petals and bees

you will lose yourself and it may look a little like this so

remember the senselessness of your own hands, between

the right and the left, they will turn on you like two teenage

daughters out-moralizing the other for you, the mother body–

one day your left will be at his hip then your right will be

at your face with a hard smack

you will find it inside yourself to walk

outside to shake off your quarreling limbs

you will take the sun as if it were a round mirror and stare

directly and bereft of limbic intervention, divining some power

up and out there but instead your eyeballs will turn inside out

you will have no choice but to take the world by sightless impulse

your knock-knees made off with all your agility

but to you it’s a moonwalk, deeper into the dark

the way night running becomes preternatural flight

somehow the less you can see the more you will

cuss out god whose name resembles his

wife because by now your tongue has become a storm

in your throat, for all the love that you hate is falling rain &

you swallow, and swallow

at this point you may smell him; forgive yourself –

it’ll only be the edge of a had-been forest

fire, or more likely the neighbor’s wood

burning stove, as you really haven’t made it too far

since you encountered his hip, followed by the sting at your cheek from

the memory

of a wife or the oafishness of your tragically backwards feet –

since the savagery of your own

flight of fancy     since the tempest

of your voice could finally unglue

the words           tomorrow, I’ll do better –

photograph by Francesca Woodman / “but does it float”

I drank bitter milk

I bit the nipple as it came out

The liver suffers but I write it off

as overhead

some color of cream

soak our selves in amber oak

milk, present tense, like a dream  –

temper can roar all throughout my bones like wind and I don’t need

you

I like to feel sorrow

I suck the nipple, I cry for more I drink    for more

the wind roars the color wheel spins, all the secondary colors are born

and beautiful

I like o feel sorrow I li tio sfeel sorryow

I lifke to fel sorry oi lifke so toffee

l orrry oi like to feel sorry w

somebody gave birth to me, to you

somebody gave into a moment with somebody else somebody sucked away at the amber glow somebody’s liver begged for a red light somebody’s body saw green there was also blue and indigo and pink and orange and brown

some body wanted a space to fill

and there you were

will you drink?

the milk vivid, sumptuous, something to sink your teeth into

you tell me the color, give me a name, tell me

give me, you should’ve come over

you.

We wants to speak for the women and the men

the men who are becoming women and the women who are

becoming men

for the they and the them

and the she who capitulates to he

for the he who grows up into a The

because of other he’s

so she who was once an I

who either wanted an our (or didn’t)

converts to an it

then all the its become a were

because of the The.

As such, we is in mutiny.

A rebellion, we said,

with the backing of the other parts of speech

against their English lords and ladies

the year was 2017 it was all

man on man

woman in woman

 she after him and him under her

       and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise

                                     even though we all tried

the future isn’t male or female

we said. At this rate it’s Us, or nothing at all.

original artwork by japhy riddle

make the booze hum

make the throat larger

make this screen brighter

may these fingers soften

make the vowels sing

make the night longer

shade the grass bluer

move the moon closer

reinvent the color of your eyes

mine them like minerals

make mine the orebody

mend the jaws’ loose hinges

make my tongue

make the buzzards blacker

make them circle our bodies

shrill their Caw over me and you

shake those heavy wings

make the firewater

make my tongue tell time

face the clocks to the wall

drill the well deeper

fill it with sweat

make the point sharper

waste it on their oily wings

carry away with the buzzards

make liquor your dinner

make my shoes soggy

make me climb up to you

collapse the well

extract your eyes

undo my tongue

original photography by japhy riddle

I don’t know the kind of house it would be, in architecture or floor plan

I never could get close enough to go inside and admire our decor

our trappings.

To begin with, I don’t know how to conceptualize our

front yard and fence

a leaf blower

him changing the oil bringing in mail taking out garbage and me

cleaning out refrigerator

matching Tupperware to their lids.

I have never been inclined to sequels for any given moment.

I ask you now to suspend judgement as we trespass on property,

perhaps yours,

trip upstairs

suspend your piety as he pushes me against fresh paint as if

you left only hours ago

eggshell honeymilk slipper satin paper white

suspend your unspoken covenants here –

(nobody has moved in yet)

the window swells his stomach and neck, consequently my hands and mouth in

moon

as in silk and sealace, ivory, bone and cream sousing all parts of our selves

in that high brightness

flat floor and oblique walls are all the same to us

my hair my shoulders in the small of my back, white smoke, my ghost white backside gives us away

sometimes there is no way

to see what happens next.

