I want my words to be beautiful.
Beautiful like yours.
I want to see ordinary things,
Find the magic in them,
And put the magic on a page, for everyone to understand.

I want to have a way with words.
I want every poem of mine
To become a masterpiece.
Just like yours.

I am not broken.

But you are.

You see the world through pain,
And pain makes the colors brighter.
It makes the value of feelings
Climb higher.

Sometimes I wonder
If I should be broken like you
If I want my words to resonate
Like yours.

Sometimes I wonder,
If it will be truly worth it
In the end.

I wonder what it will be like,
To cut myself up to pour out the beauty inside me.

Just like you.

I imagine that you
Raise the blade
Slice your feelings open
And write your masterpiece
In red.

My english teacher says
You **** at writing

My math teacher says
You're gonna fail

My history teacher says
Go to sleep

My science teacher says
Just get out

Yet they still want me to learn
*How am I supposed to do that?

(after dean young)

“there are some parts of the human brain
even carps spit out.” but the amygdala births worms
which the fish chew quite sweetly. what isn’t
here: one un-slipped stream, one un-swissed
memory. what is: encephalitis, beetle-black shadow
in the water’s meat. some questions prompt answers
like mouths and feeding. ask yourself why fish bones
are like angels if it isn’t their getting stuck
or the filigree. ask yourself why the first words
of a poem are the skin of an unfathomable ocean,
or why you can only ever think about bodies
and feeding. in the throat, i forgot to say. i take
a layer of algae off the table before sitting down to tuna
and the soup in the coffin that is the kitchen sink.
ask yourself: if the water pressure’s been gone for weeks,
why is your hair always soaked in the morning?

i miss the dogfight
of our teeth squaring off
in a shiny mirror.

you could call our canines
moon kernels or portents,
but the sentiment

is sharper. the poem
tautology to a bracelet
of crescent dents.

self-portrait: light
shadow, shadow, light.
a plane reflecting

other planes, an edge
biting an edge, biting
an edge, bitten.

the bracelet tautology
to a skyline sans sky,
one wedge of evening

held in your periphery.
i press my fingers
into a warm glass throat.