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content warning for alcohol abuse and domestic violence

Gaslight

We started fucking in places we could hide:
the winter-stomped wheat field, behind

                a stranger’s barn. I saw rain
on the windshield, realized love

was an eggshell, the wet rind of an orange.
I could not admit this. Do I think he enjoyed hurting

me? No
                and yes, and no.

I wanted to believe
                an answer was snarled in the blankets.

If we stripped ourselves bare,
we could find it and forget our hate

for each other’s bodies. There is no forgiveness.
We are still empty. He says I remember it all wrong,

but it happens again and it happens
again. He comes home drunk,

                knocks me to the ground and tells me to beg,
and we start fucking

in places we can hide: the winter-stomped wheat
field, behind a stranger’s barn. He knocks me to the ground

and says I remember it all wrong.
                He comes home drunk. There is no forgiveness.

I could not admit this. I wanted to believe.
                He comes home drunk. Yes. I saw

rain. He tells me no.
He says I remember it all wrong.

---

The Drive

When I was young,
the hills were green like this

and you were strong and
unyielding as the hills—

green and full of
stories. Wet and fresh

as anyone equipped to live
in a car or under the sky.

You fought a man
much bigger than you

because he had drowned a kitten
in the river, and you said

anyone who would do that
had to be weak.

You, pure sinew, all
impulse and overflowing

with rain and green, like that.
Yes, like those hills just there.

I can see them now.

---

The Dark

He spells my name with an e instead of an i,
asks if 12 p.m. means day or night.

Everyday knowledge slides away.
He’s leaving before he leaves.

Lights out at six, lights out all the time.
So what if the world ends, so what

if the cities drown. Put your coat on
in any weather. Your preoccupations

become you. Eat the same breakfast
each day. The buttered toast is sour,

but nothing tastes the way it did.

---

Driving Lessons

Grief is an invisible skin. You
wear someone’s life in your own.
Even the way I parallel park is him.
For a mediocre driver, I’m pretty good.

Crank the wheel one way,
then the other at the midpoint.
You have to go all in or know
when you’ve botched the geometry.

Commit or start over.
No, that’s not right either.
Grief is closer and further
away. Always both.

---

Shelter

The birds have flown away.
The sky tips with the weight
of their wings turning all at once.

My father’s bones are the beams of a house—
Once someone said you could live there,
turn the lights down, light a fire.

---

Language of Dominion

Perhaps those maps are beautiful, too.
Vibrant cities growing inside you.

What do we dare call
progress? This advancement.

My brother drew boats and planes and
faces with deep set eyes on the old blueprints.

Foundations, property lines, numbers
landing under his sketches,

in the language of dominion.
The only imperative is to build.

Push and work and repeat.
Eat when you’re hungry.

And drink. Just don’t shrink.
There’s no time to be still.

Expand into what little space you have.

---

I Pose
For a Selfie with Venom
My Termite Service Technician
Who Is Still Sometimes Recognized
as His Nineties UFC Persona

as a fist
as a fist the inconsistent growth silhouette
as a fist the inconsistent growth silhouette of an heirloom tomato
as a fist the inconsistent growth silhouette of an heirloom tomato
         furrowed by the paths of insects

as an insect
as an insect that burrows
as an insect that burrows in the humid flesh and juice
as an insect that burrows in the humid flesh and juice of tropical
         wood frame houses

as a house
as a house like a retired competitor
as a house like a retired competitor on his second career
as a house like a retired competitor again invested in the
         opposition

as the opposition
as the opposition who drinks
as the opposition who drinks holistic remedies as if to purge
as the opposition who drinks holistic remedies as if to purge the
         losses of fights and women

as a woman
as a woman also giving
as a woman also giving up
as a woman also giving up what she has won and loves

---

@Death Follows Me on Twitter

                                                          From a real, defunct Twitter account

@Death tells me our relationship is complicated, and wants to
simplify things.

