Mosquito (6 page)

Outside the smoking & beard-burdened trees—
& always again, it is winter

 

Always again children streak into traffic, & again, & always,
I'm decapitated

 

& feel as though someone is lip-tracing

 

The zippers of my self-inflicted bites & it is true—
the only thing I can

 

Fully understand about sickness is a tractor dragging a stolen
ATM machine

Down main street Or a body flinging itself

From a train bridge & the sparks Lightswirl
& the sparks

 

This is all about hunger, I said to the man next to me
in the waiting room

 

Pointing at the bruises Jesus Christ, he said,
you should have seen it crawl

Back & beg Even after we'd dropped cinder blocks
on its face

 

& here you are You are right fucking here

& the sparks Here & the sparks

Ground hard as I-beams.
Blisters and whipping flags,
but I can only remember how grandfather spat
tobacco in Tupperware—sleet so cold I couldn't
speak.

Today—a finger's calligraphy on car windows.
Our ribs crack with longing.

 

 

 

If I see you, I won't remember your name.

A poor taste on lips.
Tonight, a shattered cup.
The window breaks.

When the chest sweats, where is the light? Cold, but
face flushed like persimmons.

 

Hold this. If it shakes, don't let go.

I'm in love with sleeping bodies.
I can't remember the melody.
I don't remember anything at all.

 

Today, he brushed his teeth then leaped
from the balcony.

 

 

We couldn't hear over chiming glass, the snow
falling straight down.

I tar acres of wandering
The guarded woods hunting
Shudders of moonlight

 

My hands steadying
On barbed wire I open
My jacket to evening snow

 

The creases gleaming
My cheeks before
I shotgun myself in the face

 

And now I have fucked up
The voices are lightning
Jagged cracks in the frozen pond

 

And each holler beatboxes
Through the back-lit and feeble
Armed trees a reminder

 

That affliction is caress
Said over and over when
Your skin is lost to the cold

 

And in the moment before
The moment of noise everyone
Is eye to crotch in the delivery room
Of your panic they're rubbing IVs
Against their chests and picking
Their teeth with scalpels

 

While the sink overflows
With voice—will you follow
Into the dark but what is

 

That way the body suffers
Your eyes you are all wishless
And bewildered mouths of black

 

Berry fists pumping ribs they say
Come running with a star
Bright needle there is
Bound to be damage

—EDWARD HIRSCH

When I say
hello
, it means bite my heart.
Let the blackfly spin invisible & delirious

 

on vinyl. Let it save me from what I can't
know. Send posthumous letters in neon,

 

scribble love unreadable. My body is sweet
with blasphemy & punk teeth, memories

 

of slam-dancing underwater.
Tonight the absence of rain

 

is the mouth-open rush to noise:
a hurricane of wasps throat-clambering

 

for air. This half-earth where grind
sleeps dormant, a sickness without

 

temperature or cough. Hold my hand,
my nothing shouts. We'll stay up all night.

 

We'll orgy with shake and groove,
wet whisper—
clap, kiss, watch me go
.

I stopped listening
as the blue jay hooked
its final turn.
I knew its business
was no longer air, only rage—
good just out of reach.
Jake, my nephew,
asked questions you hear
underwater. Questions answered
when a stranger ties your shoes.
We stared together. Everyone's
done this—gazed at an airplane
slicing sky & blossomed
with visions of balloons
bursting with gasoline. I held Jake
to the glass, bird in slow motion.
I squeezed his tiny hand
in time with
smack
.
Jake's bobbing head
drooled. The stain was a half-
finished Rothko. In the fading
light, the still bird was gray.
I wanted to take the window
out & frame it. I wanted
the delicate bones in my freezer.
I wanted to kiss Jake's soft head
& whisper—most days, this
is the sound of the world.

Trample me to the stage so I can hear the butterfly
tongue the last bee-swelled scream Rats chewed

 

through my night & now I reverb with failure
I am a bathroom stall sticky with a good

 

time's remains During the coda
tell them it will be painless when I'm gone

 

The crocuses are ablaze Tell them I can't be lonely
Tell them what I buried under the yew tree

if you need rock 'n' roll stick a finger
in my chest believe the blackbirds
whistling through my ribs
saw an ecstasy from my skull savor

 

the slick-boned grit split me
open & a tanager quivers to life
wing nailed to wing it sings
the cripple is the blind boy's

 

crayon-whipped best thump
its breast & chuck me
in a dumpster of needles
& rubber gloves name this the big

 

bang press a scalpel
through my cheek & lick me
use your teeth to scrape
the gravel from my tongue

Skin searing blue-soft I plunge
in the hallway's spins All strobe-lit

 

tits & teeth I holler the bottle rocket
I moan There are secrets

 

carved into my pockmarked moon Mouth my hurricane
throat I come Break me tender

 

I cry The glam-heart needs electric
paint I bleed Stitch me shut at dawn

It's called the moonwalk. Front yard
glory. I eat frozen strawberries & watch

 

falling clouds, God's muscle-thick arms
whipping savage. All of us will hang for belief

 

in sunlight's rejuvenating power.
Today, I wear ditch cheeks, horse sparks

 

at my feet. Add wood chips to my pocket
lint & I have filthy thoughts. I itch melody.

