for Jericho, with thanks to Carl Phillips

I like men who are cruel to me;

men who know how I will end;

men who, when they touch me,

fasten their shadows to my neck

then get out my face when certain

they haven’t much use for being seen.

I like men to be cruel to me.

Any men who build their bodies into

widths of doors I only walk through

once will do. There’s a difference

between entrances and exits I don’t

have much use for now. I’ve seen

what’s left behind after a hawk

has seized a smaller bird midair.

The feathers lay circled in prattle

with rotting crab apples, grasses passing

between the entrances and exits

of clover. The raptor, somewhere

over it, over it. Cruelty where?

The hell would grief go in a goshawk?

It’s enough to risk the open field,

its rotten crab apples, grasses passing

out like lock-kneed mourners in sun.

There I was, scoping, scavenging

the damage to drag mystery out of

a simple read: two animals wanted

life enough to risk the open field

and one of them took what it hunted.

Each one tells me he wants me

vulnerable. I already wrote that book.

The body text cleaved to the spine,

simple to read as two animals wanting

to see inside each other and one

pulling back a wing to offer—See?

Here—the fastest way in or out

and you knew how it would end.

You cleaved the body text to the spine

cause you read closely. You clock damage.

It was a door you walked through once

before pivoting toward a newer image of risk.

For years had anyone needed me

to spell the word commiserate

I’d have disappointed them. I envy

people who are more excited

by etymology than I am, but not

the ones who can explain how

music works—I wonder whether

the critic who wrote

that the Cocteau Twins were the voice

of god still believes it. Why not,

what else would god sound like.

Even though I know better, when I see

the word misericordia I still think

suffering, not forgiveness;

when we commiserate we are united

not in mercy but in misery,

so let’s go ahead and call this abscess

of history the Great Commiseration.

The difference

between affliction and affection

is a flick, a lick—but check

again, what lurks in the letters

is “lie,” and what kind of luck

is that. As the years pile up

our friends become more vocal

about their various damages:

Won’t you let me monetize

your affliction, says my friend

the corporation. When I try to enter

the name of any city

it autocorrects to Forever:

I’m spending a week in Forever,

Forever was hotter than ever

this year, Forever’s expensive

but oh the museums,

and all of its misery’s ours.

To forgive one’s life love for dying, pick the long, feather-like, crimson flowers in early spring, when the desert is in bloom. Boil in river water only. Let cool. Drink at once. Drink when waking, at noon, and at bedtime each day for three full weeks thereafter. If resentment persists, go to your beloved’s grave daily and pray for forgiveness until sound sleep and appetite return.

◊◊◊

My last days

May they pass

slow as black smoke

goes father’s

only prayer

of late

No

No I’m certain

that he stole it

from Adam I’m sure

who first

uttered it

just outside

the Garden

the first night he

spent alone

The way that the sea fails

to drown itself everyday. And entendre alludes all those not listening.

The way unfertilized chicken eggs fail to have imagination,

           dozened out in their cardboard trays,

by which I mean they will never break

           open

from the inside. The way my imagination (née anxiety) has

           bad brakes and a need

to stop sometimes. The way I didn’t believe

it when he told me we were going to crash into the car idling

           at a red light

ahead of us. To know our future like that seemed unlikely.

           But to have time to tell me?

—Nearly impossible. I may have broken

           several ribs that day

but I will never know for sure. I’m okay,

I guessed aloud to the paramedic. It doesn’t matter

           if you’re broken if you’re broke,

I moaned in bed that night, after several glasses

           of cheap red. I thought it would make a good blues

refrain. I made myself

           laugh and so I made myself hurt—

MEMOIRS BY EMILIA PHILLIPS, goes the joke.

A friend of mine competes in beard and mustache tournaments,

           even though she can’t grow one herself—

Once, she donned a Santa Claus made entirely out of hot-glued tampons.

It was as white as the spots in memories I doubt.

           The first woman

I kissed who had never kissed a woman before

couldn’t get over how soft my face is,

           even the scar. Once,

a famous poet said what’s this and touched my face

           without asking—

his thumb like a cat’s tongue on the old wound.

He must have thought he was giving

me a blessing.

The sun rises in shades of tuna

I can only hear

One song

See the trucks moving

Like ribbon around me

It's me and this machine

Somewhere are the bodies

I’ve put my mouth on

When I am old

And held in

I hope words

Will be lusterless

I want to be

Buffed so hard that even

The highway

Can’t scratch

When I get to school

One kid reads a piece

About how he wants to give

Relationship Advice

For a living

He says that a cheater

Will always cheat, and of course,

He wants to find a way

To make us learn this

The other day when locking

My house I had

A vision of a field

Behind it were three

Smaller fields

I can leave many times

And still not be

Gone