Unloved Among Waters
Love is a sign of our wretchedness.
Simone Weil
To begin with you, interrogating the purpose of my thighs
while I drank rum from a watermelon beat through
with blessings of oblivion. The beach folks went about it all
and I mounted you carefully like a thing wild on the sand.
Arrangements are for river rocks,
and I am not sure we ever had one besides fucking.
You were never one for understanding
the nurture of nature, much less love—
it was like you said, a tongue’s reaction is glorious,
and whenever you teased me, I pined for taste.
At the quartz lake, you were there again:
You, my cabbage pie.
You, my blind cure.
You, who lobbied flesh for fact.
You, who mistook kisses for curses.
You, foregoing me baseless and bound.
Right now you raft-sleep prone as a soldier,
water streaming beneath like piss
from a hound, but then
you are off, sucking in every sound
from here to Southport.
And me?
I am landlocked all akimbo—limbs splayed
like blood splatter, a filthy star stinking then gone.
Man-sized
I live in a dollhouse
and everything is tiny
My desk is for a child
My dog is wee
My eyes are beady
My feet hang off the end
of my miniscule bed
and my stove is thin
like a playing card
My lover too has shrunk up
to fit the toy shower
the slip of our kitchen
the plastic frame
of the puny couch
The thing is my ego
is ballooning
amidst all the miniature
The thing is my body
is stomping around like
the 50-Foot-Woman
with no regard
for the size
of my tremendous feat
I am monstrous
and the dollhouse
cannot contain me
My lover cannot
contain me
The weather cannot
contain me
My limp sheer dresses
cannot contain me
And I am not ashamed
for the petite pain
of my wake I am
unbelievable
Bus Stop Madonna
Right now,
I am trying
to be smarter
than ever before
but the whitetrash
displays regardless—
how my insecurities
blanket like warm ash,
the malapropisms
and catachresis,
how I sound
lowkey dumb.
I am not ashamed.
She is not ashamed.
She is waiting
for the bus piously
nursing a full-grown man.
He is hidden all over
—there in her hair, there
in her heart, there in her hand,
there in her fear.
He is her fear-dear
and we’ve made a God of him,
terrified of his poverty
and magic.
Like Lucille and her twelve fingers,
like Sexton’s Ms. Dog—
I have something
that I really want to talk about
but can’t.
She has something
hanging off her like a tick.
Licking his stigmatic wounds,
she’s stretching him
into a Texas T,
reaching
the darkest parts.
In this way, we both fallow
a burden.
Her with her
faith, me with my
ignorant irreverence.
Which is,
honestly,
A-OK—
we all need a mountain
to die on.
Deep South Augury
Beware the black symbol of planets.
Beware the whack pull of spandex.
Beware the spindly waxed cane haul.
Beware the wayback machine made landfall.
Beware of beehive hair and God calls.
Beware for beware’s sake, wear flair for handshakes.
Beware the bastards are bashing, the poets posing.
Beware of loose women, loose asphalt.
Beware, of course, of Koko B. Ware.
Beware, be fair, and be melting.
Beware the dark heart in the chest, faking.
Beware before becoming.
Beware for months, then nothing.
Beware the cows weighted and whelping.
Beware the spacehole’s sudden hotel.
Beware of heaven and hell.
A Poem for Texan Summertime
All those cicadas didn’t come
this far South. I didn’t get no night noise,
no overwhelming sense
of being alive. Nothing out-buzzed
the traffic ‘copters, the whine
of forgotten dogs tied to trees.
No one told me about the Borealis
lights—I didn’t see the soft
candy sky, the surreal smears
of gold and green.
The eclipse was all cloud cover
and a black snake ate
whatever baby birds we had.
Rain’s been so heavy, the herons
fall from Live Oak limbs
like pennies down a thin well. A girl
was strangled and thrown into
the bayou, again and again. I saw
a man so hungry, he ate his own
beard for breakfast. The heat
here makes everyone crazy, boils
our hearts into hate.
A poem should turn eventually,
offering respite and release, ending
with beauty or hope—but my lines
are tight, my images alive,
and the real truth is
there’s no good cheer here.