 

Take away the frost, tremulous rhythm.
Sing breeze & I am an accordion

 

unbuttoning his jeans. Now is the season
to shave off my eyelids. Kiss me, ground,

 

I'll read you the dictionary backward.
A page a day for the rest of my life.

Rain is holding its breath—water-damaging
The oatmealy clouds and you must want

 

To be the stranger of swollen doorways,
The specialist who cannot carve my insides

 

Enough. When you think midnight,
Do you taste hot honey and water

 

Or muffler-rust? When you hear thunder,
Remember the bowling balls herding

 

Around the buckled wood of your mother's home.
Bathroom light, womb-bright, the six-packs

 

Are slow tonight. There is a car smashing
Around my chest. Do you hear the breath

 

Of the waiting? It doesn't matter how
Many times we prick our tongues and touch.

No matter how well we live, there will be mornings
when 3,000 pounds of jet fuel spill from an airplane
racing across the sky. Every Tuesday a farmer falls
against a pitchfork in the barn. All of us will surprise
two bodies in a dark room, grinding each other soft,
or leave home in short sleeves on a day snowplows roar.
In one life or another, we've all been the pocket
of a murderer, restless with bullets, or a knotted sheet
tearing apart, unable to hold a lover's yearning weight.
Down the street, two boys are swinging behind the school.
In a week, one will be struck blind by the cry God makes
when someone lives. The same day, the other boy will write
the first sentence in his autobiography. It might be better
to be a caterpillar half-asleep on an elm branch, staring
marble-eyed at budding grass, but as soon as you think this,
the Saint of Ice Cubes pounds against your door.
Swaggering in his stillness, he looks you up and down,
pokes your chest. He makes you watch as, under the cashew
moon, he grins, rakes his cheek and yowls. Then, terrible
as the boy's soon-to-be-white eyes, he raises a fist
to the flickering streetlight and shakes wicked
the hummingbird he's squeezed into a bottle.

Voltage or diabetic, my hands.
We crossed the river pirouetting

 

on buoys. Predictions of sunshine.
Come over now, my hands flutter.

 

Did you believe you were good
as the rust-dulled axe, the go-there-

 

be-happy? On a beach
of violin skins we turned into lightning,

 

or didn't, but smoked too fast,
attacking. Our chests tightened

 

with glee. Swaggering. Hip-tight
to the rough bark of perverted trees,

 

we shouted bloody, lips cowboy tall,
nick-winged & dusty.

 

I waited all day for you to tell me
that love is what I hate about myself.

—Larry Levis

I saw you kissing
the black pearls
in your reflection's eyes
& wanted to taste
the endless gift of a tire
filled with rainwater:
concentric circles
loosening themselves
from the throat-wrenching
grasp of the world.
Archimedic rhythm
that, when balanced,
turns you back
to red—a heart
bursting in flutter
above a chain-link fence.
Turned inside
out & pulsing
sugary—thick smoke
in summer air.

After the storm,
the horsehair nest
you weaved lay frayed
on the bottom step
like a nail-filled sock.
For weeks, I crunched
the retort of fallen branches,
gathered newspapers
from towns hours away.
By the time I restaked
the vine's bamboo poles,
the comb you'd stolen
from the bathroom window
was tucked in the tree's V—
mother's gray hairs
unfurled into the air
like a night photo
of fireworks.
Two days later
the comb shined new.
You disappeared into
the lassoed tornado,
hiding your plumage
in a privacy where anything
could happen: promises
of wheat fields smoking
like pyres, tomato plants
pecked in the fibrous dark.
What do you name in your
never-ending shade?
Which sacrifice is true loss?
Veiled, a song rattling
the knob-shouldered sumac.
Fork-lightning, fire; raw-throated
through the orchard's cobalt day.

Do you save
the best for last
like I do? Eyes
taken first, rib cage
scoured white.
The squirrel's belly
must be tender
for you to pick
cruelly all day
with your dagger face.
Reminder of night's
warm sidewalks,
you are a shadow
in pawnshop alleys.
Watching
from the stop sign,
morning legs
exclamation marks
against the rising sun.
You predict scars,
count soft parts
like a gambler
already spending
his winnings.
Surer than hell
he'll taste the queen's
sweaty kiss
after his double down.

Spin with me, flamenco-style.

 

Here—a boutonniere weaved from tender split nails.

 

I am a three-winged angel, graceful with my fingertips.

 

My sound, the small particles of prophecy.

 

Do you believe and stay attached
to your small desires, old fruits,
or do you want to lie down?

 

It could be foam-white,
the
I cannot remember
room
or your eyes are white as the clown
fish's belly. Here is the highway

 

to the lumpy bed, moldy
with floodwater, headboards
carved from church organs.

 

It is not necessary to sleep.

 

The shortcut is closed, laced steely with daytime.

 

I am here to help. Flares, a white flag.

 

Siphon gas from my lungs, spread my jelly and sing.

 

I am one fraction away.

 

One one-hundredth from what will make all the difference.