A language pulsates
underneath my skin,
a language in which
I await a dream,
a death wish,
a language bequeathed
to me in a night of
hushed love-making.
There is another language
that waits, makes its presence
felt among the shadows.
Deep into the night
when the axe pierces my body
and my guts spill out,
I shriek
in that language.
Let yourself in—
use any key that fits.
Be kind to the parrot in the mirror
who doesn’t know what he’s saying,
there in that cage that looks
so much like your face.
No one is on this, not even you.
Call the numbers you find
on certain benches in the park
& leave messages consisting of
precisely timed moments of silence.
Words can’t be trusted.
Be sure to forget your dreams
immediately upon waking
& remove all traces of any nocturnal emissions.
If sleep apnea develops,
For touching what wasn’t mine—
even though I didn’t want it,
even though I gave it back—
I lost my fingers.
The press called us demonic
but they, my ten thin fates,
were innocent as fire
in search of fuel, & I
in my disguise as oxygen
couldn’t let them go out.
We shattered windows
to let more world
into those narrow shrines
to whatever. We broke in
aorta by aorta,
cavorting like a virus,
At some point in every horror film
comes the line: It’s alive!
Is this the way the dead feel
when we disturb their rest with
our roots & our pickaxes, our squirming
purple larvae & our blind snouts?
We are the zero in their bones,
that slick thick marrow, mother
of blood. We are their unlucky
rabbits’ feet, the throw of their dice.
We creep & crawl. We erupt,
dangerous as magma.
Someday the sun will bring us
all together, living & dead, in one
molten paroxysm, but until then we can meet
only in the briefest of spasms, & are listed
Veratrum viride
Bright green.
Tight green.
Clasping green.
Grasping green.
Armed green.
Charmed green.
Hairy green.
Scary green.
Ribbed green.
Nibbed green.
Panicle-green.
Planticle-green.
Patient green.
Abortifacient green.
Killing green.
Rhodnius prolixus
The dry season ends
with an abrupt deluge.
We run for a three-
walled hut at the edge
of a pasture, crowd in
under the tiled roof
until someone spots
the kissing bugs, vectors
of Chagas disease,
crouched in a crack
in the adobe, distinctive
patterning like a miniature
African mask with abstract
features & a net for teeth,
the real face little more
There’s nowhere to hide. Ever since
the first abduction, I have felt them
sifting through my thoughts,
pinpoint headaches never in
the same spot twice.
Other times, something almost
imperceptible, more felt than heard,
like a breeze so slow there’s only
one moving blade of grass.
But I know it’s their doing that
I find myself questioning who I am.
When I start to doubt my
own memories, I know it’s time
for action. I will line a swim cap
with eight sheets of carbon-
impregnated Velostat, attach
long as my papers the road
ordinary citizens never see
indifferent
yet there is a go sign
go home
morning like a wing
tomorrow a fallen-down house
not quite finished
making use of bad mortar
but no god this day
brought me a black coach
a prisoner or a patient
God in his church
the tombs kept clean
with curtains before them
an old fear of being
out of our nest
over the war
how it bled my eyes
afterwards
we consider
going out walking
in the fields
a hanging at noon
many fine people there
going and coming
make me unable to read myself
two lines together
grow a night