after I was diagnosed       &         my friable red gut leaked blood like a new animal I’d grown

I came home to learn how to sleep & to name Crohn’s & you should ask someone out to coffee

everyone said         &       an ampersand looks like a pregnant belly the famous writer said

&         all the sick poems I read had lovers in them kissing the belly          &

their mouths linked as if by a blue stone          &        the water kept electrifying me

mildly as a penitent angel         &       sometimes I pray to thunder to be anything but what

I am    &      someone says to me there is nothing more universal than the love poem   &       I

find out the woman who once lived here stuffed steel wool in all the outlets    &      her husband

died shortly after      &       it was to drive out the hunger of small mice     &        you never know

how 
the right man will change your life people told me       &       once I walked through

an unfinished house    &      left a message on the bare lathe a coiling dragon with my name

in its claws    &       I set traps around the house      &      my life was not complete until I met


& don’t worry the pain of being single is not forever & how many times have I risen at night

listening

for god      &        I can convince no one there is no pain in what I am     &        the black sky

splits open godhead      &      I fashion lungs out of my breath on the window   &     how many

times has the female god come down   &     lain next to me wrapped her arm around my side &

there is no set of jeans to hook my fingers into & there is no mouth filling with cum & my

pulse

is a hammer making stars deep in body   & the couple next door fight & fuck beneath the deer

head mounted on their wall &   I once found a mouse the cats killed   &     licked the skull clean

to bare bone     &      am I staving off death if there is no one on top of me       &

scream a white candle litany       &   my chronic body turns over          & in the dark mouse

backs snap in half