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.

Hello, good morning. Hello, meadowsweet
that pinkly lines the river. Hello, book
with deckled pages. Hello, lucky day
from picking up a penny. Lo, I greet
milord the sunshine. Hi, unfocused look
of upthrust glacial mountainhead, display

of winter storefront dazzlement. Hello,
sundogs loping at the edge of sight,
goosedown on a wet and chilly night.
Hi, summer afternoon. Good morning, snow
that drifts us in so we don’t have to go
to school today. Hello there, startled flight
of doves with whistling wings. Hi, time to write.
Hi, ringing downstroke of a cello bow.

I am my own Nude. -Anne Carson

Voluptuosity? Go down.
Cascades, cataracts: fat in a bra,
globes of honey tickled into
some palm, but only Anubis,

lover and coroner, sees the yellow drupes
of cells stacked inside, parts the lips
of the Y-incision most tenderly.
The living see only the juicy

dive, meetly and sweetly, between
strong marked-up thighs. What moving
finger writ these runes? White calves
bellow at night. Painted hide,

and the brown hands of a wicked, wicked witch
on a strapping white ass. All poses are coy.

I got a High John the Conqueroo
trading card in my pack of ten
from the convenience store.

I got root access through you,
root doctor, root guru,
ghost in the UNIX shell.

Penguins taught you and you
taught me. See? How a mojo hand
trails off in rootlets, a taproot

where saxophones divide,
a girl named Truffles brushes the drums
with hairy ginseng from the holler:

you knew these blues, and you taught me well,
chords of the Buddhas unborn.

               The rumbling stomach
          of the sky releases
Summer’s symphony. Our
          tennis shoes still resting
               by the door and our toes
          free-dance across the mud
that squishes in between.
          Our swirls leave signatures
               deep inside the earth and
          stains bleed through our jeans.
As we spin, the cruel
          words and sibling pains
               of the day drizzle down
          and puddle away from
the thunder that we make.

Satin remnant of a howling storm
Fragmented from its original form
Stripped of protection, broken, tossed
And tumbled, sea-soaked, missing, lost
Like a sailor on unfamiliar seas
Drifting ashore on a delicate breeze
To a destination unknown
Into a shell-strewn tideline sewn
Tangled with seaweed and beachglass and sand
Landing as new wood, refined, yet unplanned
Not belonging, but soon enough
A removed diamond from the rough

She says:
I don’t feel right. I’m imploding
or exploding. I’m not sure
which.

He said:
The leaves are falling off the trees,
browned to the color of the cancer
rust edging up the fenders of my car.
Usually just the leaves die, but
I think the trees are dying too.

She says:
My head is swollen. Pregnant
with ideas and failure. Full of mourning
and morning sickness. My feet so fat
I can only wrestle in my sheets
and lay with open mouth counting peaks
in stucco ceilings.

He says:
I’m hungry for change.

She said:
It’s time for me to go.

What would you think of me
if I set a table for iced tea out in a park
with two chairs; for you, for me while air
still gold, the cloth checked, gone Deco?

You’d look swell in such a place, I swear
you would. Not far from a lake, it’d all look
just out of this world, like some pearl-strung
still frame from a faraway screen, all blithe

and fair. Small lights, I’d have them there
too, bugs that each hold a piece of moon
to build as gold fades to a June night blue.
What would you think of such a rose? Of “I may

be wrong, but I think you’re wonderful.” And as I
mean it, I’d spill my drink, honest I would. Please say
at least, you’d smile, at me, at petaled songs, the beat
of thumbs to thorns, and of love, old, gone Deco.