To be honest –

Love has always been perfect, 

and each incarnation leaves me 

closer to some ideal at the intersection 

of brokenness and power, maybe emptiness? 

but always shattered and spread thin but also 

wrapped up but also like all of those pieces 

of glass at the bottom of the recycling bins:

covered in filth and sticky, matted to the bottom, 

precarious to pick up always lingering for that day

when you finally get around to just admitting, yeah – 

its emptiness alright but it’s meant so much – 

in a convex way? 

Perfect lovers help me trace 

this convex emptiness  bearing down on us 

beyond gravity and other presences; 

Cling to this invisible dome with me, 

magnets staking claim and 

holding up your letters and bad drawings 

before bearing to much and sliding down, 

only toothpicks and quarters wrapped in dollar 

bills seem to stick and stay up there forever. 

Prayer 2: Void and Compensation

In my imagined barrenness,

I held my tummy in prayer and asked 

God’s spirit for new creation in my womb. 

To dismantle you as an imaginary being 

and find created matter:

to never be compensated for prayer; 

to just press my hands over and around my navel 

praying for something new and soft. 

A rock in my belly,

I throw myself on it,

activating my imagined matter as 

an absolute-still thing

without otherwise possibility, 

in debt to gravity and deeper waters,

frigid cold and descending.

Holding on to that sinking stomach feeling

praying, and asking all the wrong questions

of matter like: 

“Why are you this way?” 

“Why are you upset?” 

“Where did you come from?”

"What are we?"

Prayer 1

my pores open for

the softest radiation; 

drying mud of my skin 

cracking and freeing me

to breathe and writhe. 

hope is always something 

you can touch beyond 

the way things currently are. 

I put my favorite objects

on an altar and pray to forget 

them as they are and remember 

them as they might be. 

carefully stepping 

over abundant loose ends, 

"I gotcha there, bud."

a high water mark. 

a ball of foil warms me, 

my inner beauty. 

Copernicus. A role model for getting it so right, 

but for absolutely missing the point – 

I tripped and scraped my face on omnipresence,

and lay there in a pool of letting-everything-catch-up-to-me. 

 

  

living, laughing,

loving with great affect

and 

expectations.

wearing God out.

Sacrificed in platitudes,

voguing in basic truths

A cross with swirls

and an oddlee uniq font,

a cross made of reclaimed wood and

railroad nails,

a camo one;

a pink one with glitter;

one that reads “Faith” and fits in your pocket;

one that your cousin Braylee gave you;

an air freshener;

a vinyl wall decal;

a Dollar Tree cross;

the most idolatrous clean lines on beige walls,

offensive incense of Kirkland’s glazed donut candles

and swiffer wetjet scrupulosity

Wavering

my bottom lip skips, 

my mind's sharp needle 

scratches over empty shell.

full of vaporous forms

trembling and falling into 

place for me to find my

way back to breathing, 

back to losing my breath

raspy glossolalia scraping: 

the bottom of the mixing bowl

for all its worth. 

Salamander

going home, or moving 

between all of the ponds

which have nourished your

spirit but remained isolated. 

You crawl on your belly

through the mud to find 

a new pond to meet new 

fish friends and fish food. 

You tell them about your

other ponds and friends. 

You use discrepancies as 

currency for fish food. 

But you're not a fish,

you're a salamander and 

before long you don't know

if you're a real fish-friend or fishmonger. 

You crawl on your belly 

back to one pond and another. 

You go home and tell your 

home fish about water temperatures

and acidity and mercury and fish food. 

But you're not a fish, you're a salamander. 

You go home every time you drag

your belly across the mud with fierce

conviction that the ponds are related some how. 

And it all seems rather pointless but

you love fish, and love the ponds that you 

crawl between on your belly, 

gently pushing mud to the side, 

You love that small trickle of water 

that follows you from pond to pond, 

You dream of that small trickle 

turning into a tapestry of streams. 

Self-Effacement

I was one of those inflatable tube People

before I was an Inflatable tube person,

before I was the best seat in the house,

before I asked myself where my own ticket was,

before I realized this was my wedding or maybe 

the day before perhaps after perhaps it isn’t my wedding 

and I’ve stolen the bride’s dress but everyone thinks

that I’m the bride and they’ve brought me gifts and are crying 

from happiness or envy.

“Thank you” I mumble from behind the veil 

and my voice breaks upon repeating the phrase 

again and again as I touch hands with my guests 

in awe of my stolen beauty and wretched graciousness. 

My voice breaks and bends into iron ingots 

until my tongue cannot lift words of gratitude. 

My guests can only look and imagine

how thankful I am for them coming today.

I spent the day beep bopping around,

my hands hoisted high above my head

signaling some giant angel to "Pick me up, 

pick me up, pick me up, pick me up!" 

And nothing. 

I'm not sure which burns more – the aching 

of my tiring and cramping arms or the desire 

to be held by something greater than myself,  

or at least something that sees me here. 

It's the same fire. 

Reciprocal immolation - I just  want to be condensed 

into all that is Good, reduced to coal and other 

fossil fuels to keep this desire smoldering:

to warm empty rooms with creaky windows, 

extravagantly. 

I want to birth heat maximally and inefficiently. 

I want to devote my embers to this empty room, 

I want to maintain this fire for sacrifices and ceremonies, 

I wanted to never be die out, and yet, on my takeout 

order container, someone wrote my name and a <3. 

Extinguished. 

my body is rebar for red clay. 

when the Lord comes again 

they told me my body would 

be new and rise to heaven but

I see it washed way in the stripping of

the earth, covered in blight and 

bugs and mud slipping down the 

hillside, like when we were children

sliding down the iridescent slippery slope, 

into a ditch and clogging a storm drain – flooding. 

My corpse is lukewarm and 

spit out of red clay eater lips, 

a mushy and half-eaten portion

for the chicks in the flooding 

chicken house – nourishing. 

There are rooms that only exist when certain things are aligned, only once, or twice maybe. 

My vacant expression in an unfamiliar room that I live in, 

Here in the the here after

living is cavernous, a profound dream half-forgotten 

but mostly lingering as if it were just 

around a corner, waiting to be summoned 

by the most demure architectural details;

scrupulously re-arranging furniture into occult formations, 

Pushing planets into alignment with my uncontainable envious nostalgia. 

I swear, I was standing right there and 

I reached through the walls and found a 

place to burrow in my first winter. 

I promise I went beyond that corner of the basement and lived a life there.