I would prefer not to live
in a dry hot place with those
sandy stucco houses and windows
you can see straight through, there's
nothing there that quenches a **** thing
just brown lizards and copper crickets
and I don't remember why I was
so mad about this in the
first place.

I feel the need
to surpass you
when I remember
you're in college now
as if I don't have confidence
in my own talents to grow
to grow
grow
grow
blossom

I'm swollen with
annoyance, and
popular culture
disgusts me.

I can feel my
heart heal
slowly
inch
by
inch

sometimes I
still taste you
on my breath.

is there are a way out of the blue?


when we are buried so deep in our
own bodies that the surface is just
a dream, try to live for today but
you are living for next summer
count the worries off my back
like notches in wood or welts
from belts don't need no
father figure with his
strap because I am
my own abuser,
I laid myself
o u t   o n   t h e   t a b l e   t o
condemn my
parts against
the stained
oak, white.
palms. white.
knuckles. Each
draw back is a
word

love.your.self.
love.your.self.

God spoke
to me today,
barely a thought
hardly a whisper

in the past
i've thought
I was doing
people favors.
as it turns out
I was giving
them open
access to
scald
me.

put this in your wallet
you said, and you ripped
a dollar in half, I told you
it was illegal and you shrugged
just keep it in your wallet*
how many times have I
been over you, written
a silly poem about leaving
you, talked about letting go?
well, talk about letting go,
Chris, I can't take it out.

i'm finally
starting to
look up at
other faces
I was scared
to do it, as if
it were a crime
to put the visor
up and let the
sun see my
face.

can you imagine
God scattering stars
like marbles.

Do you want to know why
I fall for boys so easily
men so easily
they're men so easily
so easily
and I fall for their pretends
their charms on necklaces
because
I believe everything they say, they
see it in my eyes and my face, they
see all the things I want to hear and
close my eyes, it's sweet mmm mmms
i'm swaying and they're catching, i'm
a butterfly and they're the nets, then i'm a
fish and they're the boats my
eyes are wide and pleading
i thought
i thought
i thought
you were different
my big fish eyes thinking
i'm out of air, i'm tangled in fingers
your words are like burrs, steel traps
catching my feet, teeth snapping around my ankles

It's my fault.

she likes older men
because Ty said boys
like *****, and he tells
me that librarians are
**** when I say I have
a full bookcase at
home, when he
says he doesn't
read, when he
ditches me on
July 4th to
get drunk
prays before
his meals but
says that he
would ****
my friends
if I broke
his heart.

I see myself in chunks
in fat limbs and a month's
worth of self-hatred, my mom
asks if I'm any better but the truth
is I've just stopped crying over it.

you weave through the heifers with your arms out,
palms down, barely sweeping your fingers across their
hides as if you were gliding them along grains
of wheat or stalks of tall grass, with careful footsteps
as if only you know the way through the hay and straw
(the way you look at me says that there's a difference)

sometime at one or two am you are out walking among them
again, and they all rise with their burdened bodies, swishing
their tails and swaying from side to side with their engorged
bellies, softly groaning and parting. You are some sort of holy
man, they're smart, they know when to move, you say. But
I think differently, there's something in your body--a gentleness
that emanates softly, a warm light that cuts the denim coats and
steel-toed boots, you're hard but your voice comes out in this
southern sing-song that makes my chest ache, ears red and a
laugh as rare as normal midwest weather.

you don't mind, do you? and you fall into the recliner next to me
It doesn't feel the least bit wrong to sleep next to you, doesn't feel the
least bit right to let you do it because i can feel your heart swelling
through your carhartt, don't like to look at you when you're
leaning into the side door, because the sun does you some sort of
righteous justice, spilling into your irises--streaking through your
lips when you speak as if ending every sentence with I dunno is the gospel itself.


