some nights

you may experience

thought’s diamond

drop           squeezed

from an enraged

zero. strained

& so so

bitterly wrought

some nights

labour, some nights

grieve, some nights

exorcise somnolence

o who                  come middle age

can enjoy their white noise machine

their plastic anti-bruxism mouthpiece

their apnea apparatus           & allow

their subconscious to work

its internalized heresies

its backward dance

its sandpaper erasures that smooth it to sleep

as night drips

pandemic & toil

& the schoolchildren

dream of sugar’s

refined fluorescence

speed into tomorrow’s

slapstick

hyped by lucky charms

hallucinate 

locker-lined corridors

that twist into a rich dad

poor dad

pedagogy

& their anemic allowance

offers only

a leadership mentality

fueled by squats &

plant-based proteins

by plyometrics

only

feral invective

to arise

& grind – but tonight

that rare

ecstatic hour between

the internet’s thirst traps &

the pillow’s

wicked blow

is –

o

who                      

can afford to release

their unrealized life

into a freakish

disambiguating

microtonal cry

The chiropractor sent me home
     with my left ankle taped, my neck
          cracked, and instructions not to sleep

on my belly, so when it came time
     for bed, I dropped a tequila shot,
          laid back and closed my lids, entrails

exposed to vultures of bad dreams.
     From the neighboring pillow,
          my love whispered theories

of meditation, biofeedback, post-
     traumatic stress, and prayer. When
          she asked, “If a divine creator

made the universe, who made
     the divine creator?” I mumbled,
          “Are you trying to talk me to sleep?”

She smiled, then babbled
     past midnight, contemplating out loud
          the metaphysics of leaf production,

the wonder of molecules
     that make up our bed, the web
          of my cell structure connected

to hers, until I fell asleep,
     imagining the mitochondria
          of words, thinking, if god is

love, let me sleep to this sound of her voice.

August in Indiana:
 
a heavy moon hung over space
where there was almost nothing
 
but one big town at dead center.
 
Grasshoppers popped under tires, 
the trees swelled with grackles,
 
and I amused myself with windmills -- 
the solitary geometry of glint and spin,
 
slowing then standing motionless
until the sky raised its dark fist. 
 
 
The autumn my mother left
a coldness opened . . .
 
Beans dried to snakes' tails in the fields,
and my chest filled with rust.
 
 
In the snow I walked the pastures 
 
in an orange poncho 
my father could see from the house.
 
Once I told him to stop waving at me.
 
Once I said maybe I’ll just keep walking.  
 
And once I slid the poncho 
to the near-frozen middle of Moots Pond
 
just to watch him run from the house 
barefoot and wild.

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

When the forensics nurse inspected me, she couldn’t
see the tenderness he showed me after. My walk home
 

squirmed sore with night. I passed the earthworms
displaced to sidewalk, their bodies apostrophed
 

in the sun. I did not anticipate a grief
so small, my noun of a prayer, Eat dirt to make dirt.
 

Took a man’s hand as he led me to cave. So long
as I breathed, I could huff violets in his dank, practice
 

earth’s gasp. Mother lifts daughter, daughter casts
look at camera, a killer, a stick in the mud. I hold
 

my own hand. When the forensic nurse inspected
me, I described the house, historic blue. Asked me
 

to push my hips down. Little crescent moons
where his nails stabbed into me. She gave me
 

the word abrasion so gently I offered consent. Blue
as the moon when I sighed wait, blue as the no of my

throat. Abrasion, possibly extended form of red.
Harm results in a starry night too, many galaxies
 

scraped under the nail of a heavenly body. Ah my
second earth, its wounds hardened into swallowed
 

prophylaxis, an injection pooling between muscle
and skin. A woke seed. Deadarmed anti-moons
 

aggregated. A storm can travel seeds up to 30 miles
away. They dust on the sidewalks like lost data.
 

He did not intend Did not. Bloody speculum
a telescope searching the angry night sky for proof.

When the light wakes & finds again
the music of brooms in Mexico,
when daylight pulls our hands from grief,
& hearts cleaned raw with sawdust
& saltwater flood their dazzling vessels,
when the catfish in the river
raise their eyelids towards your face,
when sweetgrass bends in waves
across battlefields where sweat
& sugar marry, when we hear our people
wearing tongues fine with plain
greeting: How You Doing, Good Morning
when I pour coffee & remember
my mother's love of buttered grits,
when the trains far away in memory
begin to turn their engines toward
a deep past of knowing,
when all I want to do is burn
my masks, when I see a woman
walking down the street holding her mind
like a leather belt, when I pluck a blues note
for my lazy shadow & cast its soul from my page,
when I see God's eyes looking up at black folks
flying between moonlight & museum,
when I see a good-looking people
who are my truest poetry,
when I pick up this pencil like a flute
& blow myself away from my death,
I listen to you again beneath the mercy
of a blue morning's grammar.

