure of a mouth
Gasping. & above, the street bridge fills with voice
& the smack of doors slamming. Again & another & so on
To infinity. So the tanager on the park bench. So the stoplight
Dizzying red. Cars like old bulls limp around icy corners
& I am simple, knitting myself from this barbed-wire wind
It cannot be called “after” because there is still snow
& our eyes are hard & unblinking. I confess this system
Of hazy skylines—fast-moving constellations of shouts
Plastic bags are like clouds & you are a necessary-mouthed
Dumpster. The barges clang or an explosion in the sky
It has been a kung-fu winter, months of rat-thick pillows
But this midnight the deal is different, huzzah, huzzah—
Your grace is half plague, your hands are full of shaking
Ashtray
When the paramedics kicked his heart
back to life—the blooming light, doctors
cutting away his vocal cords, a lung—
Grandpa heard children tearing
through leaves. I promised not to tell anyone
about the flowerpot filled with ash,
the yellow-walled smell. I caressed his back
with a warm washcloth. Vibrator at his throat,
he buzzed his pleasure. Kneading skin
in silence, I traveled the universe
on his tattoos. Mountains and ships—acres
of faded ink. I rubbed circles, pushed
until his back roared, the ocean of his gravel-
skinned shoulder blade where a woman,
naked and fierce, dangled from an anchor,
winking her secrets: there is never a reason for fear,
simple as the crashing wave—Grandpa’s smile
as tumors turned him slowly into night.
How he held the X-ray to the window,
inhaling a cigarette through the hole in his throat
until it blazed, bright as an eye.
Silt
—after Charles Baxter
In the dark, I count fingers,
Watch lightning spider
Over the mountain’s toothy peaks.
All the while, the cupola grows
Cloudy with accidents—
Dark blossoms sticky and wet,
Clinging shadowy with reincarnation.
Yesterday eight and, now, eleven
Memories distilled, frayed.
The neck-breaking spiral
Of this morning’s junco
Landing on a gnarled fence,
A surgeon’s fingers tapping
His way through afternoon sleep,
Breaking a heart into ballet
Or the several postures of pain
A body makes falling unconscious
In the bathroom while violins roar
On a television straining with blue
Light. The fatigue of healing
Interrupted by the susurrus
Of an empty shower. An ear, blood-
Smeared cheek and bit lip—
A sterile, sweating tiled floor.
Having Been Roused by the Sound of a Garbage Truck from a Moment of Unwaking in Which a Fishing Hook Is Pulled from My Hand by the Mouth of My Grandfather
On the boulevard, morning’s cottonous haze hunches—
Already hot breath & car exhaust among the dahlias.
Stumbling to the trash can, the neighbor’s wave unbuckles
The sky. These are the beautiful ways we exist—rain needling
His sweatshirt, light orange-stripping from above. & blocks
Away, to the beer-bottled river where a wading man shouts
To a stray dog. His hands, bleeding & pruned, sweep suck-
Holes for cans—the same man having followed someone
He loves home last night. The same man who stared into a
Half-lit window, drenched in a midnight heat. This insomnia
Is more deafening than the buzz. Cracks moaning when
You walk that same water during winter’s deep freeze. More
Important than the head-tilt when watching your pickup
Wrap around a phone pole. Headlights are always
Swerving now. Not yet, they flash, not just yet. Soon there
Will be the simmer, the hollow of failing fruit.
The Butcher Dreams
Butcher paper, breasts, fresh snow.
I hacked whole flocks of chicken,
blade orange with rust.
We swung slabs of beef
from hooks. Heavy shadows
dripping through freezers, steam.
White aprons hungry for blood,
we used our weight to split
ribs, break bones.
Moans, the ripping of our saws.
We struggled, pink fingers,
pork against glass.
Late into night, I’d lie exhausted.
Weary brain unfolding
like a lotus, intricate map of the heart.
Arpeggio
Outside the smoking & beard-burdened trees—
& always again, it is winter
Always again children streak into traffic, & again, & always,
I’m decapitated
& feel as though someone is lip-tracing
The zippers of my self-inflicted bites & it is true—
the only thing I can
Fully understand about sickness is a tractor dragging a stolen
ATM machine
Down main street Or a body flinging itself
From a train bridge & the sparks Lightswirl
& the sparks
This is all about hunger, I said to the man next to me
in the waiting room
Pointing at the bruises Jesus Christ, he said,
you should have seen it crawl
Back & beg Even after we’d dropped cinder blocks
on its face
& here you are You are right fucking here
& the sparks Here & the sparks
Snow
i.
Ground hard as I-beams.
Blisters and whipping flags,
but I can only remember how grandfather spat
tobacco in Tupperware—sleet so cold I couldn’t
speak.
ii.
Today—a finger’s calligraphy on car windows.
Our ribs crack with longing.
If I see you, I won’t remember your name.
iii.
A poor taste on lips.
Tonight, a shattered cup.
The window breaks.
iv.
When the chest sweats, where is the light? Cold, but
face flushed like persimmons.
Hold this. If it shakes, don’t let go.
v.
I’m in love with sleeping bodies.
I can’t remember the melody.
I don’t remember anything at all.
Today, he brushed his teeth then leaped
from the balcony.
We couldn’t hear over chiming glass, the snow
falling straight down.
