we send out flares
slow at first
then slower
still
but oh how each one
lit up the black
sky just for
us
we put down roots
on different soil
we tear ourselves out
and again we grow
different than before
but every night we
point our flowering
face to the sky
look for
flares
there
one of the guys
who raped me
had a
pan-fucking-tera
sticker on his
big
texan
truck
i traced those letters
with
my finger
while he crushed
me into a very fine dust
thirty years later
i’m still sharpening
my knife
hoping to
run into
him
you know the way it
starts as if something
terrible is squeezing
your middle
just enough to make you
wonder wickedly what is next
the squeezing leads to
trembling fumbling bumbling
well everything
stuttering too
because why not
things begin to funhouse
grow beyond belief only
to shrink into a polite nagging
then the tsunami shadows over
a gorgeous curl
on the end for
panache
just you
(a cone filled with sloppy soft serve)
and the next
leap
when i first noticed
well before even then i
turn to your ghost and said
i can feel my
heartbeat in
my lips
can
you
can you put
your hands on your
throat and sing
golden birds
can you open your eyes
to the hottest
heat
slake your thirst
in endless
truth
can you feel
my heartbeat
in your
lips
i opened the
darkness as a gift
as a real honor
to make acquaintance
charmed immediately
i shook out all of that
sleek feathery rage
let my hands touch every
inch of it
rolled around on it
until we were one
perfect scent
bayed into that night
that was swallowed
by weeks
that bowed to months
just as
i forgot my name
from all that running alongside
night until
both knees kissed
the ground
until a heart was
a stone
light whispered
look
up
i thought i
saw you in
the smoke of
the volcano
it was you shaped
anyway
and you smiled once
from the rim of
the world
before
time
lurched
forward
i send out
sentinels
small winged things
made from my own
feathers
and
other dark
feelings
i send them out
with honey in their
gold beaks
sweet and sticky of
the darkest layer
beyond the unremarkable
pale beast
common hearts
do marry
no the dig down
into the marrow
scrape against
something so
nourishing
that even
this girl
sighed
tie it to a string
let it lift up
until it’s a speck
among other
specks
space dust again
let it find it’s own
path for awhile
until a heart is
just any old heart
again
a field study in
chaos
or the thing
more ancient than
chaos
a place where everything
is sorted in
packages of
dynamite
where caught breath
sours into
acid fog
where tenderness is
a place for hand wringers
and all around me in this
vastness are
all the things i can see
but you
can’t
from the sidewalk i
prepare to
lift up
find myself
nowhere and everywhere
cease to need
anything
reflect light endlessly
from the sidewalk i
tear open
spill all over
into the cracks where
i grow vines
thorns come next
push out of my flesh
painful as baby teeth
each lush and heady flower
from here
on will know only
liberty
