December 2024

Today I think I am healed. I do not want
what I do not have. Even the lover who sleeps
across town—one of my hairs trapped behind his ear—
feels near to me. Sure, my mother did not hold me enough,
too tempted by the specter of satiety only alcohol can bring.
But I do not resent her. Even she is wild and shining
in the palace of memory…

If upon me in my garden, I mouth up sun and die of some bitch
seasonally snuffing my golden light, then omen me an open grave
and a night knife. Cue up the dead, nasty grinders. Swish me in a jug
of haunt rubbish. For fuck sure make me dogbody ravage against dirt’s
invisible fence. And while I might, in my life, have put up fists…

From the violent dampnesses, from

the places where residues

of storms and sobs intertwine

comes

this arterial sorrow, this memory

torn to pieces.

                        Still losing their minds

those mothers in my veins.





It was

the music mortal, the shriek

of the incessant horses, was

a funeral pavane at the time

of the bloodied cotton…