OCEAN–BLIND

God does not live / in church. She made you her kingdom. Of course / she lives in you

I no longer chase sleep. I’ll have another night out on the town. Ankles shipwrecked, upsetting stars, brain etching pale whites. I catch a glimpse of your shoulder blade on the water, but it always dries up before I can muster a sip. When the sun scabs, I’ll pilfer the skin  that falls away, and you’ll cut the moon out of your stomach. We’ll call it a Tuesday evening and I won’t forget—living is terror. We bathe in it. The church sounds. Breath. Holy, uneven. The metallic shadow of the city: cold rain and hands that find the places  where we deposit our mouths. Extract the blood, the honeysuckle. Your knuckles against  my jaw like a second pair of teeth. I'm gone, partially. Tonight we’ll be dangerous and fluorescent. The serrated lilt of a butcher knife. The light at the bottom of the stairwell with no traceable source.  Wings burned into spines. Half a hidden planet, (your body) under flame. Somewhere. Plainly as this, I will admit, my lover is still asleep  on the kitchen floor.

oh, grant me the vision. envision me on my knees begging for what i already have. blind as night, i follow roads that have been walked. ignore the footsteps. find solace in waywardness. at least i am lost and have nothing. at least i am lost but cannot lose. now rain, rendering dirt road mud. and i am kneeling in water, well-worn. weary, worried, wanting. at the crossroads, wanted. at the crossroads, haunted by what was always waiting. sweet stream, wash the dust from my eyes. i have not seen, but i have known enough to stand up again.

you want love but not enough to die for it. you want the hand in yours but not the tug. you want the promises but not the sacrifice. you want the beauty but not the disadvantage. you want the movement but not the blind spots. 

i always sink faster than u

Will things be okay? (Question/poem game)

O-B Prompts

Dear Ming, Think of us as an act. Of survival. Think of survival as their best lie. We used to believe all the old lies: close your eyes & nobody can see you. Our grandfathers fought in three wars each & that means we are safe. Etc. Have you ever stood at the mouth of a river? Saltwater shredding itself against your stomach, limbs tossed aside, the only way out & in. Out & in. That’s the way politicians describe your body, a beckoning. Words ashing in your mouth before you can spit them. Tongue heavy as a stillbirth. Still, these days we can’t stop watching TV. Like the moon, we can only play at withdrawal. We follow & unfollow our own bodies like prey. We have coffee breath & stopped caring about it. In between the men, there are commercials where mothers read the script off their palms, say they did something bad to deserve us. In a past life, they fell in love with their shadows. In a past life, they converted their homes into natural history museums, dug up their bones & charged 5 cents to cop a feel. On stage, a politician reenacts natural history, the light falling in coins, his white hands groping for purchase.

call me friendly      fire, fatal pitch of light through      the jaw, you are too late to this scene:      my dress already wrecked on the riverbed, the river      kneeling in my throat. a woman      once sank her children in this river. now      it gives up its dead, spits bones      in the mud like rumors of a body,      no nation is ever big      enough for everything it wants, snip me      from my scenery & bob my limbs      down the river like infants what is ruin      if not the body becoming aware of itself?      let’s say a thing birthed in water      can become water. let’s say it is easy      to raise a daughter from the dead: the first step      is to slit a stranger’s throat, release its crows.      the second is to write a poem that leaves space for a      body. when ICE took my grandmother, she folded      inward like a fist, blood pouring through her ribs      like light through a forest of sap-mouthed trees. a stopped      heart is nothing like a slain dragon. two wars      taught us that a gun can deliver the body &      nothing more. what to do when your country      ignores all its best disasters. can a birth in      blood be rendered in light. can a girl outlive      her myth, bullet hole her song      & give every space a mouth