Tonight at dusk the runtiest coyote
stared me deadass in the eye
and started limping. Oh no.
Like all men, he regards me
As a fucking idiot. That I know
nothing about his band of friends
crouched in the scrub, teeth wet,
waiting for my give. He looks
at me and believes in what he sees.
And why not? Someone should
get to move through this world
powered by their sheer conviction in it.
O, I do at times want to be this woman
the animal thinks I am:
urgent and champing for crucifixion,
so sinless I heave with it,
swollen for the want of salvation,
so dumbly rich with almsgiving I seek
the desert out, just to spend my supply.
Would that I was worthy. Would
that the world warranted it.

Because you did not know the word for jet lag that trip
in Barcelona when the night was swamping under our arms
and eyelids along with an awareness of oblivion (so
tired the beautiful city is like a carousel of fiberglass horses,
nothing will stay), you kept saying mareada. Correct enough.
Seasick on the cobblestones, tapas behind a thin wall
in like-minded cliques: peppers with peppers, tentacles
with mantles and so on. We fell into bed at an hour
and died, thin sheets a pall over our sheen. From outside,
a haunted lowing that sounded like opera, but stuck
in the throat of a bird. Barcelona eventually righted.
We eventually regained our sense of composure
enough to make memories. Or at least call a thing
its proper name in the eyes of illness. Thank god
humans barely remember how bad something feels.
What is left is merely soul loss. What is left is the afternoon
we wound Montjuïc, lapping our delighted tongues
around the forgiving bodies of ice cream cones.
Startled only by the avian aria that began every day
at two. Closer, this time. You cast your gaze heavenward
like St. Lucy. Alighted on a terrace with a gilded
cage, the eyes of the African gray parrot waiting
to catch yours. Silence. You drop your cone. You open your mouth.

She would get the flowers herself.
Someone must be in want of a wife.
Someone in want of a fortune must be
in want of being a wife. A green & yellow
bird trapped in a corner yells Allez vous-en!
‍Many years later, she did not reminisce
about the day her father took her to see ice;
it is highly unlikely she ever faced
a firing squad. In her younger and more
vulnerable years, yes, it was her father’s advice
that haunted her. Happy families
may very well all be alike, what does she know.
About flowers, yes. Call her anything
you’d like. To women, all alike in dignity.
A call to the goddess of memory. It was always
the best and worst of all times. When she woke
from her bed, she found herself transformed
into a monstrous vermin. Can she still
get the flowers herself? I should mention
she was sleeping in what once had been
the gymnasium. They’re out there. She’s in here.
It was a queer sultry summer when they executed
her, not by firing squad, but by tedium. What
choice did she have, but to reach inside?

Someone helped me out of a chair. Someone helped me out of a pickle. Someone helped me out of a womb. Someone gathered the globemallow from my yard. Someone left a Post-it for me to find: javelinas will get into your trash. Someone flew over my head. Someone let me to cut in line. Or they didn’t, but I still cut. Someone trimmed my bangs. Someone said a prayer. Someone lit a match. Someone wrote it down. Someone got the last word. Someone took my pulse. Someone walked on the moon. Someone liked me back. Someone cursed my name. Someone dreamed me up. Someone ate my plums. Someone ate my heart out. Someone’s my plum. Someone’s my trash. Someone outed my heart. Someone pickled my womb. Someone found my line. Someone wrote my prayer. Someone pulsed my weeds. Someone matched my lit. Someone mooned me back. Someone trounced my curse. Someone ate my like. Someone mourned my bangs. Someone flew over my head. Someone flew over my head. Someone said we are in this alone.

You could be the devil if I believed in the devil I do believe
in self-actualization though not in manifest destiny
nor environmental determinism nor the secret
‍I do believe, at moments, in mood boards, numerology,
sun + moon + rising, in fluidity (our bodies our choices),
circadian rhythms perhaps to the degree of evangelism
because I cannot or do not want to believe in a world
where I am not an animal. For all my canting about the moon
I cannot or do not want to be in a world without the sun.
While I hold a special place in my heart for maximalism
I don’t buy sapiosexuality but I do think one can be demi,
what is more innate than believing you must enjoy something
to desire it? The other side of this coin is the list
of things I do not believe in but must live with: the system
of men, trademarks, the puff test at the optometrist’s, expiry dates,
time zones, sudoku, the rats of New York City. Geography
is questionable at best. Heartache, too. The gradation
between truths and untruths is worth living for and still,
it is second-hand fun. But we were discussing the devil.
No. Before I made this about me, we were talking about you.
Talk about a religion I can stand behind.