VOICEMAIL POEMS

Another storm has the neighbors' chickens

all lumped together and subdued, so

I can't hear them from my attic room.

Rain has thrown itself

for days against the roof.

"What is the cruelest month?" people ask.

Last year I watched a man

put one poor frozen bird

in a garbage bag at the end of winter;

it had been stuck in a corner of the coop.

That's what Spring does: uncover

what you thought was gone, flood

the dirt and leave you to wonder

which is meaner-

the freeze or its long thaw.

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End of the year gray. Anchors

Where balloons should be, or:

Could peace wait on the outer

Bank of sane. How in the holiday

Buzz to say nothing for clear, that is:

Give me back remembering,

Its attendant costumed sting.

The portraiture made overkill

By rain. No incoming. The quantum

State the same. The slide to black,

The self-quilled quell to love

The heartburn sun, its citrus sky.

If only.

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i.

In the other world, everything smells like cherries.

Every phone call is the news of someone's death,

and every cigarette is candy. In the other world,

you tell me you do not love me every day, and our

bed is made from cedar trees. The horses run rider-

less and frightened, chased by men with bottles for

weapons and collarbones made of ice. The plains

are a burnt orange in the other world, and everyone

reeks of a longing to understand.

ii.

In the other world, she never died, and everything

tastes like gunmetal. Everyone washes themselves

in coldness and sleeps in the bath. In the other world,

I tell you to keep the dogs at bay, and our bed is made

from palm leaves. The ocean laps at sand that is still

glass, riddled with shipwreck. The mountains tumble

down themselves in the other world, and everyone

speaks to each other in tongues.

iii.

In the other world, everything sounds like a heart-

beat. Everything is made of tinsel, multi-colored, and

glows in the dark. In the other world, we tell each

other every secret, and our bed is made from cattails.

Grief slithers in and out of our ears, only frightened

away by singing. The grasslands mumble mutely to

themselves in the other world, and everyone knows

only their own names.

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Part 1: Untitled

It was yesterday or something, when I heard

the song playing in a store, asking

do I make myself a blessing to everyone I meet?

I don't sing it to myself, exactly, but I do repeat it,

metallic gyre, all the day long.

In the at-home lab of an electrical engineer,

I was surrounded by metallic gyres (not an industry term,)

tiny spools of wire thread that do not unwind

to fulfill their purpose.

I touched things carefully, understanding

none of them, vaguely

susceptible like a green bruise because

we had woken up in one another's

legs. Do I make myself a blessing?

(I really do. I am

not perfect, but lovely,

and a perceived dearth of this,

of lovely people, is just a

cultivated skew, benefiting whom?

It's like, capitalism.)

Anyway, unearthed Soviet

tubes filled with brief

forests of material mythos

surrounded me, hofbrau,

complex blessing. Engineer says:

…(the) reactors all disappeared

and who knows where they are. Each could kill

100,000 people.

He makes coffee, I sit on the lawn.

Oh, and at 1:47 we watched a rocket

ascend. It did not go straight up,

in case you are wondering.

Part 2: Rocket Ascent at Vandenberg

It appeared to experience

a horizontal epoch, a teendom.

Maybe meandering is part of all

great inclinations. I'm reminded of

"...the falcon cannot hear the falconer,"

but that's never really true, it's only a game.

The rocket could definitely hear the falconer,

and I feel sure that it still does,

even at this very moment.

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The town knows about darkness, the slithered purple

that comes on the land when rotation hides the sun.

Something gathered, slow and heavy and electric, almost

as though the town knows evil is coming, and its shape.

From here we can't see spots on the sun. We know

where the roads go and where, how the ground lies.

The town has us because we know it, and it knows us.

It sees through our lies, even the ones we tell ourselves.

And in the dark, the town is ours and we are the town's.

Being in the town is prosaic, sensuous, alcoholic;

black galaxies shot with morphic red. We see ourselves

drowning in the sweet evil falls and liking it.

There is no life here but the death of days.

Something is going to happen. Can't we feel it?

