Me, Undone

She fussed over the spread all morning Patterned the blanket to match the doilies and cloth handkerchiefs  Polished the silver cheese tray and knives  She picked the perfect casserole dish Fresh green beans from the garden Ripe cherry tomatoes from the vine Edna closed the wicker basket  And fastened the bows tight  She then focused on her children   Zipping and buzzing around the house – the girls in polka dot cotton summer dresses and loose curls. Charlie, her husband – debuting the polo shirt Edna starched and ironed earlier in the day  It was 6:30 pm With the sun beginning to set, Edna corralled her family toward the door One last glance over   Everyone and everything in place  The family sat about down the road waving to neighbors as they passed by  Mr. Roberts watering his lawn  Mrs. Thelma carrying a crumbled brown bag of groceries into her home  When they arrived, Charlie lay the plaid blanket across the stretch of...

On this earth day here is an ode to all the things that didn’t go right To the vain ambitions  The ghastly blood-borne tantrums And the rage This is an ode to the fuck-ups. The fuck faces.  The petulant mouthbreathers   The uh…ohs… To the sloppy way I drank all the tequila  Stashed in that cupboard in New Mexico And drunk dailed my dead grandmother three times. Hoping. Hoping. Hoping.  And even emailed the Magician  The one who serrated my liver into forty-four  And to the Ring camera that caught discarnate limbs running out into a snowstorm at 3 am to dance.  This is an ode to the interview man that came on his Zoom Zoom  To tell me who I was  I wanted to release the middle bird And lace a necklace of profanities around his heart  But instead    I sat on my hands  As payment for being This Way  Very haughty  Very untamed.  This is an ode to the unanswered. To the unmanifested.  The ectop...

This feels like a slow fast strangulation.  Thimbles of the absurd. The unrepentant - unacceptable - blazing present of all that stands before us.  Our epithelial cells are revived only to be snuffed out again.  Each violation. A lesson in futility. A didactic in impotence.  I don’t know what I have hands for.  I don’t know. 

I’ve been trying to place an order online all day.   Bubble wrap. Human size.   No shipping to Mexico.   Scroll down to the bottom of the page for a number. Give me the phone.   What is the code? 001.   Let me out. Let me call.   Ring. Ring. Ring.   On the line. Robot loop speak.   Numbers. My ears are ringing. Press 1. Press 2. Press 3. No number for bubble wrap. SOS.   Jam zero. Over. And over again. Get me to a voice. I need bubble wrap now.   Estimated wait time. 11 minutes. 10 fingers. I count down. Almost. Almost.          Ring. Ring. Connect.   "Hello, how may I help you?” “Ma’am, it’s an emergency.” “I’m leaking out. This world.”   Voice pause.   “I need 23 rolls of extra large bubble wrap shipped to Mexico right now.” “For what Ma’am?” may I ask. Press lips to receiver. Open mouth.   “2 arms, 2 legs, torso, head,                   ...

I came to earth for flesh  To bend this spirit into body   To become the thing   To know the thing   To touch water   This is the mud packed with tiny sticks and berries in my hand bones   The soot, traveling up the cracks of my toes   The spring coils at the base of my neck and the glides of my hips   There are boulders  That will fall into the story of your life   Like rhythms  Meteorites smashing down   On precious land   Each weeping wound   Becomes a port hole for transformation   Pray down over those sacred spaces   Remake yourself   God   again   And  again

Look at dis woman, ya'll.  Let us look.  She cover oh ye of stars. She wrap de sky in her bosom. Oh, she smell of grace.  Fresh soil under she nails. She mixed with silt from de mighty pyramids.  De light of Sirius over she head.  Let us crown her.  Kneel down.  Dis woman, ancient.  Old and new again.

  today my grand mother  asked for my burial plot   next to   her daughter   my mo ther and i obliged having lived in her womb once in my mother’s tiny ovaries   like wooden Russian dolls   we are finding our way back home

I saw the devil last night She fucked me in cobalt blue  Dragged my body across the marble floor Pressed her thumbs into the tiny bird bones of my chest  and opened me. "Balance," she said.  Remember the dance of the light and the dark.  Stray too far from me, and I will break you. 

“Where does it hurt?” Luz asked.   “Here,” Chisa reached down and touched the bed next to her. “And where else?”   “Over here,”   she walked over and stroked the handle on the wooden dresser drawer   “And…”   Chisa unclipped the barrette from her cotton brown hair and fingered its bow.   Luz stood silently bouncing her eyes between the three places Chisa touched-had she asked the question incorrectly   or was it Chisa who failed to understand?   and then she realized suddenly that trauma   outsmarts its victim   lodged everywhere and nowhere at all.  

