bearing lightning

[TEXT ID:

it’s the longest light on the boulevard. school children and salary men baking under windows. i feel lonesome, like one day i will leave and the landscape will change. the curb will change. the light will change. it’s tuesday and my eyes are out. i want to hold the green cross walk sign.

embrace it. a shiver.

i take my education and move to another state. i think fondly of two lane roads. i come home like all my parents. i think fondly of soup in an all hours shop. it’s 107 degrees and i pull out the drill. the sun concusses me and i’m tearing at the metal. a breeze bends the corners of the thoroughfare

im belly down the slip face of a blown out dune and my mouth is hinged no wider than a child’s. my baby teeth wiggle into crabs marching into the ocean. she slips in froth and i slip sand blown under the tide. i was supposed to drown yesterday. yesterday. further down the coast is painfully white. the crabs crawl over one another.

[Fifteen Speaks to Twenty-Five] Leah Saint-John

Are you alive

Yes

Does it hurt

Yes

Are you glad

[instead of an answer there is a helpless look]

Is it all still green

Especially in June

Do you still love it

Especially in June

What colour is our blood

Garnet

It’s thickened

Yes

Is it a sickness

Yes

What does the garnet make you think of

Mouths God’s mouth The inside of His eye sockets

Are you happy

Sometimes

Is it enough

Sometimes

Are you lonely

Yes Garnet Like God

Did it get better

Yes No Yes Yes

Are you living

[Text ID: not a lot to give

but here is the sky, it’s yours. in the gray clouds and tin roof. a river snake. the black clouds brought in on rolling metal decks.

here the windstorm. green in your hands. the years turn over a belly fat with sky in the morning. the blue of a young tree. the threads of its trunk.

[TEXT ID:

xvii. bad plan

in the back seat.

on camera.

in the mirror and tones.

black green and bumpin’.

dance.

alignment.

ease.

choice.

wind.

xviii. lazarus

I CAME BACK AND THEY TOOK ME TO DINNER.

I ATE IT AND HATED MYSELF FOR IT.

xix. possession

The clarity of knowing where you are. I think my way through breathing. In private I practice eating and the chewing turns gentle.

She doesn’t mind, it was a relief. I told her about grass in the sun, how it itches and calls, how it winks and splays. Now she has green. She’s been bathing in that chlorinated noise.

Woke up this morning, 5 am, sweetening time. I’m taking us out, these fingers are to die for.

The morning dew reeks of paper.

I’ll say it first, I know my body: I’ve come back wrong. I breathe through my pulse and it comes back faster. All night, I beat and beat. She gets confused in certain lights and I let her out— I’ve been practicing my chewing. It’s

ochre, this time of year, anyway. Rust in the darkest brick.

These fingers are young. Unripened. Jointed. Fidgety. Round. Fat. Ruddy. I’ve been watching them sit all day. This time of night? It’ll be green. It’ll ask after you.

“You know I’ve been looking—“ and this works out anyway. I’ll give you a holiday. Ceremonial.

There’s something wrong. It’s loud. The wind is asking after me. It’s hot. I’m beating.

I’m still beating. And wind. Wind too. I’m breathing.

[TEXT ID: in the mouth of a crying bird, some day after the front has passed, the pavement steams a brand. the grass dies out and

a forest hangs in heat.

its pond leaves,

its stones sink cold songs

ask my loss to wait,

wait:

for the light to sigh beneath the waves.

a hiccup in the humming. a Great Horned sun watching, canopy into shoreline, some eyes take longer to turn,

the tree clouds shake the owls nest and I emerge