Villanelle

She spoke of ghosts when I was young
Of heartbeats swallowed by the walls
Yet I could smell the devil’s tongue

My eyelids fluttered as she sung
My Playboy mommy, us her dolls
Songs of ghosts when I was young
 

Us little girls once prayed, once clung
To her long legs to break our falls
Yet I could smell the devil’s tongue
 

One breath of her collapsed my lungs
Nightmares born from her shrill calls
One ghost alive when I was young
 

From my dear mother’s mouth, she hung
Those pretty dripping words for brawls
The sting, the smell of devil’s tongue
 

With steadied vengeance I once flung
blood from my lips to make her small
I learned of ghosts when I was young
I learned to steal the devil’s tongue

Cadavers for God

The dawn cracked upon my eyes

but had no yolk, so I blinked through
the bland fogginess with no real hope
of redemption. I no longer feel the pull
of direction as I navigate my way
to the culprit. Demagnetized
with heavy crosses to bear

guess I’ll file for unemployment.

The North drove me insane for years
upon years – wrapping myself in bearskin
I felt the arms she chose to never wrap
around me. So I’d flee to
the East for my reincarnation
but they said I’d need the exorcist first.

I’ve lost my divisibility, I think,
but leaded hands don’t know much
about nothing. Us wanderers steal
precious space from the rest

But we’re great cadavers for God.

Phoenix, Arizona

the desert brought

my greatest harvest –
__________

the other man’s dust
rose swiftly
from the dunes

all the grainy details
blinding me
as one

the calm post-storm
under-
whelming.

__________

at first, I could’ve sworn
you were a mirage
out there –

the seeds you carried
birth barren plains
from rough hands

the peace on your face once dishevelling.
__________

the longer I’ve
lived here, the more
primal I feel. The more

at peace with the
pieces I could never
really settle

Even indigenous
to the art
of becoming.

Midnight’s Cartographer

pale earth, dark sky
reversed – these fingertips know
these hills pressed close above me,
the ivory spanned
in plains across my chest

you often leave this night
brighter
in your half shadow.

I shake
as your lungs pound against
these ridges, these ribs
I once drew, plunge
into the hollowness
of each collarbone
waiting to be filled
with my breath

when this land grumbles
in hunger, I know just
when to brace
for the shake.

you are an endless map
to be filled, my love
an earth unalike
to discover

and I: an unmarked night
a sky with mismatched stars

with constellations to give you
moons I wish you’d name

Adam

I saw you in
our poison apple, in love
with a different kind
of dream. Our skins – bereft
of life – slithered ‘round
our thinning ankles in a
single, tender coil,
abiding.

You never feared it –
I know that now. How I loved
your kaleidoscope eyes as they
danced in this small room and yet
somehow always found me. How

I loved the way
we merged, our braided limbs and
molten eyes, yours ever searching
for that sanctuary awaiting –
spiraled patiently, reluctantly
on a small patch of carpet.

Oh, how I loved you,
how I loved you raw.

Crawl back in that decrepit skin
as if it cradles you
to sleep. I saw past
your stale horizon, to a pulse
and flame, carved gold; to a
labyrinth of beauties and fears
that bring a man like you
to tears. But crawl back

into your sinner’s cage
if it holds you tighter than
anyone could. I’ll set this bed
alight, I’ll watch you slink away – I’ll
lie down in our dear relic,
an ever-burning rib.

Disembark

She left me silently in the morning
and only once she was really gone
did I wake up. Maybe I knew she was
there all along, hiding for her grand reveal,
hoping to make the two of us
swell with our pride as we stood
patiently by the gate.

But she could hear what you
were thinking, my lover, so she
waded away from me unwillingly
with hopes we would find her again.
I hope I find her, too – that I will
one day take her into my arms
and thank her for leaving me so that
I never had to choose to say goodbye.

She could hear
what you were thinking, my lover,
but as she slipped away, I lost
the part of you within me, I lost
the sense of completion behind
your stone cold eyes, I lost
the beautiful feeling that you could
one day love me, I lost
that gold horizon, the chance
I’d ever love myself.

