Night Sky with Exit Wounds
Page 3
The body was made soft
to keep us
from loneliness.
You said that
as if the car were filling
with river water.
Don’t worry.
There’s no water.
Only your eyes
closing.
My tongue
in the crux of your chest.
Little black hairs
like the legs
of vanished insects.
I never wanted
the flesh.
How it never fails
to fail
so accurately.
But what if I broke through
the skin’s thin page
anyway
& found the heart
not the size of a fist
but your mouth opening
to the width
of Jerusalem. What then?
To love another
man—is to leave
no one behind
to forgive me.
I want to leave
no one behind.
To keep
& be kept.
The way a field turns
its secrets
into peonies.
The way light
keeps its shadow
by swallowing it.
Anaphora as Coping Mechanism
Can’t sleep
so you put on his grey boots—nothing else—& step
inside the rain. Even though he’s gone, you think, I still want
to be clean. If only the rain were gasoline, your tongue
a lit match, & you can change without disappearing. If only
he dies the second his name becomes a tooth
in your mouth. But he doesn’t. He dies when they wheel him
away & the priest ushers you out of the room, your palms
two puddles of rain. He dies as your heart beats faster,
as another war coppers the sky. He dies each night
you close your eyes & hear his slow exhale. Your fist choking
the dark. Your fist through the bathroom mirror. He dies
at the party where everyone laughs & all you want is to go
into the kitchen & make seven omelets before burning
down the house. All you want is to run into the woods & beg
the wolf to fuck you up. He dies when you wake
& it’s November forever. A Hendrix record melted
on a rusted needle. He dies the morning he kisses you
for two minutes too long, when he says Wait followed by
I have something to say & you quickly grab your favorite
pink pillow & smother him as he cries into the soft
& darkening fabric. You hold still until he’s very quiet,
until the walls dissolve & you’re both standing in the crowded train
again. Look how it rocks you back & forth like a slow dance
seen from the distance of years. You’re still a freshman. You’re still
terrified of having only two hands. & he doesn’t know your name yet
but he smiles anyway. His teeth reflected in the window
reflecting your lips as you mouth Hello—your tongue
a lit match.
Seventh Circle of Earth
On April 27, 2011, a gay couple, Michael Humphrey
and Clayton Capshaw, was murdered by immolation
in their home in Dallas, Texas.
Dallas Voice
1
As if my finger, / tracing your collarbone / behind closed doors, / was enough / to erase myself. To forget / we built this house knowing / it won’t last. How / does anyone stop / regret / without cutting / off his hands? / Another torch
2
streams through / the kitchen window, / another errant dove. / It’s funny. I always knew / I’d be warmest beside / my man. / But don’t laugh. Understand me / when I say I burn best / when crowned / with your scent: that earth-sweat / & Old Spice I seek out each night / the days
3
refuse me. / Our faces blackening / in the photographs along the wall. / Don’t laugh. Just tell me the story / again, / of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome, / their blazed wings. / How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing
4
until the notes threaded to this / smoke rising / from your nostrils. Speak— / until your voice is nothing / but the crackle / of charred
5
bones. But don’t laugh / when these walls collapse / & only sparks / not sparrows / fly out. / When they come / to sift through these cinders—& pluck my tongue, / this fisted rose, / charcoaled & choked / from your gone
6
mouth. / Each black petal / blasted / with what’s left / of our laughter. / Laughter ashed / to air / to honey to baby / darling, / look. Look how happy we are / to be no one / & still
7
American.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
I
Tell me it was for the hunger
& nothing less. For hunger is to give
the body what it knows
it cannot keep. That this amber light
whittled down by another war
is all that pins my hand to your chest.
I
You, drowning
between my arms—
stay.
You, pushing your body
into the river
only to be left
with yourself—
stay.
I
I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night,
after backhanding mother, then taking a chain saw to the kitchen table, my
father went to kneel in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through
the walls. & so I learned—that a man in climax was the closest thing
to surrender.
I
Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.
Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.
Say autumn despite the green
in your eyes. Beauty despite
daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn
mounting in your throat.
My thrashing beneath you
like a sparrow stunned
with falling.
I
Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining.
I
I wanted to disappear—so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast-cancer ribbon on his key chain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky—to be filled every flight & fall at once.
I
Say amen. Say amend.
Say yes. Say yes
anyway.
I
In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed.
I
It’s not too late. Our heads haloed
with gnats & summer too early to leave
any marks. Your hand
under my shirt as static
intensifies on the radio.
Your other hand pointing
your daddy’s revolver
to the sky. Stars dropping one
by one in the crosshairs.
This means I won’t be
afraid if we’re already
here. Already more than skin
can hold. That a boy sleeping
beside a boy
must make a field
&nb
sp; full of ticking. That to say your name
is to hear the sound of clocks
being turned back another hour
& morning
finds our clothes
on your mother’s front porch, shed
like week-old lilies.
