The Good We Can Sense

Middle school hung a steel box from the bottom of my sister's chin,
so that she'd feel rejection twist and drift from her bones
every time that motherfucker swings.

The chain is dotted with the fingerprint fog stain
of the men that take these links
and run like dogs the women shrouded in Myst
to the waters where he makes them drink.

Forestry

we loved to watch her leaving the river
for obvious reasons
for reasons we smile over

and we look at the mountains here, knowing
this is the paradise that doesn't exist

she crests the little bank
blown dry of the drips in a weak breeze
of the wind that draws to her
we watch her stop
and crumple and splash up in the dirt
and shoot roots deeply

Throat of the Beast

and it occurs to me
that I, in this field,
yelling at that needle-stick
vein-splitting, first fuck, first love
first light for a born-blind man
kind of addiction,
that while I'm knelt in this high grass,
proposing nightly
to the Nothingness which always wears Everything's little black dress,
that I might just be screaming up the neck of another beast