Sword in the bonestone. Blade rhumb lining the tongue. I
was really sick but didn’t know it. One by one the
acupuncturist tlcks out the rostrum-like pins—forehead
cheeks chin—save for the splinter embedded in the
meridian of my soft spot, crown of the governing vessel.
Monster irresistible like the rhinoceros. Spiny spiky anteater.
Hedgehog cousin. Half-squamate, half-woman dwelling in a
cave no outside world’s iron age pierces. When I press the
antenna hidden in my skull the mind’s long lists of past due
& to do & will it so. When I press harder that axis of a planet
yet discovered: blood temples; glass blowing nerve hiss; salt
of tinnitus. Harder still—a jet shatters the sound barrier of
retrograde amnesia, a bolt of lightning fernseeds dream into
channels. Like a finger in the dam or a cork in the socket,
it’s the plucking out of the stoppering—not the arrow
spearing the heart—which kills you

When the sea breeze makes its way inland
through all of the cranes & concrete forms

of downtown, past the new floor-to-ceiling
windows, & in amongst the suburbs’ shadow

box fences, I watch the palm fronds behind
my computer monitor alternate between

a mild daze-like sway & orgasmic tremble.
Sometimes I fantasize about what a release

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Rub her tiny protruded belly in circles
and the sin will crawl out, fill a room

like prayer. Her first word is mine.
Do not let her use your heart

as a tool. You cannot take body
from her. You must keep her

alive, let her fatten up like a little disaster.
Under her coiled ribs beats a new tender

plan. If you bend deep enough

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What lives in the laboratory of the body
was cradled in someone’s hand
Look, they said and the thing
wet, translucent, glowing,
pulsed like the inside of a firefly
essential inner matter, vital, alive
in someone’s hand in a hallway

The [ ] you threw away
climbs out of the trash,
metaphor or not,
crawls across
the kitchen floor,
makes its way outside,
boards a bus,

finds a pawn shop,

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The room is your own, but it is still bare.
It has to be furnished; it has to be decorated; it has to be shared.
-Virginia Woolf

The day after we take possession of the house,
I find two bats mummified in the basement,
a mother and, perhaps, her child. They live

in our dustpan for a week before I decide
to carry them outside. Meanwhile,
we ferry furniture up stairways and through

narrow doors until I feel I have mastered
the maneuverings of each four-legged
wooden beast—dining table, sofa, armchair,

desk. There are cobwebs on every stair.
The spiders spin faster than me here
and I have been hurrying so long.

I sink anchors into the walls. My partner
buys a fly swatter, chases the insects
around the house. I buy knives

with rosewood handles and blades honed
in the country where my grandfather
was born. I have been building bookshelves

in our highest room, fitting dowels
into each pre-drilled hole. I assemble them
on their backs, laid down, then raise them

their weight tipping lighter, then level,
as they tower over me. On my front porch,
a great grey dame of a spider, quite rotund,

has spun her corner web. She sits at its center,
her hourglass abdomen turned
toward our door. I watch as moths, mosquitoes,

other wings catch in her careful architecture.
She never leaves them long, no struggle lest
their dying break her fragile home.

She kills them quick, then carries them away.
Just today, checking the mail, I saw that her web
was gone. I cannot know if it was the mailman

who swatted the strands aside, or a swallow,
or some other bird that passed through,
or if it was she herself who made another plan,

unstrung each filament and let them fall
leaving only an isosceles frame—three guy-lines
and somewhere, perhaps, in a corner out of sight

the remains of her meals, a tidy pile of wings.

splice the remaining fragments             smell of vodka, basement room filled with debris, sharp
pull of hands      zippers             teethed             apart with drunken care

what were we supposed to trust
but collapsed filaments?

we embraced teenage stupidity          left ourselves a sticky residue                             queer
shame

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I crashed through clouds of insects

on my riverside run and carried some

away from their copulation

and the rising warmth of a sodden bank.

Were they me, humans, I’d name the juggernaut

of my body a natural disaster

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we averted our eyes from the blown-out tire
by animal instinct, though it was not flesh,
its singed inverted fibers waving invertebrate
in the blackened wind. at the horse-themed
mexican restaurant, i took 1 photo of my body
in the mirror and my phone died. body my house my
STORMIN PROUD PAPA my HANDFUL OF PEARLS
body my $75,000 purse and that’s in aughts money
before the recession hit. o throat that triple a called ma’am
again, o babyface that the tire place, full of mercy,
failed to gender at all. at lunch the next day i kept locking eyes
with a mural of a tom at the movies, a HOT BUTTERED LOSTCAT,
though the sun glided into my eye like boiling oil for
galaktoboureko and octopus and chickpeas and beets,
grease that wept from the eggplant when squeezed
just like my shoulders do. yet i still sat dazzled by dappled
spectres of jockeys, the only boy-shape whose door
i fit through. what is someone like me good for?
speed, mud-splattered harlequin, and you saying
my beautiful boy, and slamming the gas on this thing
as hard as possible before it runs itself into the ground.

The dark brown doors to the playground are heavy behind our early arms. Without windows.
We are used to holding small hands, so, once and a while, a teacher will help us push. To find.
If we hide then maybe there is someone counting with their face in their hands / excited
to see us. Here, we are all in the grade where we just can’t miss school. Parents have dropped
off all the happy and so much warranted expectation. If we wake then maybe there is someone
who sings our heads heavy. To the moon. Someone who lives for the cute confusion all over
our faces. We must still be waking up.

We arrive on a bus and the bus driver is our mom. We check to see if there is anyone who fell
asleep in the back. Who forgot their backpack? In the hall there is a party with empty hooks
where we hang our heroes before we enter. We are ready for anything but stillness. Do you hear
the bells of chocolate milk? Stomachs are floating and we’re tugging on the rainbow pinwheel parachute / all the early arms pulling each other and creating clouds. (If I had a crayon
for every time I felt like I was going to die at school, I wouldn’t have many colors. And counting
my valentines cards does not count. And getting jumped in the bathroom does not count.
And getting sent to the office definitely does not count.)

We came longing for a sticker. It would say GOOD JOB and we will have only practiced
our sweetness. It would say EXCELLENT and we will have only professed our favorite species
of wild horse. It would say WINNER and we will have only recited the process in which honey
is made. It’s like a golden beam of heaven in your chest. Early arms.

Outside the heavy brown doors is a playground etched in painted circles, homeroom gathering
spots, and an outfield that at one point became eternity. The bright beyond the heavy door,
the recess, how the light screams like a friend telling you        run        from whoever is           it.
Wince with all the noise of laughter. The concrete smells like mom’s hair. The wood chips
are drying rain. The door is open. All the kids pour out onto the brilliant playground
and are scraping their knees on the blinding sky. Early pick-up. All of us, picked up
that afternoon by our parents. Our teachers. Picked up. Lifted high into the air.