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The List
I went to three Asian markets, and none of them had peanut oil, she
told me.
I put it on the list, magnetized to the fridge, among tampons, half &
half,
organic moments of mouth-print and stain.
Such a list was a framework for torn skin.
Here’s how to become the bleeding of a star.
Death was a myth inverted by water.
Sparrow blood, a mysterious edging of sunlight slantwise through
the throat.
On the ground before me, ambrosial seeds of what will come after.
I wanted to crawl through a gauntlet so I could linger in front of the
one hand
that would eventually refuse to strike.
Make eye contact with me, direct our love—one rib at a time—into a
propelling yet perfect abrasion.
Tell me our skeletons are on the list, that at the edge of our mouths
exists an
abyss worth falling through, forever.
Either Way, We Agree
Now we return to deciphering llama blood.
We might position their cliff-sure hooves, or we might signature our
shame in
each intuitive pool.
Either way, we agree that north has a more intensive pull
on our sleep.
We recognize the way yeast lifts differently at higher
altitudes.
Then the myth of stook-tented Buddhists arrived.
We’d believe anything, as long as it involved Tibetan
monks melting
snow
with only the aid of body heat.
Then the citizen of good sex desired an illegal name.
Anything human could be a blue flame in the sternum.
It almost feels fake to tom-tom them alert with warm hellos.
They knew they were uninvited and still they stopped by.
I’ve bitten so much of my life away I have little left but raw bone, or
a condor
stretch of prehistoric feather through mountainous cycles of night.
It’s what I have, what I’ll work with, and what—God-willing—will one
day
help me get out.
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