after Alvin Baltrop &  sam sax

i have yet to mention semen

       in a poem, although, dear reader

it has always been here. it is not

      that i failed to, i just neglected. but

while we are here, let’s speak

      to failure. i have failed to

mention crying here, not the tears

      but actual deluge. i have not

failed to talk about the grief of sex.

      there are other griefs i wish i could

have mentioned in these poems but i do not

      grasp the ability to hold it in a healthier

way other than by fucking

      a man. i have mentioned a man

in each memory. like most men,

      their relevance is very little. i am unsure of

how to relate this to the dead

      animals in each poem. i have

however, mentioned the sandhill

      cranes, their glossed wings

skimming the river’s out stretched

      tongue. i think the dying around me make me

question how does one have sex when the air

      reeks of old bones? how is this

sex still relevant when i am

      watching a cooper’s hawk

carefully make incisions

      down a rat’s stomach? why

do we need men when we have

      been given such beautiful birds?

‍

I am trying to rewrite the ways I name blood—scarlet ribbon dancing in me; a hex of summer tanagers who refuse to silence. It is hard to make pretty of what America makes sport. It is hard to know my blood wishes to exit my body. My mother calls, says her brother has a cancer that sleeps in him, like her father did and his father before, a small seed blooming in us, singing in between the cells. It is hard to die in ways that are unknown to us. New assassins, lying in the field of our platelets. From what I understand, the blood is a script. A myriad of scrolls unrolling themselves within us. A play we are never to unlearn. Some call it by its god-name; fate—I just call it amurderer. This not to say that I have met death and bested it or understood its blades—no, I have just befriended the only eventuality to ever exist. And this makes me no better than you, one who believes in god and love and the way the light falls from the  illuminated cheeks of a disco ball just after a three tequila midnight. We were meant to break, that is the purpose of nature. The red in me now twinkling with new toxins. Or were they there before? I do not know.  I am out of definitions and yet, here I am trying to still breathe. So what if my blood is just a skulk of violent foxes racing towards an unending forest? What are we to learn then, in the heat of their noise?

‍

The voice of Brooklyn sits heavy; holds

the jazz of a baritone, unfolding in their

last note. Even in this rain, listen

how bewitching that sound can be, the night-

hollowed gut; a torchsong refusing to

go out. Many times, I have called for the rain

to be a lover, but oh how I forget its face

when it comes. The rain is often

whatever memory we grow sick trying

to outrun. I cannot blame the city

for being the city, holding wet in

its crystalline lungs. I am not lonely

because I live here—in this downpour while

the sun is sitting flirtatious across the horizon

beckoning me west. There are pears I greet

in the morning when I am sad, I kiss them

until they untie their skin for me. They, too, will

bruise their flesh to please another. The wind

this evening, pushes rain against my neck,

another small kiss, another inevitable betrayal, tells

me to trust the crickets more. A stupid orchestra

we pray to, I pray to the most. These puddles

are welling at the throats of the catch basins.

I do not wish to step through their spilling

so I find a way around. I could leave this city—

and one day I might, but for now, I’ll catch the rain

in my mouth; for now, I’ll choose to drown.

‍

it is not always a lie i tell; my excuse

to wander the backwoods behind

my old house, i say i wish to capture

the trees in their undressing during

the mid-thrust of fall. today, i

photographed an old black cherry

tree starting to lose its bark, close

to collapse. today, two deer danced

in front of my lens long enough for me

to document it. today, i followed a man

for miles into nowhere, until i was

completely lost, no longer sure of which

direction the sun would set. the man

asked me what i am doing out here so late

in season, and i pointed to two swallows

circling each other in what I presume

was in lust to say i like to find things

when they’re unknowing of their own

heat. he nods, he understands but the words

are caught in his throat like a brush

of leaves. a third man followed us through

the forest in hopes that we will lead him

to his unraveling. he says, he found a

mushroom so orange, it could be the sun,

told us he would take us to it if we wanted.

we nodded without questioning his intent;

we are all here for the same thing, but none

of us are willing to admit it.

‍

i start every story with

noticing: what i can touch,

who i cannot. i take survey of

the room, question who is

alive, who might be a figment

of my false reality.

‍

often i do not believe someone

is dead until i call them and

they do not answer. when i was

a child, i thought everyone was

dead until they appeared in

front of me, risen from the

grave.

‍

                              what vast

variance i’ve created for myself

through this learning of

deadness. i tell a friend to text me

when you make it home and they

do not. in my mind they are

gone. i find a dead hen in the

pond knee-deep in ice. i am not

sure about the protocol of dead

things. i do not touch it.

‍

i believe in omens. i believe in the pith of

mothers saying text me when you get home,

chile, i believe in the dragging of the “L” in

“chile” to emphasize how tired we have

become at losing kin to the night air—i

answer every message within seconds, to

prove my existence. i speak invocations of

survival,

‍

                     place runes beneath my

tongue in prayer. let my grandfather

be okay when he misses my phone

call. let my sister be okay when she

forgets to message me back.

even for my father, whom i do not call, i still

pray. i search his name in the toledo papers,

wait to hear from his wife that he did not

make it; that she sat, phone in hand, waiting

for the text that would not arrive.

‍

on the other hand, my mother texts me every

morning just to prove to herself she is not a

ghost. i answer every message seconds after

i receive them. on the days she does not

respond to my response, i spend the rest of

the day waiting for her eulogy.

‍