Who Finds You
I tar acres of wandering
The guarded woods hunting
Shudders of moonlight
My hands steadying
On barbed wire I open
My jacket to evening snow
The creases gleaming
My cheeks before
I shotgun myself in the face
And now I have fucked up
The voices are lightning
Jag
ged cracks in the frozen pond
And each holler beatboxes
Through the back-lit and feeble
Armed trees a reminder
Said over and over when
Your skin is lost to the cold
And in the moment before
The moment of noise everyone
Is eye to crotch in the delivery room
Of your panic they’re rubbing IVs
Against their chests and picking
Their teeth with scalpels
While the sink overflows
With voice—will you follow
Into the dark but what is
That way the body suffers
Your eyes you are all wishless
And bewildered mouths of black
Berry fists pumping ribs they say
Come running with a star
Bright needle there is
Bound to be damage
4
The gods are strange. They brew us fatal pleasures, they use our virtues to betray us, they break our wings across the wheel of loving.
—EDWARD HIRSCH
Corpus
When I say hello, it means bite my heart.
Let the blackfly spin invisible & delirious
on vinyl. Let it save me from what I can’t
know. Send posthumous letters in neon,
scribble love unreadable. My body is sweet
with blasphemy & punk teeth, memories
of slam-dancing underwater.
Tonight the absence of rain
is the mouth-open rush to noise:
a hurricane of wasps throat-clambering
for air. This half-earth where grind
sleeps dormant, a sickness without
temperature or cough. Hold my hand,
my nothing shouts. We’ll stay up all night.
We’ll orgy with shake and groove,
wet whisper—clap, kiss, watch me go.
Callnote
I stopped listening
as the blue jay hooked
its final turn.
I knew its business
was no longer air, only rage—
good just out of reach.
Jake, my nephew,
asked questions you hear
underwater. Questions answered
when a stranger ties your shoes.
We stared together. Everyone’s
done this—gazed at an airplane
slicing sky & blossomed
with visions of balloons
bursting with gasoline. I held Jake
to the glass, bird in slow motion.
I squeezed his tiny hand
in time with smack.
Jake’s bobbing head
drooled. The stain was a half-
finished Rothko. In the fading
light, the still bird was gray.
I wanted to take the window
out & frame it. I wanted
the delicate bones in my freezer.
I wanted to kiss Jake’s soft head
& whisper—most days, this
is the sound of the world.
Fever
i.
Trample me to the stage so I can hear the butterfly
tongue the last bee-swelled scream Rats chewed
through my night & now I reverb with failure
I am a bathroom stall sticky with a good
time’s remains During the coda
tell them it will be painless when I’m gone
The crocuses are ablaze Tell them I can’t be lonely
Tell them what I buried under the yew tree
ii.
if you need rock ’n’ roll stick a finger
in my chest believe the blackbirds
whistling through my ribs
saw an ecstasy from my skull savor
the slick-boned grit split me
open & a tanager quivers to life
wing nailed to wing it sings
the cripple is the blind boy’s
crayon-whipped best thump
its breast & chuck me
in a dumpster of needles
& rubber gloves name this the big
bang press a scalpel
through my cheek & lick me
use your teeth to scrape
the gravel from my tongue
iii.
Skin searing blue-soft I plunge
in the hallway’s spins All strobe-lit
tits & teeth I holler the bottle rocket
I moan There are secrets
carved into my pockmarked moon Mouth my hurricane
throat I come Break me tender
I cry The glam-heart needs electric
paint I bleed Stitch me shut at dawn
That First Day of Spring Kind of Feeling
It’s called the moonwalk. Front yard
glory. I eat frozen strawberries & watch
falling clouds, God’s muscle-thick arms
whipping savage. All of us will hang for belief
in sunlight’s rejuvenating power.
Today, I wear ditch cheeks, horse sparks
at my feet. Add wood chips to my pocket
lint & I have filthy thoughts. I itch melody.
Take away the frost, tremulous rhythm.
Sing breeze & I am an accordion
unbuttoning his jeans. Now is the season
to shave off my eyelids. Kiss me, ground,
I’ll read you the dictionary backward.
A page a day for the rest of my life.
Look Close
Rain is holding its breath—water-damaging
The oatmealy clouds and you must want
To be the stranger of swollen doorways,
The specialist who cannot carve my insides
Enough. When you think midnight,
Do you taste hot honey and water
Or muffler-rust? When you hear thunder,
Remember the bowling balls herding
Around the buckled wood of your mother’s home.
Bathroom light, womb-bright, the six-packs
Are slow tonight. There is a car smashing
Around my chest. Do you hear the breath
Of the waiting? It doesn’t matter how
Many times we prick our tongues and touch.
Cocoon
No matter how well we live, there will be mornings
when 3,000 pounds of jet fuel spill from an airplane
racing across the sky. Every Tuesday a farmer falls
against a pitchfork in the barn. All of us will surprise
two bodies in a dark room, grinding each other soft,
or leave home in short sleeves on a day snowplows roar.
In one life or another, we’ve all been the pocket
of a murderer, restless with bullets, or a knotted sheet
tearing apart, unable to hold a lover’s yearning weight.
Down the street, two boys are swinging behind the school.
In a week, one will be struck blind by the cry God makes
when someone lives. The same day, the other boy will write
the first sentence in his autobiography. It might be better
to be a caterpillar half-asleep on an elm branch, staring
marble-eyed at budding grass, but as soon as you think this,
the Saint of Ice Cubes pounds against your door.
Swaggering in his stillness, he looks you up and down,
pokes your chest. He makes you watch as, under the cashew
moon, he grins, rakes his cheek and yowls. Then, terrible
as the boy’s soon-to-be-white eyes, he raises a fist
to the flickering streetlight and shakes wicked
the hummingbird he’s squeezed into a bottle.
The Xylophone Is Blaze
Voltage or diabetic, my hands.
We crossed the river pirouetting
on buoys. Predictions of sunshine.
Come over
now, my hands flutter.
Did you believe you were good