@Death tells me about “soul midwives” and “death doulas,”
flashlight-armed ushers to that final throne.

@Death tells me to decide now between a 12-piece jazz band and
Rush’s 2112 for my service.

@Death tells me that wearing a Fitbit may help me die better:
10,000 steps toward a daily end.

@Death tells me, on the day Wimbledon begins, the history
behind the sudden-death tiebreak. There used to be a
lingering-death tiebreak, too, but that was put to death.

@Death tells me the florists known for reliability and fair pricing.
@Death does not know the scent of flowers aches my temples,
throbs my veins.

@Death tells me the statistics on selfies: officially five times more
fatal than shark attacks.

@Death tells me jokes, like the one about the man who invented
autocorrect dying. “Restaurant in Peace,” @Death says.

@Death tells me, when the U.S. women win their fourth World
Cup, that captains of losing teams were traditionally sacrificed.

@Death wants to know if I will put down my surviving pets when
I die.

@Death is feeling ancient Egyptian, but walks like a cop in a donut
shop.

@Death wants me to take one last rum safari in Jamaica, drink
mamajuana with the locals.

@Death tells me that “dying on holiday does happen.” Presumably
by selfie.

@Death tells me lines from obituaries, such as “Freeda sledgehammered
every rule of healthy eating to obtain a nice long
life.”

@Death tells me about direct cremation, how I can be turned into
ash without a priest. @Death does not know that I’m Jewish,
despite skin etched into graphic anecdotes.

@Death tells me stories, like the one about the golden retriever
trained to bring tissues to mourners at a funeral home.

@Death asks if I’ve seen Michael Jackson around. @Death is not
old enough to ask about Elvis.

@Death posts links for alternative hearses. My coffin can be
carried by a Harley Davidson sidecar, Volkswagen Campervan,
horse-drawn carriage, fire engine, vintage truck, bicycle, or
Land Rover capable of an off-road detour.

@Death tells me grief will compound chronic pain, speed up an
illness.

@Death tells me to appoint a digital executor to care for my social
media estate.

@Death tells me how I can be unburied in a coffin made of willow
or bamboo that biodegrades so that my bones will be available
to the earth, my reception embraceable as limbs. Death does
not know that I live at sea level, where mangroves snarl the
sand.

@Death tells me how I do and do not feel, twice per day,
sometimes three times.

@Death tells me to be #DeathPositive, but so often the numbers
say otherwise.

---

Rooster Blues

The just-hatched chicks were let loose as favors.
Barely dry, they were let loose like favors,
a flavicomous cloud dropped among toddlers.

The birthday boy picked them up and held them.
The party guests picked them up and crushed them.
They forgot about the “pet” in petting farm.

We gathered the chicks in a cowboy hat.
Collected chicks in the well of a straw hat,
and took four of them home to make them fat.

We shouldn’t have named them after cousins.
We learned never to name birds after cousins.
Ben didn’t make it; the others mashed him.

The three grew an aubade of combs: All roosters.
And took to the stew pot our dream of brooders.

---

The Nature of Nurture

At dusk, the screech owls warn us with a bounce
of song that we’ve come too near the recesses
they’ve accessed, their found nests, in the live oaks.

They target heads—ours, and the dogs we walk.
We wear bright-brimmed hats, neon the collars
of the animals, brighten cell phone

screens to announce our presence. But such small,
otherworldly suns fool just a few. One
night, a fly-by swooping cranes us upward.

We find an owl, melting into her
tiled backsplash of brown, beige, and dun,
guarding a duckling?—yes, a wood duckling,

tiny crest of head beginning to green,
peeking out from behind the bird who warmed
a rogue egg enough to hatch it. But he hears

the slide whistle of his mother along
the canal and jumps from the limb to land
unharmed in the swale we have neglected

to trim. Even the dogs pause as he runs
to his kin. Only the owl now fills the space.
Feathering her hollow. Settling. Settling.