he takes things to a jar, leaves it
lidless – a load off my lungs

he won’t call it stealing but i know better

we discuss ‘we’
decide it’s just a drawbridge
and move slowly to where the other is coming from
i don’t look down, i love him

so i crawl into my phone
fit my drink and bed and toes
bring my suitcase full of little things
and give him handfuls
the space bursts

it will, i become millions
collect me like a paperclip
hold poems together with me
and promise nothing

she admits,
“i’m more than sweet on you. i’m burning sugar on your outside. all the pollen is tiny candy. i fall to pieces in your morning coffee.

he sips, he thinks she’s
“hot.”

she’s sweating, so she’s naked a lot.

she wonders,
“are the walls of my empty apartment his temple. am i walking around his temple in my underwear. is his temple happy to have me. am i alone here. does he think he’s going mad. why can’t i open the windows.”

he thinks
he is going mad, but he favors delirium. talks to her everyday. is narcoleptic when she’s singing. makes friends with all her hair.

he pretends to act like a greeting card.
he asks,
“i love you.”

she responds,
“i’ll tell you that later, i’ll tell you that again later.”

we’re not assholes.

we’re in the kitchen touching each other
on the counter next to the garbage disposal switch.
and the hand mit with the hole in it that keeps us burning.
and the fancy pans we’re afraid to use.

actually

we’re on skype instead. both a little naked.
you say you like my skin – it’s like a desert with dresses in it.
i say i’m a little wetter than that.

go play in the sand box. use your imagination. i do it all the time.
i know you’re far away
shut up. alright, i miss your e-voice now.

let’s talk about buying the things we have the money for.
plane tickets. coffee tables we won’t drink coffee on.
coffee tables we’ll probably fuck on.
fuck tables just made the budget -

what are we doing?

stealing my neighbors net.
you’re video isn’t working. it’s very funny.
the camera has you frozen with a look like you’re in love or something.

the picture on the front of the box she was born in
suggests some sort of cloud or wrinkle was once used to fill the space.
she frowns very often,
but some things don’t have to be permanent.

next, a painting in progress:

a dandelion seed
pinned to the cheek of a young, toothless girl
the other children make fun of her
call her a wish, a walk-in closet, chipped toe-nail polish.

the work is finished with a freckle–
the artist joins her, says
“your shoes are on the wrong feet!”
but she is barefoot.

“!X!?!O”
says the thought-cloud, the older face.

no one knows me here.
i run, i choose.

i like to watch you there.

you say I have two left feet, so

we dance in circles

around and around and around–

you say

you’re dizzy.

i ask you, spinning, if you see

a thousand girls who look like me.

you say,

“no, there will only ever be one of you.”

but i dream this.

you are not in front of me. we hardly speak.

i know your name sounds like a mouth mid-kiss,

like an arrow hitting

it’s mark.

i like to shrink you to fit inside my fist

on my chin

my head tilted out of an open window.

we touch again, there.

you put your palm on my shoulder

you say i am soft enough.

everything blinks

we get caught in the lashes

you take one, blow it in my direction

make a wish that’s already true.

i think i’m talking about science, not magic.

something clicks.

you pull the wonder from me

find that it’s just like yours.

i pull the skin from your skin,

put it in my drink, a martini

simply for the color–

olive. i sip you.

today was simple.

you made a moon from ‘mine’

i wrote that somewhere on you once. you made it full,

gave it a halo shaped like the rings of my skull.

there are only a few, i am still young.

none of this is true

just to me.

i don’t speak.

hello sounds too much like take me with you.

he was

Everywhere.

for a little while

mark

left by a
healed
wound, a blemish.
i peel back
the last trace of injury
only i am there under the flap he left,
but i am shining
like i got the moon, in all it’s phases, for teeth.

i show you, you say i’m pretty.
i can believe you now.

i say,
i know i am warm
but you’re right
i haven’t felt it all yet,
wrapped the blanket of my inside around myself
but perhaps i’d simply like to share it
with you
watch a movie—
the fingers of your like
between mine
sometimes, along my back.

i wear my weak
it is pregnant with you.
play me something laborious
give it to me, i’ll keep it in my pocket
like a little red rock
and save it for later.

