There Will Come Nights with More Moons

Prove to me
there is more than just tidal blood and marrowed
boys pulling firearm petals from the trunks
of hand me down cars
the kind I drove when we abducted ourselves
stole into a night that folded onto our shape like bedsheets

When I still needed someone’s hand to hold
there were trees like prayers, all around me

everything looked like rain on coke bottle glasses

names were wild Things drawing blood in my head

I remember how August became the shape of her

I haven’t met anyone like that in a long time

I keep hearing there are things good at being

            cats, people with clear skin, God, water.

I am not one of these
I          pinning huckleberries to my tongue

scratching my feathers against indigo friends

Can’t understand the gold seeping to
and from the sky, the blood dancing between clouds
And when I wake, I forget every melody I’ve ever heard.
I braid every mistake into my hair and choke on donation gold.

I’ve no idea what to do with grace save
limp through thorny brackets and push my finger
down my throat
heave away all my splinters.
This is where the body is supposed to begin and become more than a garden

of locusts a pail of flood water
thrown out
and licked clean by foxes.

It gets harder to swallow

something to do with the spine, I think.
I saw my prayers out of my chest      now
Now, I place my shames on the pulpit and read myself to a thousand lambs.

My love I could fit into the bolted hole in a cow’s forehead.
My albatrosses fill living rooms, museums, and New York ballrooms
They discuss the latest trends in marxism and how to treat oil paintings right.