Christ, he said,
you should have seen it crawl
Back & beg Even after weâd dropped cinder blocks
on its face
Â
& here you are You are right fucking here
& the sparks Here & the sparks
Snow
i.
Ground hard as I-beams.
Blisters and whipping flags,
Â
but I can only remember how grandfather spat
Â
tobacco in Tupperwareâsleet so cold I couldnât
Â
speak.
ii.
Todayâa fingerâs calligraphy on car windows.
Our ribs crack with longing.
Â
Â
Â
If I see you, I wonât remember your name.
iii.
A poor taste on lips.
Tonight, a shattered cup.
Â
The window breaks.
iv.
When the chest sweats, where is the light? Cold, but
face flushed like persimmons.
Â
Hold this. If it shakes, donât let go.
v.
Iâm in love with sleeping bodies.
I canât remember the melody.
I donât remember anything at all.
Â
Today, he brushed his teeth then leaped
from the balcony.
Â
Â
We couldnât hear over chiming glass, the snow
falling straight down.
Who Finds You
I tar acres of wandering
The guarded woods hunting
Shudders of moonlight
Â
My hands steadying
On barbed wire I open
My jacket to evening snow
Â
The creases gleaming
My cheeks before
I shotgun myself in the face
Â
And now I have fucked up
The voices are lightning
Jagged cracks in the frozen pond
Â
And each holler beatboxes
Through the back-lit and feeble
Armed trees a reminder
Â
That affliction is caress
Said over and over when
Your skin is lost to the cold
Â
And in the moment before
The moment of noise everyone
Is eye to crotch in the delivery room
Of your panic theyâre rubbing IVs
Against their chests and picking
Their teeth with scalpels
Â
While the sink overflows
With voiceâwill you follow
Into the dark but what is
Â
That way the body suffers
Your eyes you are all wishless
And bewildered mouths of black
Â
Berry fists pumping ribs they say
Come running with a star
Bright needle there is
Bound to be damage
4
The gods are strange. They brew us fatal pleasures, they use our virtues to betray us, they break our wings across the wheel of loving.
Â
âEDWARD HIRSCH
Corpus
When I say hello , it means bite my heart.
Let the blackfly spin invisible & delirious
Â
on vinyl. Let it save me from what I canât
know. Send posthumous letters in neon,
Â
scribble love unreadable. My body is sweet
with blasphemy & punk teeth, memories
Â
of slam-dancing underwater.
Tonight the absence of rain
Â
is the mouth-open rush to noise:
a hurricane of wasps throat-clambering
Â
for air. This half-earth where grind
sleeps dormant, a sickness without
Â
temperature or cough. Hold my hand,
my nothing shouts. Weâll stay up all night.
Â
Weâll orgy with shake and groove,
wet whisperâ clap, kiss, watch me go .
Callnote
I stopped listening
as the blue jay hooked
its final turn.
I knew its business
was no longer air, only rageâ
good just out of reach.
Jake, my nephew,
asked questions you hear
underwater. Questions answered
when a stranger ties your shoes.
We stared together. Everyoneâs
done thisâgazed at an airplane
slicing sky & blossomed
with visions of balloons
bursting with gasoline. I held Jake
to the glass, bird in slow motion.
I squeezed his tiny hand
in time with smack .
Jakeâs bobbing head
drooled. The stain was a half-
finished Rothko. In the fading
light, the still bird was gray.
I wanted to take the window
out & frame it. I wanted
the delicate bones in my freezer.
I wanted to kiss Jakeâs soft head
& whisperâmost days, this
is the sound of the world.
Fever
i.
Trample me to the stage so I can hear the butterfly
tongue the last bee-swelled scream Rats chewed
Â
through my night & now I reverb with failure
I am a bathroom stall sticky with a good
Â
timeâs remains During the coda
tell them it will be painless when Iâm gone
Â
The crocuses are ablaze Tell