just let me know when you make up your mind
the inconsistency of it all doesn't fall on you, I realize,
once again choking on my own insufferable selfishness
not brave enough to make the right decisions (probably)
convincing myself that things can just work out as if
the most wrinkled material doesn't need an iron, needs some steam
needs more than that's just the way I am, this is just the way
you are, and here I am tortured by the thought of telling you
to shut up, how can you have pricked my heart and
still be
So far
Away

the parts in me
they click and
surge, tick like
clocks and twist
like giant stone
cogs

a voice said all low
and soft like a seed
not b e f o r e buried
but         found take
c o m f o r t  in  your
lowliness and when
i left  the spirit of God
stirred in the street
and moved amongst
the cottonwoods so
much like the brittle
trees that guard my
heart and shook the
leaves    from     my
branches--not at all
overdue

not at all
overdue.

wherever you are
whoever you are
alive and well
just know that
i pray every night
for you when i go
to bed and again
in the morning
when i wake up
so that maybe
you'll be okay
to meet me
sooner

Sometimes my mom speaks
to God in the afternoon, and
I hear her through the walls
her whispers, but mostly her
why nots and what ifs, how sos

how easily i remember
why I loved you after
all this time, it's strange
to see you talk and watch
your eyes move and hands
tremble gently pouring
coffee grounds, you'd
never say you're
nervous but
right as I
thought that
you strummed the
guitar and said so.

conversations with paul are a one
way street, an play in a single act
between himself and a shadow (me):


in which Actor tells Actress he loves
her and then watches as her feet burn
holes into the stage and sink beneath
the floorboards, while he dons purple
prose and begins to blame your fire
for the forests he's burned with
his hot breaths and angry manuscripts

and the guilt he peddles is contagious
it wets through your layers to dillute
your kindness, your sorries, your innate
empathy for people in pain and when
he's not here, he's whetting his words
and staking them in your soft soil
in the middle of the night while
you lay unaware but dream
that a thief sweeps through
your garden and uproots
the best and most purposeful
foilage, unguarded even by
the moonlight because
such a thing could not
disguise a lack of a
a person.

I wish i had
the capacity
for affection.

don't orange slices
look like butterfly wings?

I don't think I should
have to try so hard to
be loved or liked or
interesting, if I thought
being myself was enough
then this poem would not
[         ]

She whispered into
his spiral notebook
in the empty class
shrill pencil marks
and then she called
across the table, hey
kid
hey kid

but that wasn't my name

whenever I get to thinking
about what it is that you really
like, like if bourbon was your
vice then i'd be some simple
syrup, the kind my grandma
makes--with sugar and hot
water, and how you only
use a little, a little goes
a long way.

still got those words runnin'
through my head, you'd be better off
you'd be better off if you were
*you'd be better off if you were by yourself

I hope that when Love comes into my life, he knocks.
That he is warm and smells like hay, like wet earth and roses, like my father.
that he is the same in every light, every angle, in black and white and color. That his daddy taught him how to fix things, and a Phillips looks good on him. When he says my name, I'll hear Texas, North Carolina and Oklahoma, long hot drives and a dust filled cab.
When he sees my shelves are crooked, he pulls nails
out of his pockets, he has pistols in his glove compartment, *****
jeans but cleans up nice, that when I say that I love Jesus he
reaches for my hair and says of course you do.

When Love comes, I hope he waits at the door because I take a while to get ready.  I've been perfecting my heart for ages, softening my
soul to room temperature, polishing the pottery and brushing my hair back. I've been searching for the perfect shade of lipstick, one that
reminds him of a dream, an old brick building where he once
found me, where we broke bread and communed and
when he woke up, he left this old life and
came in search of something new
someone, new, me.

That when love comes, he's neither relieved or overwhelmed. He might
breathe a sigh of joy over I didn't know when it was gonna happen, but here we are. And Everything we've done up until that point is
an instrumental, everyone else a backing vocalist singing
harmonies to the way we laugh. When Love comes he'll
probably know. We'll probably glow brighter.

we'll probably glow brighter.

i will try to remain as soft
and warm as I am when
the days are long and the
river is high, because I seem
to take the winter into my
pores and the snow pack
in my thighs, let my fences
run for miles and miles
but I'm trying.

i resolve that
my mother is
happy in her
skin and valiantly
fights her own thoughts
to glimpse the person she
might be, were she to
defeat her demons.

I swear
I'm not
a *****