2. it is our duty to rebel against sophistication, social constructs and conventionality.

3. up until now, literature has merely glanced into the expanse of creative possibility. we intend to race this space to its ends and upon victory, draw it onward and force its evolution towards absurdity.

4. we affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of the mundane, the detail, the spec, the routine. an edge, a vestige, the sliver of space wedged between misery and invisibility: each are individual. when memorialized through page, they are more beautiful than the fathomable ideas of our rushed humanity. we will be still.

5. the body who experiences despite consequence, who asks the edge for favors: you are an open window holding a magnifying glass.

6. the poet must know that one cannot have pleasure without an equal or surpassing amount of pain. we must ache.

7. except in struggle, there is no more beauty. a work that’s chest does not heave and strain, that is not bruised and broken, will not delight us with aesthetic epiphanies.

8. why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the impossible? we already live in the absolute, because we have created an eternal, omnipresent dimension of never-ending evolution.

9. we will glorify suffering and hedonism so that those who are adhesive to convention might judge us only after first indulging in our means of attaining beauty.

10. we will know of the individual beginnings and ends of every patch of sky. we will know the personalities, expressions and moods of every strand of our hair, every crease of our skin, every pitch of our voice. we will know every blade of grass. we will carefully choose which flap of the venetian blinds to peek at the morning with. we will watch things as they melt and know the distance of their spread. we will think about someone else’s ears. we will say apple and ask that you tell us the color. we will wallow, oh how we’ll wallow. we will sit in things for too long, thinking. but we will connect and feel and better understand.

she never knew her smile was capable of shaking something until she thought she heard him rattling, her head on his chest, his inside bouncing like it was happy she was happy—
she is happy, happy that for the first time in her life she’s comfortable with a body that someone else can be comfortable with too.

the way he holds her, fragile like he’s afraid she’s going to break. he knows shes broken before. she tells him about the flying orchestra of shattering, he doesn’t mention he likes the sound. she is so unsound.

they blend into his sheets, they are so red and dangerous on those saturday mornings when they threaten to swallow them whole. she can still feel their bare feet touching underneath them.

she loves her man.
but love has trials and she’s on the stand, defending him, like she always does.

she tells him to fuck her. to fuck her over and over again. so she stays the next time he fucks her over again. she moans, she closes her eyes, she fingers herself with his hands, fingers the scratches on his back—she tries to forget how short her nails are.

she doesn’t care what it means, she keeps her mouth shut, only opens it at his tip, she can taste the other women, not as sweet as you, he cooos. and she believes him.

she loves her man.
got herself convinced he’s doing the best he can, that he didn’t mean it, that she deserved it, that it’s okay being beneath him. she likes the ground. she doesn’t mind going down. she can still feel their bare feet touching.

yesterday when she woke up she wasn’t breathing. it was saturday. the sheets had swallowed her whole. he was pulling her out with his hands around her neck, she was wearing them like he had given them to her in a jewelry box, like pearls she thought. he tells her that she is most beautiful when she’s blue. who else but him could decorate her with such pretty colors, so she kisses his fist with her jaw, let’s him ruin her sliding his wine into her carpet.

maybe she’s just crazy. batshit. in love. something innocent taking on the dead of night. she’s a coupla screws too loose, so he finds something tighter to fuck. she is spells of inner adventure mistaken for seclusion, sometimes depression,

sometimes
I am pathetic.
I can still feel our bare feet touching.

silence

when inside me is so noisy, breaking
like all my thoughts
are committing suicide
splattered
in messy pieces at the feet of my face
spilling down
gruesome
into my pillow

there is a deep pounding in my head,
someone there is screaming

i open my eyes
something rolls across my face,
into my ears

the quiet is so
salty
wet
distrubing
here.