For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling.
I love you. You are closest to my heart, closer than any other human being. You are my extension. You are my prayer. You are my belief in God. For better or worse you inherit me.
The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not.
Look to your heart that flutters in and out like a moth. God is not indifferent to your need. You have a thousand prayers but God has one.
I’ve grown tired of love You are the trouble with me I watch you walk right by.
And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself.
Despite my asbestos gloves, the cough is filling me with black, and a red powder seeps through my veins...
Home is my Bethlehem, my succoring shelter, my mental hospital, my wife, my dam, my husband, my sir, my womb, my skull.
The fish are naked. The fish are always awake. They are the color of old spoons and caramels.
The day of fire is coming, the thrush will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket...
Blind with love, my daughter has cried nightly for horses, those long-necked marchers and churners that she has mastered, any and all, reigning them in like a circus hand...
The Saints come, as human as a mouth, with a bag of God in their backs, like a hunchback, they come, they come marching in.
I leave you, home, when I’m ripped from the doorstep by commerce or fate. Then I submit to the awful subway of the world...
I have a black look I do not like. It is a mask I try on. I migrate toward it and its frog sits on my lips and defecates.
We are America. We are the coffin fillers. We are the grocers of death. We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.
When someone kisses someone or flushes the toilet it is my other who sits in a ball and cries. My other beats a tin drum in my heart. My other hangs up laundry as I try to sleep. My other cries and cries and cries when I put on a cocktail dress.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars. Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die.
The stars are pears that no one can reach, even for a wedding. Perhaps for a death.
To die whole, riddled with nothing but desire for it, is like breakfast after love.
I am torn in two but I will conquer myself.