He revisits dislocated memory. Disjointed and fractured - seething and ready to be reconstructed again. In any way. It doesn’t care. It stumbles and gathers to its feet.   Now fully dislodged - it tells the story again. Not for truth. But for pleasure. It is dark. He tilts his head as they arrive untangled and bustling in the frame of the door. They slither over and pull up a chair next to him. And they begin their play.   Pulling and tugging - twisting and turning. Slow smile and glance over at their new feed. He darts his eyes across the room -  f ractions of seconds looped and blown open.   He clinches his fists tight -   digs his fingernails into his palms - his feet jerking violently off the floor. Teeth chattering like fractured bones. They are exacting. Each one taking what the last one left behind.   When they are done, his chair falls to the ground. Next to him, a puddle of coagulated blood. The taste of brine and metal in his...

We all have a drug on this densely packed plane soiled and stripped of our majestic selves benumbed walking universes limping by collapsed hogtied with thick plaited ropes and digital collars

And even if you never did such like Never again chased youthful folly naked crashing against the cool Delta with cherry blossoms spilling out of your mouth And even if you never for once more slow tongued love and its harsh and honeyed ways splitting yourself open on the altar of truth know with clear and cutting certainty that you matter you mattered at the daybreak of first breath Your life is the purpose.

My grandma would have let that boy in My grandma would have knelt and prayed for him   My grandma would have laid her hands over his head and left a blessing   And then he would have stood up   And put a bullet in her head  

two bodies   unclothed over-ripened   soft   easy to tear   tender to touch   dance naked   in the living room a sacred act the fire has hushed now turned to embers   it is the warm light in your eyes   that guide I do not ask more of you chide you to bend or sway to the crooks in my being I stand back   and absorb you for what you are a miracle I lean close to your left ear   and lend you my   dreams We lay down and press together   but do not enter having learned long ago   that our frames are not a means to an end   it is your mind   having grown deeper   and wider   I ready to pierce it opens up   And we   are young again  

you are a raven’s breath  flower skin  the hushed supplications of butterflies knelt in worship   at sunrise  you sit on the wooden porch  mid summer afternoon  blood orange scarf fringed across your narrow shoulders reading about things past  when   thunderclouds  roll  in  you do not rush to collect an umbrella  or motion your lover for a raincoat you sit  still opening your mouth to drink

And this is love When old man death comes knocking at the door again She says There  With you  I will go  Down deep  And  When your soul has washed away  I will light the wick And carry you  Back Home 

you are that kind of human you wake every morning and know that all you treasure so close with guarded heart will go in time the sky passes above your crown never the same again yes you are that kind of human sometimes you stop in the dead of the day to see time moving in the back room it does not judge to hold, is to suffer, it calls. i will take all this from you lay it bare leave your bones to waste you are that kind of human the kind that rinses and repeats with imprints of slave lives buried deep in your coal black eyes and you are that kind of human still watering the seeds clearing out the weeds sweeping the porch and preparing your heart for more

she smells of sage and the binding of a new book discovered in a dying bookstore. she lets me in to read when she is not afraid. she builds things for a living I asked her to build us a library to read and grow old in and a home on the pacific with a garden to gather tomatoes and collard greens with our weathered hands. she dresses in safety. a plain t-shirt. a button down sweater. flat leather boots. hair pulled back tightly in to a ponytail and tucked. no makeup. no jewelry. nondescript CK underwear. she paces around the apartment making copious lists in perfectly straight lines in a black moleskin. she specializes in risk-benefit analysis and excel spreadsheets I run my fingers along the grooves etched in her forehead I notice them whenever she lifts her head to take a clear look at me to love a woman like me, I know, is her riskiest bet yet. no mitigation. no expectation of certainty. just plain courage.

And then she brushed against me strung herself across my lap lacing her heart around mine "We are threaded," she said. You are the coming. I am the going. I've mapped your ridges with my tongue.

I realize that beauty is fading fast It's the price we pay for wisdom and better days Webs move across the corners of my eyes soft folds have arrived at the edges of my smile I look out to see awkward teenagers struggling to chart a foreign landscape so precariously full of wide life the sun is beginning to set warm gold against my back this day is the best it will ever be ever more now I know that this body is not home simply a stunning arrangement casing for an expanse so wide the very thought of it makes me cry yes, the sun is setting warm gold against my back but we are not the sunset We are the very sky.