Moon-tides

It was on this day that your Lord had made
that I reclaimed my tender mystery. My destiny
shook beneath me, settled itself between
each of your folds, shattering against the shore
as a collective sigh, one wave. And to think
you thought you were something
without me. To think
of a lover’s stroll along the coast
without the clamoring voice that I gave you,
of the angry release you inflict upon the earth
until I strip your high tide away.

I do it all with a whisper, what you attempt
in Triton’s scream. To dance our waltz
you chase the curvature of my hip,
navigate each intricate step through
desperate fingers in my hair. You take pride
in this slavery, swell with joy as the corners
of my mouth soften, a smile to break
the barrier between earth and sky –

my permission that molds us to one. So
with clasped hands, intertwined, with the hunger
of fiends – your sea foam illumed by my Luna’s light,
my moon, ever brighter, because it’s touched you.

But be wary, my seamen, when the smile fades,
when the moon woman wanes, retreats to her sky.
Be wary when I fade for your new stillness
will haunt you, left alone to your devices, nothing
in my wake.

Le Premier

in the iron, we are clad
we were won by something mad
that drinks fools empty. in the earth
in the fire, in the wind, that
sweet, sweet water
we are still what we once were. in the

moments that I find you,
when I sink, dissolve inside you
i am breathing for
your name. but my wind
it cannot reach inside the part
of you that preaches
false desire

i can pick us up as ghosts
who left their entrails in the hallway
where i met you. i’ll show
the heart of every haunting
the beating of the drum
pounds soft inside you. but when

i crawl back in your bed, hold
your head between my hands
i’ll know i’m holding something less
than the man who reached inside me
grabbed my lungs and eyes to blind me
and ripped my air straight from
my chest. if you see me

softly ringing the bell that sculpts each
wasted second in your memory
get on your knees, say your hail mary’s
pray that i’ll still be here standing
in the ruins of our love. that love

erupted life inside me, built a fortress
from thin air, put the poetry in the words
that i once spoke, and as I stand
here stone in stone weezing heart
and broken bone i can’t help but think
that you might be the one.

The Lover of a Ghost

I’m the lover of a ghost swallowed
by Arachne’s famished aspirations,

by her beguiling professions, her
ever-soft asphyxiation
her sweet gossamer grip, the shackles
seeking love requited. I have

heard his faded testimony, I have seen
him take the choke. I fell upon him
with my midnight veil, and in the center
stood my eye— waxing, approaching full

bleeding out my soul’s conviction.
And in my lightness shone his chains—
his spider’s art, her labyrinth web
and spoke the moon to a dying man,
“I promise to help you live.”

He begged for me to wane, he pushed me
through the velvet night. He almost loved
Arachne’s bites and chains, sweet throbs
of fruitless guarantee.

Yet I’m the lover of a ghost who spins
his own web of indecision, I’m the lover
of a man who can save anyone but
himself.

Landing

I came to you many miles above the world,
caved into your touch, shuddering in the wonder
of merging with another, of the nuances of fate—
flying intertwined for a reason.

Miles above the world, your heart beat
as you watched me. I could feel it through
your chest, pressed against you in our seats
molding to your body more and more
with every sigh, wishing that we never had
our separate destinations.

We weren’t ready for the divergence. To pass
through the barrier between earth and sky,
to touch firm ground, marked dark with borders
and names, the ground where you were known
as one distinct life and I was known to be
distinctly, painfully another.

You’d later haunt me with your softness.
I remembered you while in the grip of another,
tossing my body exactly where he wanted it,
pushing and pulling for his selfish release.

I thought of you, of the way you loved how I blush,
of the way I eased into you and you eased
back into me, of the satisfaction it brought you
to gently bring me higher. In your lips,
I briefly tasted what’s as bitter as is sweet—
recognition beyond my bare body in a bed,
awareness of how little my silhouette really says.

I crave you, the way your eyes drank me in.
I crave the tinge of fear in your voice
that reminds me I am loveable, I crave your
endless questions that remind me
you can hurt. I know I could’ve touched you
with the same care you touched me, I know
how much I could’ve given you
in the fewest precious hours.

But you stopped the fight we once believed in
for us, for the coming together in whatever
way we could. I understand it, all your caution,
our one heartbreaking difference:

I wanted you, to escape my lonely for a while,
and you don’t want me so your lonely never comes.