I brought you

to the curves in the south fork

I use my lashes

to sweep up your attention

hold it

right there

an eddy, a dervish,

a timely spoon in my eyes

on,

then in,

yours, oh god

I just make up so many stories to keep you

right here

how I laughed at the neighbor boy

behind his back

called him weird

told him to get off my property

I was devilish

struggled to be a good kid.

Everyone was sinning their way

to hell in a handbasket

adultery

words bargain time

fornication, transubstantiation

the river is blue and deep at the south fork.

We would throw empty wild turkey off the rocks

bellowing and daring each other down

after them

now

I follow you,

after your wife, into the water,

I can see you seeing her. Wind and sun

substantiating your deep blue guilt

a lapse in

storytelling.

Once I told my mom I wanted to see

what was under our priest’s vestments.

I never was able

to get out of dodge

quick enough

holding down the fort for you

here at the rocks at the south fork at the water’s edge

in the eye of the hurricane

hold it

right there

an eddy, a dervish,

a timely spoon in my eyes

on,

then in,

yours, oh god

I came to myself lover after lover

singing my way to hell.

kenne Gregoire 1951

I still label it “masculinity”

despite the matrilineal anger

it sprung from, or rather –

the man inside me

sprung.

His need to fuck but

be free, naturally therein lies a

fiction and an

adolescence, an attachment

to individuation: dusk-dawn

the first light of differentiation,

yin-yang, the plausibility of the body

we are born into.

It’s controversial to admit that I am

a colonialized woman

I remember

a dialect of tenderness – speaking

was like splitting fruit with my mouth

the idea of freedom did not govern me

I was already free

my limbs were in chorus, seasons of

sympathetic magic with a phenomenal world.

My mother passed along her rage

bred within me an extraverted boy who punched

holes in the drywall, cauterized my womb,

a sovereign masculinity that defines me and enslaves

my anatomy to geometric efficiency, narrower hips

smaller breasts less luster less room

for impressions or shadows.

We are as close to friends as we will ever become,

I know his secret love of fire

the heat of things we

share

sun up sun down in the trenches where I was

told to hide: they’re his night terrors not mine

he brought the war in while I

unlearned my instincts.

So I come here for the fruit –

the lost language

though never all the way forgotten

long past dusk in starry corridors,

unsupervised while he sleeps

I chew slowly

quietly.

original artwork by kaitlin deasy

she is faithless

the way a valley divides

for settlements and

agriculture and arithmetic

and law and alleys

and red-light, and him

and her

women don’t talk about

their faithlessness, they

do the math confidentially.

the other man I think about

divided into me

equals

an alley, if 1 woman

is distributed among 5 men

unequally and obsessively

over 3 years what are the remainders

and how can they be grieved –

it becomes a word problem

for which there are none.

she is an aberration

I think about him when –

a sorcerer

I’m with you –

an algorithm

I don’t know why –

a fraction

I’m sorry –

in a whole.

original artwork by kaitlin deasy

among the mountain

of thought you call

we, the diaphanous body

broken at your mouth by

the asking     a fish jumped

gave its body love

seen a mountain twice

once, as companion,

another in the thought of itself

on the face of the lake we

tried to ascend, lip by lip

giving love to its body

gave your body love

out of my broken lips

asking between answering

between light and retina,

sensitivity between skin

some worlds are limitless

given our world a body

jumping for the mountain,

your mouth, a lake, an eye blink,

a bruise of clouds low-hanging

over the sun where we made it up

to our bodies in love

love gave our bodies one

blink of ascension

awake the mountain and open

a lake of clouds halfway between our

twice felt skin between a bruise there

from the climb between the bodies

giving love

original artwork by kaitlin deasy

I want to be high on

thinnest breath as

I lay my pillow on rock

by the saguaro, with my head

inside those linear shadows

momentarily forgotten –

how I need these very words –

I want to be high on

need, coming up dry while

the diaphragm pumps away

how I would lie for a language, cheat

and manipulate, how I would throw

my self onto the saguaro or

turn a hoodoo into goose down,

I’ve done it before, gone prostrate

on a thing thousands of years in the

making, and I would do it again,

take a word or two, neglect

their etymon, patch them

with silence,

and defy the natural law

how I would plunge

into the desert belly first chest

to follow, like a piston

and get my fix from a place

unseen.

original photography by kaitlin deasy