On the last day

It swells and crashes
goes from hot heavy-pregnant wet
to cold, whipping, white peaks and things
equal to rise
lower to drop
and I keep drinking seawater
I keep sticking out my tongue and licking it
off my hands and arms
a salt-lick would they put iodine in my skin
and the girl on the beach watching my bags
looks just like me
if I sat on a sun-rock
dipping popcorn into dried salt
in the little empty tide pools 
and the fish wriggled
and the sand grit between my teeth

Queering the Map in Gaza

Diary entry

This morning I wished to be reborn and not for any genuine reason only that I'm bored and obligated. I swam in the ocean and tasted the salt of embryonic fluid (I imagine it is salty) and thought about performance and thought I could live in the cradle of the mountains in some sort of bush of purple flowers. Earlier today I was afraid of a barking dog behind a fence; I curled up inside myself and crossed the street and put my eyes down so it would know I'm not a threat. No, I could only live the life I am right now.

My friends

I like the way your face looks lit up from underneath by the neon light of the tap,
every little glittery yellow star in the dark room reflected in your beer, the panes of the windows circling, waving, wiggling when you wave your glass.

I have eaten a lemon cake with strings in my ears, resonant sliding and wind stretching the skin between my ribs--

for months when I was a kid I dreamed only of flying practice -- a bright green grassy hill, a blue sky like a default desktop background. The wind is harsh and whipping, my T-shirt some kind of parachute-- l spread my arms out and wait and breathe, feel it could happen on any exhale, l will be sucked up into the air and whirled around on a jet stream.

l become conscious that l'm doing it and then I try too hard; I get frustrated and wake up.

When I hear crickets I think about chasing fireflies and catching them on our hands,  ordinary bugs brown and sweet and harmless, crawling over our fingers, letting them fly off. Watching our steps in the wet grass. I would sleep with my head on your shoulder, but then where would yours go? I picture our hard skulls phasing through each others', our hair tangling together.

I forget I'm full of water until I see you again. 

Spring

Stained-glass dragonfly wing up close to my face tickling my cheek lands on my nose and begins to walk, its tiny legs tapping out mallet percussion across the glue of my eyes... a light trill, my elementary music class glockenspiel, you hear a little sprout straining and cracking its bulb, forcing itself up squirming into the dirt.

Your shovel breaks earth and the smell is divine, soil deep and cool and edible. I always dreamed of finding red-and-gold gummy worms writhing underneath a rock, stretching and pulling over each other, a chewy gummy texture that sticks to your molars. 

Sometimes when my brain is full of phlegm or water they are driven out onto the pavement. They peek around the balls of my eyes and ask each other how bad they think it is-- it would have to be pretty bad for them to leave-- before they get flooded out, down my face and out of my nose. And then later after everything has dried the streets are full of worm husks and the ones that survive limp sheepishly back in through my ears to start their lives over entirely.

What I mean, in plain English: I want to be cared for desperately. I need a doctor with his gloved hand on my forehead and all his charity work caught in the zipper of his teeth in his clenched mouth smile.

I would sit and swing my feet off the exam chair and keep pretending to run a fever until he gets sick of testing. And then I would say doctor to be honest I am afraid to move, because I am terrified of the ripping sound the roots make when you pull a weed out of the garden.

In the most lonely and coughing parts of my mind his prescription says on unmarked paper, baby stay forever, you are all the dreamy parts of spring... I love when the clouds make you calico --love you in every new light pattern and shadow--I want to see you become different in every season and place--I want to see you young and old and worm-eyed and unrooted. At the bottom his signature is unreadable. 

When the pharmacist asks about the signature I tell her I can't remember who prescribed it. I am afraid if I go back I will find out he accidentally switched my file with another worm-girl's, and my prescription was really just exercise, rest, and talk therapy. My head aches and I could but I know I will never go back. Summer makes everything a little less green.

Train Home

Superhigh girls with their lash extensions pretty and heavy and
blinking big cowlike and beautiful and slow 
and measured a waning halfmoon with the whites twice as low as usual 

Finding my way home by cosmic pull reeled in complacent and bobbing like a fishing lure 
up past Harlem-125th while I can still stay awake 
a little kid getting carried from the car to their bed

I know where I am (track 104) with only basic English and gibberish letters 3XYKJH4IJ 
meaning New Haven but you wouldn't know by looking 

or you wouldn't know at all

Some translucent bug with many legs crawls across the yellow line you aren't supposed to walk on 

but it can't understand and anyway it can survive on the tracks 

for more area than anyone 

It took me twenty-three years to know you
and for eight-and-a-half I was just sleeping
Not wasting my time
It's not ever a waste of time

Last Friday

Just a week ago one splendid horse at the horse race died. DIED! Broke her leg, got put down right on the track, fuckin tragedy. Last Friday. No that's the horse's name. Yeah you know like the riddle. The horse died on Tuesday. Fine mare. Beautiful chestnut. You got like a buck for your ten on her, she was so good. Everybody knew it. Everybody was sad to see her go but everybody was bored of the winning. Where's the fun? She was too good. Got a jockey knows he's on her for a race, he's throwing back Coors Lights behind the stables during the countdown. Fattest jockeys I ever seen on that girl, down twenty pounds for the next race. Saw Joey Mallard throwing up a baker's dozen apple cider donuts in the washing bucket after she ran. Doesn't matter! Ol girl could run records with a sumo wrestler on her back. She could stop and yawn at the finish line and still win every race she entered in. Yeah she was somethin special. Doubt we're ever gonna be lucky to see anything like her. But I'm excited to get a chance for winning again. Next race I got money on Devil's Audit.