swan's bones

gray-cheeked thrush

I thought I knew something they didn’t but they all should know I’m just a cut up cut out, loaded on free coffee marty gives me in the dry heat. the chemical warping of my insides. the left-over dribble my dreams leave behind. I walk and see myself walking, I open my small mouth and it’s a loose tongue I turn on.

I am the torn strands. I am the air you’re breathing. I am the soft skin underneath your nails and I’ve kept you for so long.

don’t you ever wake to feel me in your fingers, don’t you ever sigh and hear me sigh?

I am the wreckage you’re covered in, I am the sin you’re carrying. 

greenbush

past the peeling yard ornaments and flower boxes are the bonfire houses and tarped boats. 

when the lake water thaws and floods over the barricades, my grandfather’s dog pulls and yanks until my hands bleed. 

of the hidden

sometimes in the heat the air cuts cold like a coiled hose; its bend, unbent. robins dive from trees, hearts beating and ballooned with dry breeze and the glass in the gravel lights up, dagger-reflects, where your skin could open and curl back, wet and red inside. the yard grass gets too warm like boiling hair, so soft, compliant. 

I know where the veiled things go in this viperous weather: places too bewitched and silent— the underground of thick oiled soil,

unmade graves for us. 

uphill on opdyke

there are places where broken sidewalks are lined with clover and whole cities are made of still apartment complexes. on road sides dead things rot with new heat, the sugary smell of wild queen ann’s lace and the sharp bite of melting skin. trees the gypsy moths will plague when the sun stays and turns alongside the faded overgrown elementary schools, rusty playgrounds tilted like cracked cattails. you can go deep deep into the torn cement mountains behind bouqueted bushes, spotted and dusty, and your feet will scratch against the grip of it and nearby boys will play basketball with plastic bottles and flat tires kill the summer ants. 

there are places where the bike trails end.

winter blood

the sweetness and damp pleasure are so wicked when I can’t shake this white, white skin. 

I remember the church over the way and the ghosts we heard tapping— you’ve talked to me now. you walk away like I knew you would. 

small end

the powder of old skin, the small flakes of death inside sweaters: how wrinkles wear and disintegrate and we become smaller and smaller and smaller.