All I have is air, paired off into nitrogen and nitrogen, oxygen and oxygen, inhale and exhale. I reach my arm out and there’s nothing. My hand falls through invisible particles that refuse to become the three layer dip of your skin. Inhaling is the hardest part, taking in the elements devoid of you. Close eyes, exhale, open eyes, inhale. How can I need something not touched by you?

In the morning the light forces its way through the dirty window panes. The invisible becomes visible as dust dances, twirling in the light. Maybe it’s the curve of your shoulder, the curl of your hair spinning, smiling. The shaft of air is warm and as I exhale it’s the heat of our bodies but as I inhale it’s cold.

Maybe I’ll grow gills and go looking for you in the dishwasher, next the bathtub. I’ll imagine you water and every breath will surround me in you. I’ll just keep swimming, giving you carbon dioxide and taking your oxygen. When you evaporate I’ll trade in my flaps for lungs and go looking for you where there is nothing, rescue you clinging to pairs of nitrogen and oxygen with inhales and exhales.

In the back of your mind
there are villains
stealing silence from shadows,
there are warm wet bodies
pressing on burning brick
walls holding their breaths
held in place by pushpins,
held sturdy in place
by the fear of recognition,
of appearance.

In cold cobwebbed cellars
underneath the back
of your mind, the far back
corner of your mind
there is hot ambition combusting,
bubbling over lips of
clean concrete crates,
there is a new collection
each moment of moments
unsorted, unembellished,
there are villainous words
holding blades to each other
at the throat – whispering
sharp eager threats, fighting
for belief & release.

In the strange sturdy valves
of your heart there pump
poems that will never be read,
beat rhythms you only hear
in your head,
bleed language that hasn’t been said.

In wanton fingers
sit stories you’ve been through
before, are not waiting
to be seen but making
this happen:
there is a soft pretty girl
with her brother sharing
pictures with one another
downtown,
& when they get up to go
she walks quickly ahead,
eyes down where she steps
not slowing for him
to keep pace.

In the back of your mind
there are thugs
without faces writing
words in the blank
bathroom stalls. There are
great banners that read
DREAM THROUGH THE NIGHT,
DO NOT LET SLEEP
AWAKEN YOUR NIGHT,
NEVER OPEN YOUR EYES
AND GET DRUNK ON
THE NIGHT –

there are sleeping in the back
of your mind pistons with
crippled hind legs, frost
snorting from the holes on their faces,
teeth bared & broken & white.

In the black bright patch
behind your eyes
there is you, blinking
speechless & barren,
building dreams in the night,
trailing empty banners
of sleep, catching villains
& thugs, sisters & brothers,
youth captured in full –
in the corners, in the walls,
in the pitch of the vast dim
back of your mind.

I’m tired of poems that can be described
With just one word, I’m tired of books
That need a blurb to sell themselves,
I want a product that does more than it says.

I want the end of the earth on a platter,
For all of this to matter it would take a miracle
That would cost a lifetime of yeses
And nos that none of us have,

It would take more than what belongs to us
To sort out the difference between a beam
And a truss, to raise high the studs and kings
Of a stiff hammered wall, straight enough

That we trust it will never fall over, or
Splinter and keel in the strongest of winds,
The stiff-backed spine, leather hands
Of a man the color of the Appalachians. The sounds

That he makes are whistling songs
From a whittling stick, the scrape of an end
Without means we will never forget. I’m tired
For the scourge of blue Virginia’s lost

Who clamor up roadsides relying on faith
And the balls of their feet to bring them home
With more coal in the bag than was there
When they came, I’m afraid that they fear

And trust that they don’t.
I want a line of work that scabs my dry hands,
A day so long we use lighters to find our keyholes,
Memories I never had but wish were my own –

I’m tired of sashaying, relieved
Every day instead of reliving, I’m tired of not being
Tired when I wake. Where are the ends of my earth?
The beginning of me was more than I’m worth.

This is the way I’ve started eating oranges:
Each half in fourths, it’s a dance of peeling
The bitter bark away from the meat
Piece by piece. This is how it is with bananas:
Browning they’re halved and one
Is cut for a bowl of oat cereal, the other
Is stripped completely before eaten bite by bite.
With apples I make platters for cheese,
Grapefruits I have spent my life believing
I hated, but these days if cut right with sugar
There is no equal taste on my tongue.
This is how I started seeing fruit in girls:
The decisions for dissection, the angle
Of the cut determining the evenness
Or the level of how well we know one another.
These are the palms moistened
By uncertainty, the citrus spilling thoughtlessly
Into the crevices we find so thrilling there.