I.
Wine drunk, ham-faced on the duvet. Cue feelings talk.

Should I have been more detached? Should I not have draped myself
on the heat vent wearing only my socks—like so?

Because he addressed me always by both names. Cooked for me when I wouldn’t eat.

Making Thanksgiving food for himself in October. Patron saint of the head start.
With his dog who spoke English, possibly other languages.

Trailing a red robe in the kitchen like he was waiting for coronation.

If I loved someone like that. A figure of questionable authority
figuring out which relics to preserve under cling wrap.

For the way he smelled like cedar. Mispronounced the names of plants.

II.
There’s an airport & then there’s The Airport
From Which He Called Me On Our Second Anniversary
To Say He Couldn’t Love Me & Would Never Marry Me Ever.
At some gate there’s a specifically culpable airplane he was on for 12 hours, no contact.

There’s another woman & then there’s The Woman
I Knew He Would Leave Me For, there in a hotel with him—
there to soothe him, to believe, as I did, in redemptive sadness.

There’s regret & then there’s being so angry at myself
that I drove all night until I found the water & walked into it, March lakewater

gray & stinging. Muscovy ducks in the shallows, their strange low muttering.

III.
What is this impulse in me to worship & crucify
                         anyone who leaves me—
I have tried to frame up the cavalry in gravel,
                        in rectangles, in an honor code
of stamping out the fire. I’m paying attention. Look.
                       There’s an exchange rate
for bad behavior. It begins with the word until.
                       I agreed to affirm small kindnesses
until disaster. A risk I could keep now & pay for eventually.
                       A contract that begets blame begets
guilt. I had to say at every stage I give permission to be hurt. Until.
                      Once he agreed to stay the night with me
& by morning a small ding in the glass had spidered over
                      his windshield. The cold shattering it completely.
It’s not anyone’s fault that this world is full of omens.
                      By all accounts, history is a practice
of ignoring things & hoping for the best. You can drive
                     yourself crazy with looking. You can expect
bad luck to mark you unfooled, fooled.
                     Light to mark you with light.

IV.
I know in this system I am not blameless.
                                                  I used to promise myself
that when we broke up I would tell him
                                                  I love you. I thought of it as a punishment.
I dreamed I let him look for me in the woods.
                                                I stayed perfectly quiet. I was covered in rough scales
& my eyelashes dropped burrs when I blinked.
                                                In the dirt below I watched him search for me.
He said Is it enough that I want to be different.
                                                Maple seeds spun out from my hair.

V.
I divorce thee history
of looking at him in the fog
coming up over Scotland.

I divorce thee, North Sea
longing by boat.

I divorce thee, insomnia.
I divorce me driving to him
five hours over ice

& then picking a fight.
I divorce him introducing himself

as my friend, never wanting to be
on the phone; I divorce thee
roasting pan & HGTV, I divorce

staying quiet willing him
to speak. Music for saying things

I wanted to ignore.
Anguish—I divorce thee.
I divorce thee, I divorce thee whole heart:

from the wingbone of a vulture,
I’ve made you a harp.

Two years into anorexia recovery, 
when I begin to miss dying more than ever, 
my cat begins to hide. 
She disappears for hours and I find her 
hammocked in the lining of my couch. 
She has hollowed it out with her teeth 
and stares at me through cobwebbed eyes. 

I am startled at my own anger. 
After all the time and love I’ve given her, 
I can’t forgive her turning away like this. 
My partner reminds me that cats 
do not know how to be cruel, 
but they do know survival and fear. 
Each day, I reach into the dark 
mouth of the couch and pull her, 
claws and all, back into life. 

Weeks later, she dies with no one home. 
I discover the body and the urge to blame 
myself glows hot in my chest. 
How could I let her die 
in an empty house? 
How could I be so cruel. 

On the drive to donate her body, 
my partner apologizes with every breath. 
We pull over and he cries into my coat, 
How could I let this happen? 
And I know that if he feels guilty too, 
maybe the blame belongs to neither of us. 

This is the person who tried 
to breathe life back into the cat’s corpse, 
without realizing what he was doing. 
He did it because his instincts told him to, 
because every cell in his body is good. 
For weeks, the memory will make him 
shiver, gag, rinse the moment from his mouth. 

This is the person who gave everything 
to keep me alive, when letting me die 
was the easiest thing to do. 
He never stopped looking for me 
when I hid in the hollows of myself and my heart 
became a shadowy hallway of locked doors. 

This is the person who, if I died 
as the doctor said I would, 
would surely blame himself, 
and I would bang my phantom fists 
against the plexiglass of the living world, 
screaming No! 

I did not die. 
And when I was stuck in the hospital, 
sobbing as I pictured him living our life alone, 
I wrote him a letter asking how 
he could ever forgive me. 
He wrote back saying I would 
rather miss you for a while 
than miss you forever. 

In the car now, he asks how 
we’ll ever survive this 
and I say Together.