12.

back in San Antonio
you never knew
if it was going to be your last cigarette

you kept your head down
and learned to dance in Mexican bars

you didn’t apologize for anything

and men never paid you enough
for your sins

is it poetry enough
if the eloquence comes home
dirty
and unpolished,
biting its fingernails
and slurring its vowels?

does it still mean as much
gritty
and spent?

i don’t feel like combing my hair today
or learning to swim

and the words
cut through my sternum,
folding their pretty wings
and arriving dressed in sacrilege,
marching in crooked lines

like dead soldiers
caked with memory

 

13.

they found it in Athens,
the last breath of a mermaid confined to a kitchen sink
in a minimum wage flat

on her palms,
someone once claimed to see ink stains
that loosely resembled God
but no one was ever able
to confirm the story

 

 

14.

i’ve ruined my sheets
midmorning
with a cut on my hand
(sharks in my bed again)

Siamese twin verbs
 birds
pecking at
the glittery side of my cheek
mascara pillowcase

i left my keys
on his bedroom floor
(i do not know how i got here)

stay.

 

15.

this, then.
the jawline God favored
while painting his madness
where the light tripped over the end table
and knocked over a vase of fresh tulips;

(we sat in the dark
knitting crooked sweaters
for six months
waiting for Jesus to fix the electricity)

cheap leather ballet flats
made for walking very carefully
over eggshell improvisation
where
 ‘scattered’
is the obvious explanation
for
 ‘couldn’t dance in those shoes’
and
 ‘didn’t have time for eyeshadow’

this, then.
this, and the boots you rode in on
and the pen in your pocket
and the name you couldn’t scrape off your tongue
well enough;

a semi colon
and an after effect affectionately referred to as
grey goose martini, three olives

and every term of endearment you could muster
when it became apparent
that the walls of Jericho
were indeed coming down

and sleep
was a metaphor
used in bad movies and off-Broadway plays

this, then.
and all the kings horses
and all the kings men

16.

Barcelona, Barcelona
i kept my mouth shut
while you bled all over my notebooks

i don’t love in public
because no one needs to see this

i kept all your letters in the back of my throat
so she wouldn’t find out about me
so i wouldn’t find out about me

i smoke cigarettes because i love you
so you would recognize me in the dark