Clumsy Metaphor

a glass dropped

on kitchen floor

swept into dustpan

assembled 

into a human body

by a human body

this is how desire

this is how 

my life spent

broken spilled

how I bleed

at the edge of you

Ode to the Oceans’ Many Plastic Patches

disappointing-ass way to kill the planet if you ask me 

no music in it at all

what if instead convenience

wasn’t god

when I was eleven I joined the world

learned all the wrong lessons

about what matters

still unlearning

(not really)

mostly my problems have to do with hunger

mostly my problems have to do

I don’t litter

haven’t littered

in years but there was a brief period

when I bought cigarettes on my way home from work

did not smoke them

threw the pack out the window mistaking

this for freedom

I guess I got away with it

anyway the idea of these plastic patches

it’s fucking terrible

shittiest detritus of the shittiest century

look the numbers are too big for a body to hold

gyre of waste three times the size of France

how big can France even be

I did learn to slice the rings from a six-pack

still do

for the seals, you know

mistake is thinking we can save anything

such pleasure in not smoking

only if you have the cigarettes in your hand first

don’t mean to sound hopeless

don’t know how else to end this

don’t know how else it ends

Ode to My Stupid Mouth

My mouth has no idea we’re in a pandemic. 

My mouth cannot stop dreaming about sex.

My mouth’s fatal flaw is hunger. My mouth

is the maple limb that storm-splintered 

into the backyard overnight, wrecking nothing. 

It is a sidewalk splattered with wet forsythia petals,

sticky & fading. It is the lightning,

the thunder, the drench. My mouth is not the same age

as the rest of my body. The rest of my body

is a paper sack of bleached flour —

it cannot be refolded neatly, cannot stop spilling. 

My mouth is a map of all my desire, is the red circle

around the towns I have lived in,

is beauty mark & mole, bite & scar

& bitter grudge. It remembers everything. 

My mouth is a country that cannot stop

hurting its citizens. My mouth is ghost,

monster, dinosaur. The rest of my body

curls into quarantine but my mouth is outside

looking for someone to kiss. My mouth 

will promise anything you ask, 

go anywhere you want it to. My mouth 

is responsible for every lie I’ve ever told,

my mouth wants to confess & be forgiven

as if that is love: tonguing language

into the world in hopes it comes back changed.

With Great Fanfare I Present You the Key to the City and This Is What Happens

apparently my body is a city

like all cities it was once new and small and made sense

like all cities it evolved over the ages

sprawl and addition

accumulation of choices that made sense at the time

a history’s worth of whispers

deep inside the city are cobblestones

archways

narrow alleys

I’m difficult to navigate

yet you stride with great confidence  

as though you’ve been here before 

know exactly where you’re going

at the center of the city a park

in that greenspace a tree

ancient black trunk 

spider-limb and silhouette

the tree bears a single piece of ripe fruit

the fruit is my heart

do not pick it I say

but you say picking fruit keeps the tree healthy

you slice it into thirds

drizzle each slice with honey

one for the birds you say

one for you to carry on your journey home

you hand the last slice to me 

say eat and I do

For So Long, I Was Foolishly Proud of The Scar on My Thumb

I wanted to be a man

until I met enough men

to know better. The pain

of understanding that arrives too late 

is the teeth of handsaw 

against skin, a mistake

while dragging away limbs

after a storm; I rend

my flesh like wax, 

a wound that’s worse

when I look at it. My own blood,

the white of my bone

exposed. Bleached, dying

coral. Ashed-over desert,

one dry lakebed 

after another. I thought

I was helping. I thought

I was restoring order. I have

no excuse for the damage

I have done. Men are killing

the world. My skin will heal. 

Will knit a pale contrail 

across the smaller sky of my body. 

Will still be the skin of a man.

Nice

is what we say to each other when words fail —

nice. That was nice. This has been nice. Nice. 

What percentage, do you suppose, of people,

upon the occasion of their 69th birthday,

celebrate with a 69? Surely each person

thusly intertwined believes

in that wet-hot moment that their play

on words, their particular entanglement

of pun and pleasure must be unique

on all the planet. Is it disappointing

when you’re not the first to have an idea?

You’re not even the only person

right now with your face buried

in the flesh of someone you love

or love enough, at least, to share

this brief time. We say it

after weddings and funerals: that was

a nice service. So unoriginal, 

this fussing we do over love and death,

hunger and grief, but original’s

not the point. Our bodies

were born for this. To crave

and end. When someone my age dies

after an illness I wonder 

about the last time they had sex. 

I wonder about grief that has time 

to rise that way, slowly, the body

growing used to its inevitable end, not

acceptance or anything like that, no,

but understanding, maybe. I wonder

about their spouse, how it feels

to watch such loss approaching

like the world’s slowest

most terrible train

and then when it does arrive

it tornadoes past with a roar

and rush and then even then

despite so much warning

you must stand there 

as if at a suddenly emptied station

staring out at empty tracks

thinking, I thought — I thought

there was more time. I thought

we’d have more. What was it like,

the last time they touched,

this couple? In my imagined version

of their love, it’s all gentle

and grieving, full of awareness

of the body’s fragility but I hope

I’m wrong. I hope 

it was sweaty and exhausting. 

I hope it erased the world

for a moment. I hope it was

more like a first time than a last,

and here I guess I’m betraying

my own desire for feeling new,

for the sense that my body

is an island being discovered

by a shipwreck survivor

so eager for solid ground

and sustenance, so thirsty 

for fresh water — I’m being

ridiculous but that’s the point,

I want it to be ridiculous

the way it was when we 

first broke the rules together,

caught up in the miracle

that is mouth and finger,

touch and twist and nothing exists

outside of these bodies,

this room, this slaking

until we can barely breathe,

until the only tense is present,

until we look at each other

in shyness at the abandon,

how we just revealed

so much about ourselves

and now here we are,

uncovered, reaching

for language to share

but words fail, that’s what 

I’ve been trying to say,

so, darling, come, stand wordless 

with me at this window

and let us hold each other

and gaze at the world,

the morning rising,

the day that can go on without us.

To Empty Myself Upon This Earth Like the Clouds

It’s raining but eventually it won’t be.

Not raining but eventually it will.

Tempted, I walk outside 

one grey, wet step after another,

following hunger. Someone 

recently told me not everyone

longs like this. Can’t imagine. 

Each cloud contains the pulse 

of the stars behind it. There is only 

one cloud, obscuring only all,

backlit by the moon. Always

I wear this raincoat of desire

and ash. You are so far away. 

Ode to Infidelity

it’s only ever been you but jesus there are so many versions of me

climbing into this bed every night

they say people behaving extravagantly want to be caught

all I want is to be held

what are you looking for when you climb onto me

what late-night sounds wake you

is it too warm in here 

is it me

I’m calling no one else’s name

no one else is answering

all I want is you to look at me

tell me something true

about this life we’ve built 

one slow rhyme after another

one small patient lie at a time

one warm-hot night at a time

tell me I’m right 

about what it means to be touched

Love Poem 

There’s a song with your name in it

but I can’t listen to it

with anyone else in the room. 

You slide your fingers

into my mouth and pull out

another word for this lake

we’ve made of our lives.

Each summer it goes drought-dry:

cracked field of mud,

surface of a strange planet. 

What is left to say 

about such distance?

What to say about rain

that our bodies don’t already know?