2006 - Vol. 3, Issue 1

"Sounds Like Stones"

~For K~

Angie, February is a dead horse field,
is a coughing gray and yellow
crunching Ferris wheel sun,
a method–life painting that records
my spine hammer war
for song-handsome death.

I know I am not alone.
These crying words sound
like stones tied around my neck,
violent hands in my pockets
stealing loose change and sex.

These bent–toned words are mine;
they say brothers always die
on beggar–tap mornings.
So much pain, Angie.

I hear white frequencies of your
tin–pop color and sound;
it is nothing wrapped in old
cloth and pressed.

Rain slides my meaty mouth, bird–broken;
it is beautiful sunbeam child hands,
when you pray like love, Angie.

"Clock Dancing"

i don’t need a mouth—
to speak animal spit
is like yellowed ropes hanging
in sofa–spider basements.

my back is brown vine splinters,
a vacant urge to spin dead like
clock–dancing,
long and raining warm.

shannon of july likes to hear
the phone ring, pain,
skirts and thighs,
men's mouths liquid like
bird stepping—
he was the first to show me
that my mouth was not a need.

in the pantry cans of corn
and beans fill lower shelves,
they are blue copper–fruit,
they know that jesus is milk,
fuck–torn and crayoned.
i am half of this.

i need a brush that writes
like living cardboard ladies
tasting hazel, bones capsized
in sun–china water—
because my mouth no longer
opens for questions.

"Jacob"

There are ghosts all around me,
they sigh and fold their cigarette arms.
Jacob can't see them,
aluminum–red and hiding
in the brown hall.

Their room is thin and blue,
movie-wired and crooked;
painted/insect/leather.

Is it the way they're leaning,
white and glass-trembled?
Jacob will ask me this
tomorrow morning,
when the green clock
is 7 or past, tick–slipping,
pill–palmed.

Sitting at this table, jars of pickles
and pears are shelved,
bones of birds,
vibrations against old wood.

Roaming the basement later,
where dust and candle wax
hold chairs together,
I will see Jacob and tell him.