Did you know that
after a whale dies
she becomes a planet
for as long as she lived?
Generations of white worms
saga out her putrid
stomach,
it is a meat/sea opera,
a religion of hagfish,
tin can teeth eating
guppy eating see-through
shrimp the size of a thumb.
Fish don’t stand
but I imagine there is a certain
patriotism to holding ground
on the belly of a dead
whale,
which looks more and more like
the surface of
an undiscovered moon.
the belly of a dear
whale,
now an atmosphere, now a lover.
I imagine it is a beautiful and
horrifying fullness to
look most like a mother
in death.
Going Through Withdrawal on a Park Bench
The sky is a leaking violet like water that needs to be changed.
I’m on a park bench wondering if I have cataracts
because everything is somehow milky, my stomach feels like
I just ate a doorknob, got something rotten opening up
inside me. I do not know where I close from.
The couple behind me is sharing a drink from a paper bag.
The man sticks his hand between the woman’s legs
when I look away. I feel like I am spoiling something
but mostly I hate them, God, I hate her denim miniskirt
and how she is too old, I hate the rude flesh of his arms
I hate that it is afternoon, I hate that they are enjoying this,
I hate my folded legs and there is nothing better to do
I hate so many things and have no more room left.
I hate so many people without trying. It is
easy to hate people when they take you back.
My body smells like a dirty penny, like I don’t know where it’s
been.
I take myself back over and over again.
Now your clean dark hands
all over. all under. I want
you to scoop me out
like a bone sucked of its marrow.
Make me. Then unmake me. Then
do it all over so I forget how
I started.
Make me remember
that candles are a source of light.
Make me remember I am fallen
like a fruit too ripe for its tree.
There are ways in which I understand
violence. This is one of them.
I have bitten off my own tongue
seven times. Every sever left me
more of a scream and still the
days go one at a time.
Make a mourner out of me.
I wish to be an impeccable fossil.
Your stomach swells up and down
like a whole horizon. Every breath
is a sunrise. Good morning.