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My fingertips are sticky
with honey
My teeth ache
at your alluring savor
My skin buzzes
with the bees you keep
I leisure under your
leafing shadow
sipping from
your sweet nectar
My eyes are always trained
on your exotic features
I will kiss your wilting greenery
when winter comes
nurturing into a new bloom
more fruitful, captivating
than before.

that high summer, when everyone
fell in and out of love
and I fell in
to August, and you
spun by, with a sharp
slice of blood running
down your calf
from the beach grasses, I wanted
to lick it off
your sea salt hair
and rusty finger nails;
varnish rockpool chipped,
I remember your mouth
when we jumped waves
and we laughed so much,
I sometimes wonder if
we used it all up or
drank up all the ocean,
with wind around our shoulders
like warm evening shawls
arms and hands moved unburdened
dotted with lightening hairs –
I poured into my body
that high summer;
bare back
feather neck
hidden freckle
I breathed it all in
your shoulder warmed at mine
I don’t remember what happened
either side of those white-edged
postcard moments,
I suppose we worked
laundered sandy clothes
woke up in bedsits,
I wonder if our love lock
is still there,
on the beach fence
where we left
that one summer behind

Paradoxical,
falling in and out
of trite conversation
for the sake of something true:
profound ease, perfect fit,
conjoined pasts paving a future, a
pretty picture of glimpsed promise,
gilded around a pit of lonesome.
Restless,
falling face-first
into technicolor heartbeat,
entrenched in ritual tunnels:
dozen red roses, pink-cheeked dimples,
courtesy captured in a bottle, but
not carelessly, never corrosive, never
so corrupt as to drip vows and gestures like acid
with the intent to wear down and fizzle out, instead dripping
declarations like soft rain down the lover’s window.
Inevitable,
falling victim
to a fate designed by poetic capital:
lovely words, lopsided smirks,
lungs popped like pills.

Inspired by Li-Young Lee’s “Early in the Morning”

Before the paperboy
delivers the news,
Before the sun has broken the horizon,
Before the coffee machine starts
the morning brew–

I sit on the bed,
run the ebony comb
through my matted hair,
and listen to it snap through kinks.

I pull and tug, comb
and coax, pin and fix,
placate my mane
with warm hair grease.

My lover stirs, still exhausted from nighttime tumbles.
If I could, I would rejoin her—
let her fingers get caught in my hair
as I soothe her out of sleep.
But I know I will wait till evening,
after we draw the curtains,
and give in to the secrets
our mothers don’t know.

I’d give a lot to visit Avonlea
And sit beside the Lake of Shining Waters
With you in junebell-moss tranquility
Discussing life and teaching’s finer matters.
Pray, share the fragrance of that rose of joy
Which blooms immortal in your fairy land
And grant me lore of its geography
When ‘long life’s soft-lit path I find a bend.
You gave such joy to those across your life,
You made their days a bit more blessed and bright
By loving them so wholesome; may that I
In kindred share your welcome-loving light.
But that’s the shame of loving those in books,
For never will we chat by heaven’s brook.

my hands
I say, time and time again.
You do not notice.
You have never noticed anything.
As my body shivers, I fear you never will.

cold
I tell you, time and time again.
You do not hear.
You have never heard anything.
As my breathing shallows, I fear you never will.

my hands are cold.
I have mentioned this, time and time again.
You are interested.
You have never been interested.

how cold?
you ask me.

cold as death
I reply, my knuckles ashy.
You do not respond.
You have never responded.

cold as death.
I wait, my wrists heavy.
You do not respond.
You have once responded.

my hands, cold as death, could never be warm
I shout, my fingers numbing.
You understand.
You never understand.

why?
you ask me.

i don’t know
I lie, consumed by bitter air.
You do not help me.
You have never helped anything.

i don’t know
I insist, strangling our hope.
I do not help me.
I have never helped anything.

who would warm them?
I whisper, my darkness surrounding us.

I take a step.
I have never taken a step.

I would
you whisper.

Suddenly, I am no longer cold

“I promised you, haven’t I? I have promised that I would cherish you,
Treasure you,
Endear you,
Prize you,
Value you above all,
Forever and forevermore.”

The confessional box is suffocating
with the sticky heat of late summer

As she confesses her sins to the silence
ugly like bloody scraps of meat
she waits for the priest’s absolution

Even though she knows –
nothing can cleanse the stain on her soul.

She feels tainted, impure, and broken
this is what they tell her
in that sanctified place.

That she
is the embodiment of all things wicked—
the devil with an angel’s face.

She hates her hands
for what they crave to touch

despises her mind for its insatiable desires
curses her blood for its passionate fire.

Sitting in the pews, back straight
picking at her cracked nails
as The Lord gazes down from his place on the altar
so high, so holy, so divine
even as the crows picked at his entrails

and his gaze burns because she knows
she is spoiled

Rotten and wrong for the thoughts
that coil around her mind like a serpent

She knows
that looking at another girl’s soft skin is a sin

They tell her she’s destined for hell
where she belongs
and no, the lord will not save her

Because Jesus loves you
but you don’t want to be saved

Your swarm of Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches
That you raised generations of
That you keep in a box
In your room by the bed
Sits behind the bookcase, in the darkness
You pull it out to show me
Proud mama
You put your hand in the box
letting one crawl up your arm
“I think this one is the queen” you say.
She is the size of a small mouse
She looks like Joe’s Apartment
She looks like Edward Gorey illustrating Kafka
You look down lovingly and then up at me
Quizzically, flirtatious
You offer me your hand
For the queen to crawl onto
It’s really not so bad
She walks with these slow deliberate little steps
That remind me of the Seven dwarves
Determined, dignified, almost regal
As if she know she’s a queen
She waves her antennas at me in what seems like a curtsy
I catch you looking at me
like this is all a test
To see if i am cool enough for you
I look down at the black insect face
It’s almost cute
Somehow she has a warm personality
This cockroach queen marching gingerly around my arm
Sometimes you look them in the eyes and just know
like with dogs
Although you have been talking about murdering dogs all day
In a cutesy way
“You are an extraordinary woman”
I say as we sit together
Looking over the pond at sunset
Hand in hand
Like a couple of real assholes