Eurydice
It’s more like the sound
a doe makes
when the arrowhead
replaces the day
with an answer
to the rib’s hollowed
hum. We saw it coming
but kept walking through the hole
in the garden. Because the leaves
were pure green & the fire
only a pink brushstroke
in the distance. It’s not
about the light—but how dark
it makes you depending
on where you stand.
Depending on where you stand
your name can sound like a full moon
shredded in a dead doe’s pelt.
Your name changed when touched
by gravity. Gravity breaking
our kneecaps just to show us
the sky. Why did we
keep saying Yes—
even with all those birds.
Who would believe us
now? My voice cracking
like bones inside the radio.
Silly me. I thought love was real
& the body imaginary.
I thought a little chord
was all it took. But here we are—
standing in the cold field
again. Him calling for the girl.
The girl beside him.
Frosted grass snapping
beneath her hooves.
Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown): oil on canvas: Mark Rothko: 1952
The TV said the planes have hit the buildings.
& I said Yes because you asked me
to stay. Maybe we pray on our knees because god
only listens when we’re this close
to the devil. There is so much I want to tell you.
How my greatest accolade was to walk
across the Brooklyn Bridge
& not think of flight. How we live like water: wetting
a new tongue with no telling
what we’ve been through. They say the sky is blue
but I know it’s black seen through too much distance.
You will always remember what you were doing
when it hurts the most. There is so much
I need to tell you—but I only earned
one life. & I took nothing. Nothing. Like a pair of teeth
at the end. The TV kept saying The planes...
The planes... & I stood waiting in the room
made of broken mockingbirds. Their wings throbbing
into four blurred walls. & you were there.
You were the window.
Queen Under The Hill
I approach a field. A black piano waits
at its center. I kneel to play
what I can. A single key. A tooth
tossed down a well. My fingers
sliding the slimy gums. Slick lips. Snout. Not
a piano—but a mare
draped in a black sheet. White mouth
sticking out like a fist. I kneel
at my beast. The sheet sunken
at her ribs. A dented piano
where rain, collected
from the night, reflects
a blue sky fallen
into the side of a horse. Blue
thumbprint pressed
from above. As if something needed
to be snuffed out, leaving
this black blossom dropped
on a field where I am only
a visitor. A word exiled
from the prayer, flickering. Wind
streaks the pale grass flat
around us—the horse & I
a watercolor hung too soon
& dripping. Green waves
surround this black rock
where I sit turning bones
to sonatas. Fingers blurred,
I play what I know
from listening to orchards
unleash their sweetest
wrongs. The dent in this
horse wide enough to live
by. Puddle of sky
on earth. As if to look down
on the dead is to look up
at my own face, trampled
by music. If I lift the sheet
I will reveal the heart huge
as a stillbirth. If I lift the sheet
I will sleep beside her
as a four-legged shadow, hoof homed
to hoof. If I close my eyes
I’m inside the piano again
& only. If I close my eyes
no one can hurt me.
III
Torso of Air
Suppose you do change your life.
& the body is more than
a portion of night—sealed
with bruises. Suppose you woke
& found your shadow replaced
by a black wolf. The boy, beautiful
& gone. So you take the knife to the wall
instead. You carve & carve
until a coin of light appears
& you get to look in, at last,
on happiness. The eye
staring back from the other side—
waiting.
Prayer for the Newly Damned
Dearest Father, forgive me for I have seen.
Behind the wooden fence, a field lit
with summer, a man pressing a shank
to another man’s throat. Steel turning to light
on sweat-slick neck. Forgive me
for not twisting this tongue into the shape
of Your name. For thinking:
this must be how every prayer
begins—the word Please cleaving
the wind into fragments, into what
a boy hears in his need to know
how pain blesses the body back
to its sinner. The hour suddenly
stilled. The man, his lips pressed
to the black boot. Am I wrong to love
those eyes, to see something so clear
& blue—beg to remain clear
& blue? Did my cheek twitch
when the wet shadow bloomed from his crotch
& trickled into ochre dirt? How quickly
the blade becomes You. But let me begin
again: There’s a boy kneeling
in a house with every door kicked open
to summer. There’s a question corroding
his tongue. A knife touching
Your finger lodged inside the throat.
Dearest Father, what becomes of the boy
no longer a boy? Please—
what becomes of the shepherd
when the sheep are cannibals?
To My Father / To My Future Son
The stars are not hereditary.
Emily Dickinson
There was a door & then a door
surrounded by a forest.
Look, my eyes are not
your eyes.
You move through me like rain
heard
from another country.
Yes, you have a country.
Someday, they will find it
while searching for lost ships...
Once, I fell in love
during a slow-motion car crash.
We looked so peaceful, the cigarette floating from his lips
as our heads whiplashed back
into the dream & all
was forgiven.
Because what you heard, or will hear, is true: I wrote
a better hour onto the page
& watched the fire take it back.
Something was always burning.
Do you understand? I closed my mouth
but could still taste th
e ash
because my eyes were open.
From men, I learned to praise the thickness of walls.