film on the river a lover’s hair lit fallen
trees lengthen now but so slowly I can’t think
indifferent base God between either darkness
ALL HALLOWS
It’s bad to be alone on Halloween, worse than spending Thanksgiving with a Styrofoam cup of Turkey Noodle
or a sober Christmas after a breakup, surrounded by happy lesbian couples discussing condo timeshares
You have to turn off your lights & hide from the doorbell
You have to cover your eyes from knife shadows on the walls
& your ears from sinister music scores, smashing window glass, & terrified girls
You have to remember that time as a kid you vomited all over your fairy outfit at the shopping center
& then peed out of shame, with your ripening talent for making things worse
You had a talent for singing, too—twice you lost competitions to boys playing the drum solo from “Wipeout”
You should have just stood up in the auditorium & done your retromingent trick in front of the entire school
Now you do it in poems, laying a golden sheen over the paper, inviting people in
to the dirty gas station bathroom of your performative loneliness
Princess, French maid, ladybug, cowgirl, zombie
It’s the Night of the Living Ex-Husbands
The souls are pouring out of Purgatory or steaming up from the animals they were trapped in
My father wants a fresh beer, my mother some Fritos with a single bourbon-and-Coke
My brother just wants to go fishing one more time
Cheerleader, angel, skeleton, witch, imago
Round about the toilet go
In the fatal kisses throw
Oh my weird sisters, we’re not bad, just lost—look at Anne Sexton swirling overhead
behind Plath & her impeccable broom, look at all the blottophiliac girls
longing to faceplant in Mr. Death’s crotch
Ladies, women, darlings, bitches, you
Stop it right now & pay attention: Virginia Woolf is rising
from the river, sloshing home to Leonard in her Wellingtons
nothing in her pockets but bread
You have to take out the stones & put them back where they belong
You have to carve the names of the dead & then let rain & years destroy them
The moon weakening like a cheap flashlight while your heart blinks on
ALIENMATCH.COM
I am trying to center my spacecraft
over a volcano. I am six trillion years old
but am often mistaken for an asteroid.
My body type is indeterminate.
Sometimes I resemble a white marble floor
on which stained glass light diffusedly falls,
at other times an aortic clot.
The first thing people notice about me
is the caul over my third eye.
I would like to engage in heated conversation
about which is the dish sponge
and which the counter sponge.
I would like to date you
if you would acknowledge my special qualities
without my having to exhibit any.
After six trillion years, my spacecraft
is a little tired. Sometimes I spend
whole nights trying to phone
my dead parents, running from tigers,
looking for a condom. Mostly I feel
confused as a daffodil who didn’t get
the memo about fluttering. I keep trying
to wake up in my dreams. If I didn’t
know better, I might think you were in them.
TO THE WOMAN CRYING UNCONTROLLABLY IN THE NEXT STALL
If you ever woke in your dress at 4 a.m. ever
closed your legs to someone you loved opened
them for someone you didn’t moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why not if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming
WAYS OF BEING LONELY
Like a haunted river no bridge wants to lay itself down over.
Like a taxidermied grizzly in the Student Union.
You cry at a frequency only subatomic insects can hear.
That time with him in Houston.
Sometimes you flame into a scary flower.
An eruption of coherence in the post-modern seminar.
You stand in a shallow creek & your reflection floats slowly downstream without you.
Alcohol is your emotional support animal.
The fan hums erratically.
An unclaimed suitcase of miniature toiletries, burst open on the baggage carousel.
Like an amoeba without an e-scooter.
An extra in an epic battle scene, trampled by a non-equity horse.
You’re a red-breasted flute, but everyone else is a dowel.
A Zen koan blooming in the White House Rose Garden.
Sun-damaged curtains in the parlor of an abandoned friendship.
You’re the queen, but you’re a bee being sucked into the pool’s filtration system.
Like a version, touched for the very last time.
Spooky piano music rising from the dishwater.
You wake up alone to a bird reciting Keats.
GUITAR
Sometimes it sleeps in its case all day like a stringed vampire
In the store down the street its friends are hanging like hams
Guitars, like hearts, can be anything
If you really want to break your lover’s heart it’s simple
Just immerse yours in tepid water & walk out of the kitchen
Go call someone you always wanted & play them a song on your new guitar
Don’t break your own guitar unless you happen to be a guitar god
in which case go ahead & smash it with the impunity befitting a god
Also feel free to smash your chosen people while reminding them how much you love them
My guitar is often depressed because it takes itself seriously
as the instrument of a few generations of sensitive singer-songwriters
The ukulele has lately grown in popularity but a uke is so babyish
Playing it is like trying to placate a god by ritual murdering a sacrificial blankie
When my guitar is sad it glows eloquently & goes berserk
thinking of light thinning in a hospital gown
& the sound of paper slippers on gray linoleum
like a voice being mopped off the tiles
A guitar, like a heart, has a hole in it
It heaves out its music like a twerking volcano
like a faucet leaking bluebells in a gutted
