Mosquito Read Online Free PDF Page B

them I can’t be lonely
Tell them what I buried under the yew tree
ii.
    if you need rock ’n’ roll stick a finger
in my chest believe the blackbirds
whistling through my ribs
saw an ecstasy from my skull savor
    Â 
    the slick-boned grit split me
open & a tanager quivers to life
wing nailed to wing it sings
the cripple is the blind boy’s

    Â 
    crayon-whipped best thump
its breast & chuck me
in a dumpster of needles
& rubber gloves name this the big
    Â 
    bang press a scalpel
through my cheek & lick me
use your teeth to scrape
the gravel from my tongue
iii.
    Skin searing blue-soft I plunge
in the hallway’s spins All strobe-lit
    Â 
    tits & teeth I holler the bottle rocket
I moan There are secrets
    Â 
    carved into my pockmarked moon Mouth my hurricane
throat I come Break me tender
    Â 
    I cry The glam-heart needs electric
paint I bleed Stitch me shut at dawn

That First Day of Spring Kind of Feeling
    It’s called the moonwalk. Front yard
glory. I eat frozen strawberries & watch
    Â 
    falling clouds, God’s muscle-thick arms
whipping savage. All of us will hang for belief
    Â 
    in sunlight’s rejuvenating power.
Today, I wear ditch cheeks, horse sparks
    Â 
    at my feet. Add wood chips to my pocket
lint & I have filthy thoughts. I itch melody.
    Â 
    Take away the frost, tremulous rhythm.
Sing breeze & I am an accordion
    Â 
    unbuttoning his jeans. Now is the season
to shave off my eyelids. Kiss me, ground,
    Â 
    I’ll read you the dictionary backward.
A page a day for the rest of my life.

Look Close
    Rain is holding its breath—water-damaging
The oatmealy clouds and you must want
    Â 
    To be the stranger of swollen doorways,
The specialist who cannot carve my insides
    Â 
    Enough. When you think midnight,
Do you taste hot honey and water
    Â 
    Or muffler-rust? When you hear thunder,
Remember the bowling balls herding
    Â 
    Around the buckled wood of your mother’s home.
Bathroom light, womb-bright, the six-packs
    Â 
    Are slow tonight. There is a car smashing
Around my chest. Do you hear the breath
    Â 
    Of the waiting? It doesn’t matter how
Many times we prick our tongues and touch.

Cocoon
    No matter how well we live, there will be mornings
when 3,000 pounds of jet fuel spill from an airplane
racing across the sky. Every Tuesday a farmer falls
against a pitchfork in the barn. All of us will surprise
two bodies in a dark room, grinding each other soft,
or leave home in short sleeves on a day snowplows roar.
In one life or another, we’ve all been the pocket
of a murderer, restless with bullets, or a knotted sheet
tearing apart, unable to hold a lover’s yearning weight.
Down the street, two boys are swinging behind the school.
In a week, one will be struck blind by the cry God makes
when someone lives. The same day, the other boy will write
the first sentence in his autobiography. It might be better
to be a caterpillar half-asleep on an elm branch, staring
marble-eyed at budding grass, but as soon as you think this,
the Saint of Ice Cubes pounds against your door.
Swaggering in his stillness, he looks you up and down,
pokes your chest. He makes you watch as, under the cashew
moon, he grins, rakes his cheek and yowls. Then, terrible
as the boy’s soon-to-be-white eyes, he raises a fist
to the flickering streetlight and shakes wicked
the hummingbird he’s squeezed into a bottle.

The Xylophone Is Blaze
    Voltage or diabetic, my hands.
We crossed the river pirouetting
    Â 
    on buoys. Predictions of sunshine.
Come over now, my hands flutter.
    Â 
    Did you believe you were good
as the rust-dulled axe, the go-there-
    Â 
    be-happy? On a beach
of violin skins we turned into lightning,
    Â 
    or didn’t, but smoked too fast,
attacking. Our chests tightened
    Â 
    with glee. Swaggering. Hip-tight
to the rough bark of perverted trees,
    Â 
    we shouted bloody, lips cowboy tall,
nick-winged & dusty.
    Â 
    I waited all day for you to tell me
that