The last one: it is not for you.

I have stabbed someone.
Just once. Not a dead person.
It was not satisfying at all.
Not what I intended.
There were many surprises.
For instance, the initial severance of skin
makes an awful sound, and almost stopped me
but, magnetic, the blade
searched for vital organs tunneled deeper
for me, it isn’t over
and she didn’t stop me. Nevermind.
No, she simply watched
as I removed each rib
one
at
a
time.
She was so fucking beautiful.
In her open, black-red filled space.
The rising chest and blinking eyes.
The weeping
The plunge
The digging
I am not now, nor have I ever been a surgeon
but I was able--abruptly
finally to quiet the madness
and despite the embarrassment (stunning
and so foolish)
hold closely the slowing of the beat.
It lives on when you’re not in the room.
In retrospect, I have not stabbed anyone.
It was more of a dissection,
more of an unveiling
more a breaking apart of
all things right and human and full.
There were no reparations
sutures, stitching up
and for all of the cutting
all of the ripping
all of the intention
my scar is rather small and
will be well hidden.

Onset, Days 1-4 (I've never written about my illness)

The illness is not something I can separate
deconstruct; no meaning to
summer fever—platelet counts; body against
muscle consuming;
self. A lover once called it "your condition"
I had forgotten it was mine alone.

The last thing I remember
before the peripheral blindness that comes with
rising heat—one, two bites; cantaloupe
(I don’t even like melons)
cracked swallow; burst filters
sandy filth
ankles.

I'm sure I collapsed. At home?
It must have been after two days
that my father had to lift me,
bones rubber, snapping
swooping cradle; upward
now
a small child; come on baby girl.

Tongue lifted
arms cuffed
She’s choking.
The nurses seemed calmer than one would expect
when watching
a pretty little thing burn
from the inside out.

Unable, even, to hear music

Orion, put your bow down.
You haven’t a home to protect
Nor an army to defend.
What are you hunting anyway?
There is nothing but emptiness about you.
You’ve run away
again, hidden among darkness.
Unable to tell if the
lights below you are
the stars of another galaxy
or the upward turned eyes
of brokenhearted lovers.

I am not a scientist, pretty baby

And all the constellations, shine down for us to see
And if you don't believe me, just put your hands on me

Don’t quote me on the physics of it all,
but I know the lightweight innards
the crackling, fibrous bones
of a dove, or a bird like it, make for
an easier flight, than say, perhaps, you or I.
That doesn’t mean it’s impossible
blue sky world.
I’m content to befriend
the pattern of lines spinning about your ceiling.
Eyes closed
as you drift conspicuously back toward
the weight of the floor.

Irregardless

The hollowed out insides of a pretty
little thing like yourself
as permanent to me as the moments
unprompted, you smile.

She wanted to be a cowboy, an ode to Lisa Loeb's "Falling in Love"

See, you’re just like everyone else
temporary
and
at once inevitable.
Let me give you an example…

Finding a baby bird
broken on the sidewalk
is very different
than watching one tumble from the nest.
Both still referred to as
fledglings.

Stones

When Virginia Woolf sank herself in a river,
no one blamed the stones.

Today, I wonder how she chose which
rock(s) to stack inside her pockets.
I want weight,
balanced, consuming my palm
anxious
to meet the crest of river water--
I’m certain she was less particular.
Stack, baby girl, stack
how intimate the artist and death.

Most days I want to leave

A morning: wandering through churches--
light, through Chagall’s stained glass
tinting your face different shades
of adoration. There is a red scene
coming, blush.

An afternoon: The Bride
Stripped Bare
by Her Bachelors,
Even. Try to look away.
That reaction, what is it?
Tell me more.

Twenty dollars: we’re poets
baby, your money is worthless.

Some days I want to save her

“I would like to stab someone,” she muses.
“Just once. Maybe a dead person.”
And
if not for the turn
the pull
if not for the lift
or the slide
if not for the
empty
resting, sadness
rounding out
the sharp
air (exhale)
I might feel
Fear.

Little Moon

Orbits are the result of a perfect balance between the forward motion of a body in space and the pull of gravity on it from another body in space.


Orbit, little moon
the million tiny breaths
of her sweeping exhalation
her body bending
from crown
to blade, and be still, against the quiet
pull of her sigh.