deadend-zenith

July is for poetry. Only July. July is for never talking about poetry, only wading into thick heat, exhaust fume sweat, and/or someone else's loneliness toes first. July is for moving your lips against the grass in a small way, heart first. Only July is for freedom! the freedom to grow, grass first, the freedom to burn it all away, heat first, the freedom to forget everything you ever learned, poetry first. July is for half-hearted you'll-get-over-its, it-will-passes, today-will-be-a-distant-memories. Does that help? Does poetry help? Does heat? July is for halving hearts. July is for fireworks! You hate fireworks. You hate tha

Jonah hated Mars. He hated everything about it. Every minute he spent there he was plagued by a vague feeling of unrest: Mars was not quite foreign, not quite familiar, an endless mirage or coma dream. Maybe he was dead, and maybe this was purgatory. Sometimes he considered praying at night, asking for forgiveness, just in case, for whatever sin might have banished him there, but then he looked out over the barren, forsaken wasteland and thought his time was much better spent sleeping, or walking. But he hated how soft the ground was, how little clouds of dust exploded under his soles with every step, and how he could turn around and see his

Hint: In the winter, his spine becomes a noose. Before the first touch, he will whisper softly, not quite a secret, that he thinks you seem to float above the floor, that you'd fall forever if he pushed you gently-- You'll wonder, vaguely, if he will sow your teeth in harlequin streams as if every spark skipping on your skin asked to be hung, still wet, under some red and incandescent sun. Afterward he will let you wring words from his every pore, words like pale toy camera and tortured vice-grip intercom, or dollar-store bullhorn and black spider dust. He will talk in his sleep, curled up against you, a dream dreaming. He w

If I regret anything, it is the reticence of birds-- my reticence, the uncertainty of the word "today," which rusts like the flute before Judith one. If there is a time to undress, it is now, but my thoughts close in on me, like a tunnel, and I lose sight of everything except the wind. Beneath it all, my hollow bones are icy blue, each joy expunged-- I feel it keenly, here, and there.

Love, ah! In sadness it begins, and begins again: the flight and struggle of alarms, melancholy, tremulous, along the shore - and pain, only a retreating dream of land, returns anew.

Prostrate yourself on the surface of the sun. Let a stranger decide if the burns are battle scars or birthmarks. Climb back into the egg shells piled in the sink and incubate. Wonder if the tight-lipped boy who won't look at you dreams of your skin like you dream of his. Decide that he doesn't and love him anyhow. Tell this secret to someone you hate: It is August. Each day is hotter than the last. Still you willingly lower yourself deeper and deeper into the dirt.

As if I can interrogate the oceans' depths which are, even after these years, identical- As if every day I breathe I can be touched by a razor, sweet-smelling, refined- As if I still exist after falling asleep- As if I can imbue every idle movement with a beauty both mineral and serene- As if by "si" one always means "esta noche," which, to the synesthete, is the color of tears- As if I can press in book bound in leather a poem from Neruda, well-worn, faded, whose verbs I am not too proud to collect- As if I can longer vacillate, not even quietly, the way crows in bitterness hop from foot to foot- As if zero exists, perfectly st

your touch lingers for the longest time— beyond the Northern Lights is heaven we never found it.

i In the womb she rubbed me raw. She had no choice: Men carved her hands with lines. Restless, she told me, Your throat constricts with thirst in those ravines. ii When I crawled from the void with spider limbs whispers were seeping from dim desert vents: Nothing must touch you, keep your eyes wide and touch nothing. Quiet waters are insidious. Green pastures, too. If I cover you in feathers, you must not fly, but leave the world like you entered it: silently. ii I listened to the moon's slow rolling, the soft clinking it made as it parted the stars, and the sound of my skin spreading over my bones while others slept. It

I have on warm days poured my thoughts into buttercups, and on warm days you have sipped that potent nectar, and drummed a dew beat on the pensive spray. But I am shaken now: there is silence when I think aloud, and my thoughts are only words that will not settle, only swirl. And while the weekly winters grow old upon your lips, I'm still waiting - but what for? your name's no beacon by a broken shore, no cadence for an angel choir, no jade, no pearl, no myrtle bird, no damp daybreak along my collar, a word, a word, a word, and nothing more. In the evening chill I think, jawing, flirting with a name - I recall how in the h