Starting Over

 A fresh set of sheets
Wall painted white
Vacuuming cracks in the floor
Pennies, beads, dust bunnies
Sucked up to heaven
Curtains whipped open to sunrise
Kettle set to boil

Shake out the rug

Hang it like a flag outside

For the neighbors to read

Lines of colored rags

Screaming

I'm still alive

Soft, bright, purposeful 

His message is different

He wants to say fuck _____

Cover our windows with it

And sit behind the glass

Hatred and profanity

Won't shield us

From more of it

He has forgotten

Back of bicycle

Basement sleepovers

Selling cookies

Dancing at drag shows

Meeting on street corner

NYC romance 

I try to take him there

He doesn't see it

We revisit the streets but

The treasure chest is locked

Where does he

Hide

The memories

Misplaced like

Hat, wallet, keys

Us

We are forgotten

In the basket of dirty laundry or

Clean, sorted socks

He still loves

Starting fire

Making coffee

Breaking mirrors

Leaving shards 

For more reflection 

Another accident

To pile up

Over the gems

Of what was

Can we throw that out

If we throw it out

We can see more clearly

We won't feel ashamed

Of the incomplete

The broken

i want to write a poem to fuck up all the other poems all the times i tried to make a sour sponge clean all the times i tried to prove my levitation when i really wanted to watch tv and rub aggravating dirt in concentric circles deep into my pours

i want to write the punches that keep coming in the movies when the fists keeps bashing you think it’s going to stop but the fists keep bashing the bones and how do they even keep going the scene gets wetter and from within the turtleneck weave only sound and cuts of light but they give a good enough idea

the poem in the dip of the hills behind your parent's village where i first saw my old face but the golden grass lit up my eyes looking into themselves and i knew back at the patio you were realizing you didn't love me like you thought you did

and the poem in my basement apartment, and the poem in the mansions, and the poem in the ball of my foot, and the poem in the sediment of urine and the clots of blood and what freckles say and how the bugs feel about new skin when they first land 

and the alarm set to sound like a gong who did that when the view is 

construction

i wonder what i would think and what i would write if I wasn't always forgetting the poems that land my cheek hugging up the mountain because i saw something on my phone that told me what was happening to me and for that moment it felt wiser than air 

my poor pours 

the kind of skin that asks to die a young fairy or a rotting windfall 

apple

i want to write a poem that mashes the apples almost as good as time 

so they sour the grass and turn to 

wine

the moon collects 

your happiness on earth

to be brighter

and it takes a whole month

to get its brightness

and then loses it

that means

for one day a month

you are completely happy

Don't Make Those Cards, Renoir!

 Don’t Make Those Cards, Renoir!

He is dead. But agrees.

Don’t print The Country Dance

on card stock & sell in boxes of 20. 

Oh the robust mustache. The bearded face

that smells the blush dust of country woman’s

cheek while dancing. Country eyes inhaling.

Why because some modern man will buy 

the cards & write inside one 

& accidentally say the truth!: I am glass & you are

concrete floor. I am glass 

6 feet up & 

dropped

— we get it. 

[violent section]

•

What if I (me) go to the Morgan Library

& Museum & there they are:

sketch upon sketch upon sketch

of this pair

waiting to be painted 

with his nose again again again

against her rosed-up cheek.

Country woman looks at us. She says

OMG can you believe this

guy he loves the smell of me!

He loves my bosoming the ballooning

of my bottom & extra flare of bottom skirt

but oh oh oh don’t ever make us

into cards for sale in boxes of 20.

(She agrees!) Some guy modern will buy us

& write inside one:

Woman, let this be you 

& me

& ah! The woman modern (me)

will break

open

& will wrap herself

around 

his van

& they will take off

& [die]

Renoir! Don't let nose smell heat!

Grim Swatch

Dog black billows up from where no draft excluder dares,

macro the not knowing round the next corner

until I'm panting calculation.

In the city sweating bullets swearing I'll never be alone

or free of wildly differing expectations around code.

Con Ed said that shameless dancing cable out front could have

killed someone,

the FDNY gaffered it to a lamppost.

Treaties for all who overcorrect for the spiny things of life

whilst I minimise my response to them.