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we're crying in a costco parking lot

fiending for that intimacy we once felt

because every so often we lose it and

then i get depressed when i think you deserve much better

sometimes i think i deserve better too most of the time it feels

like i am already holding all the good that's out there

large and fragile in my arms i hold on for dear life

the woman parked across from us is staring

i wonder if she's ever felt like a failure

on my knees on the stairs that lead up to your father's bedroom

we've unearthed that intimacy and it takes us away

as usual so easily in the dark of the oakland warehouse

the delight of the freedom to touch taste tie

no time to worry about whether

my roommates will hear us laughing when the cheap ikea

bed gives up and we keep fucking on the debris

sometimes i'm so ashamed at the pleasure

of the way you fill me in these moments

on the stairs in my mouth in my hands

i wonder if we could really feel things all that differently

the car seats are reclined as far as they can go

we're here again face to face with each other

trying hard not to look away because we're not ready

to be face to face with the end

honey let's take the sobbing upstairs

and it becomes a perfectly choreographed waltz with

your head gently falling onto my heavy chest while hands wrap hands

when we make contact the weight is lifted and you fall asleep as quick as always

i hate that i can't help but stare your at-peace tender face

moving in perfect synchronicity with the rhythm of my unsteady

breath as it ruffles your hair

i fall asleep with lips and tears in your hair

i wonder if anything lasts for ever

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the ammonite an index of sutures

i got tired of cataloging them

hermetically sealing little traumas

afraid they'd get to know one another go boom

little mother catastrophes instead

i smashed little rocks to bits in a ditch

each shard a memory released pressure

from stomach the common burial ground

the cavity of accumulation

each little box coated in dust and feelings

each glass stone chamber not really secret

i get ready to shatter the discretions

i open my palms no explosions no pain

coalesce little traumas wrap your wounds

around each other a chrysalis blood

a becoming of feathers of air a fire

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He had created a type of 3d paint,

was one of the first things he told us.

As we followed him upstairs to his plant

filled apartment, we decided he was lying.

It wasn't long until he told us about Mexico;

kidnapped by cartels, held hostage for weeks,

his father and grandfather were mercenaries

in the French Foreign Legion.

He introduced us to his three passport dog,

four French girls and his pal from Belgium.

Everyday there were new visitors,

the Belgian was the last man in the house.

When we woke up to find him tucking us in

we realised he actually didn't sleep.

Each night he tried to persuade

a new girl into his bed;

the Germans were more easily led,

the French a severe non.

He spoke French with an American accent,

had the physique of a young Brad Pitt

and described to us in detail

how he used to build bombs.

We were taught about an old style of torture

while we sat in an empty fountain,

among the graffiti we learned that if

you swallow a button, and pull it back up,

your body evacuates everything south,

north, east and west.

Six months later he called me

in the middle of the night.

I didn't pick up, but remembered the paintings

he showed us before we left,

the faces lighting up, leaping out.

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"when you see a mountain coming,

get out of it's way."

my uncle, six-two and oxen

told me after clipping my wing.

i learn at an early age

to be a black man

is to see a black man

and fear his size, momentum.

to love a black man is to see

his shape and surrender.

i lay myself down

on his threshing floor

say uncle,

and await apocalypse

across my arms. when two gods

enter a room, one is humbled.

but there are no walls,

no floors in space.

so i say lover

when i meet him there.

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My mother calls them phases and maybe

that's an accurate representation because

they're lunar, edges of something, the kind

of scrambling you do drunk in the dark.

It's a lot of being drunk in the dark.

I'm dying to discover myself and finally

be cool. I'm smoking. I'm smoking hot.

I'm a smoking gun. I went out one night

and suffered through talking because

I just wanted someone-anyone!-

to fucking kiss me.

The next day, I booty called Colin

and took Jay home and kissed Emily

and thought about kissing Jessica and

I know I'm not falling in love with anyone

but maybe just falling in love with touch?

What is it when I dry hump the rug and

watch porn and drink all the Elderflower

Liquor in the cabinet? What is it when I

let you make a home in the back of my throat?

The thing is: I've got it all figured. Finally

something to pass off as the truth.

I'm just wrapped up in movement, in fingers

wet hot small of my back smell like fir needles

poking out of the snow. Touch me and touch you

and it's a special thing. It's the only thing you

fucking have. Do you hear me?

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