I stare. Pinks, grays, blank canvas politely obscure below her neck, hint at her thumb resting on her collarbone.  I raise my hand to touch trust, let it fall.

Anyway, they form a scooby-doo-esque gang of lovable misfits And solve the mystery of why I keep waking up unsure of who I am And why its so hard to explain what that means Entering your life from the outside can be a jarring experience

The yard you plotted then planted has come back wilder, the way seeming winterkill comes back wilder for its next life. So you think, pruning-time! — when, with a looming shadow and a gust of backwash, the ponderous bird alights, the porch rail trembles with its weight.

a man must lean on his liquor getting through the prayer line walking fields with all colors flaring soft or fired with hard light the walnut shell his face is the tan smeared greasy eyes a mature man out of time

Son of Esarg the axe-thrower, smelting and pin-lining coasts with bronze whirls, smoothed by Macha’s shawl. Forger of tools, lately found half-sunk in peat in a depthless bog, with his elbow crooked upward. The gases preserved his jacket, the raised sinew on his small finger, and the blazoned buckle he himself fashioned.

a window in the greenroom. a garden of trees. the opal sky. fractals of gold and violet, both. two salamanders suspended above the formless dark. liquid. speaking.

Madness is when the warrior god  calls the initiates to the altar stone  in a masquerade  to play with death to prove their mettle

What if this belly  was where you buried your sorrows nestled into disappointment shame and fear. What if this belly  resisted expectation conformity like the time you refused  to stand  and pledge allegiance.

Words were eliminated from dictionaries— bridle, ruin, barricade, lapidaries, famine, clay,  sparrow, genocide and yarrow—

My mind won’t place me there,  not today, or tomorrow, or   those four days in December,  when the drive became a ritual  and in the evenings, after the nurses said enough, it’s almost Christmas  go home, sleep in your beds, not  hunched over like a burlap bag  of coffee beans on a storeroom floor;

To watch a compassionate sky with you, the palms bend and the wind chase the parakeets home.

Kiss the wall & pretend they’re here. Let them cry like those sweet cadaverous ways they might have. I am living this life & wondering about those miniature coffins.

My traitor tongue whispers tales like wind through mountain hollows, hugging teeth like clouds that cradle snowy peaks. I’ve mapped this topography in abundance, traced familiar trails like lines inked by well-worn pen, stain left to pool at base of storied waters.

The salon is quirky— an indoor swing, a stuffed unicorn— silver and pink everywhere. My stylist meets me at the door tearful and subdued, as though about to prep a beloved aunt for burial.

Trash-talk. Heart on one's sleeves. Girls. Tattoos and scraped knees/ Random talk of beautiful, myth, foolish, heady girls/ more girls. Brittle desires unfurl.

The McDonald’s, bright and beautiful,is a coloring book filled in bya comic book artist. Yellow doesn’tstay inside the lines of the GoldenArches. Yellow doesn’t spill..

We should do everything as if we had a thousand yearsto live and as if we were going to die tomorrow.-Mother Ann Lee Down below..

Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, 2008 In mottled cotton, shambling toe-heel, toe-heel,Bass-ackwardsWith Zen concentration and breathing down the neck Of the square’sPath, sinking under the shards of bruised..

I blink at sky, fiery yellowthis time of afternoon, as I unpinlaundry flapping in an intermentbreeze like flags of surrender.  Clothes have wrapped around themselves,knotted into..

I show my dead grandmothers the map I drew: here is woman, there is queer, here is my dot on gender ave. Wish you’d braid..

When I came to say goodbye,I brought a pocketful of poems,not mine, but some which I meant to comfort you,and I hope they did,hope you..

In the spirit of all things we are not, I should be honest. Demand:take your cardigan off first, then my pantyhose, use your tongue to..