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?

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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.

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