Prologue: Meditations Through Smoke on AdolescenceAs the end drew nigh, the school became radioactive. The wild Nova Scotian smoke blasted our sun red like rouge on a dame’s face. It burned through the window as a reminder that nothing was permanent, and everything was forever dancing away from our palms. Out of our control and into the stars, out of the streets we owned and into our parents’ electric bills. We wanted sex gross and fast, we wanted sweat, we wanted more food, more noise more music more toxins. More time together. Less quiet, because that meant that the dust would begin to settle, and we would have to come to terms with the monsters we had become.Of course, we were not monsters. Just teenagers. Our hair was getting darker when all we wanted was to be bleached to death. We were not monsters. Just transitioning, child to adult, that age when we started to see the world around us, and see that there was nothing we could do about it—so now we did our best to cope with the passive adults we would be soon. And if coping made us monsters, we would demand a world that didn’t demand coping.Something about that year was primal—the way it left burn scars and bite marks on me, wanting nothing and taking everything. Everything I had at one moment had metamorphosed, and that was the way it would be forever: metamorphosis. I thought I was somewhat wrong, cocooning when everyone else was blossoming. I knew how to be a teenager, but I took it too seriously. I wanted more sex, more noise more music more toxins, but only because I thought the world was going to implode at any second. I crashed bloodily into love only because every chance was the last chance, not because it was fun and I had nothing to lose.I would have loved to be truly reckless. Maybe that was how we got free; how we started to feel better. But I didn’t really mind living with a little fear. It didn’t matter if I lived in fear; it mattered if I continued to live with it. I knew how to be a teenager. I liked to sit on roofs and steal Absolut and chop my hair. I liked to lie and to stay out late and slouch when I walked. If there was a little fear in that, could anyone tell? We were all greedy, but not selfish. Deathly serious about everything, but never very smart. How sad it was that once we were smart, we had been extinguished. How I would have loved to be truly reckless, or just truly desperate for freedom; how time got the best of us and the passive adults we would become.j.k.d.

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My Other Brothersmake me forget I’m missing you.
My other brothers roughhouse in a way that takes me back. They remind me of a time as foreign as it is fond; a yearning. My other brothers
hit hard and hit soft, my other brothers kick rocks, kick-flip, kick off the night right with a joint and a little yellow light. My other brothers,
as foreign as they are fond;
my other brothers like an air pump on a hot night with a flat bike tire. My other brothers let me sit on their shoulders to imagine being tall
teach me pit rules
and how to dunk a basketball. My other brothers
let me in on secrets
of wood chips and buzzcuts.
My other brothers look at me straight,
not sideways,
a head cocked like I can’t be placed. My other brothers know a brother when they see him—and really all that means is crowd-surfing
earth-shaking, leaf-raking, painstaking
never ever leaving.j.k.d.

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Scarcity/Demandperhaps it's just time
slipping in oil, clocks melting,
that makes me see things
                    things like fairy dust
                    rising from your every pore
                    spell of desire
your hair, like tinsel,
glitters in the sun, silver
a cherub's harp strings
               is it losing time
               that makes me see these angels;
               skipping life to die?
is it losing time
that births desire? or the
            scarcity of love
            that breeds demand?j.k.d.

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Procession of April 20thAye! this joint be a language of love:
joints I smoked overlooking the exit
dusk had fallen and Momma’s door had shut
joints I shared after rain with friends on park benches
our child selves did not recognize us but
we saw each other
joints I smothered because the world would only right itself
once I was upside-down
joints I would swallow whole
when I had nothing better to eat
joints I would kiss
when no one wanted me
joints passed between hands, between hearts, borrowed or stolen
becomes meaningless once it enters the body
or is one with the atmosphere; who can claim to own
our smoke? our bodies, our plumes?
Aye, this joint be a language of love...j.k.d.

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EXT. INTERSTATE 84 - NIGHTI love the way the underpass looks from inside
when we’re flying through like a bullet
and the way the sharp ugly rocks shine
when the Sound kicks them up to our beachfern by the highway looks like jungle fingers
when it’s framing our blazing trail to nowhere
and you look like a fallen star, fettered
with black edgesthe frame of your car shakes when we get up
to speed, like it can barely contain us
so I don’t know if the thrill is danger
or just you in the seat beside meI love the way the underpass looks beautiful
when we’re flying through it togetherj.k.d.

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The Flower May Bringsthis lush April
like a hiccup burning my stomach
and clogging my throat
this lush abundance, trained to keep back
O, the green invasion—all the critters feasted on the foliage
blackened their bodies
sickened themselves on the flush
before May arrived.j.k.d.

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Spring Breakin that moment, the whole world seemed to orbit around the soundhole of his guitar; each note creating a new planet,
a pocketknife notch on the great oak desk of the earth. a whole home
for him and me and her
inside that guitar, I saw it,
buzzing gently like a bumblebee over a lily,
hovering midair, preparing for a safe landing, but
each note was bullied on the way down, ricochet on a branch,
disappearing into water.in that moment I felt sorry for every cigarette I’ve ever smoked, every soda opened and not finished,
every time the sun lit the chartreuse grass aflame and I did not notice. I made a vow
to the tune of his song, remembering that
every spring soon breaks.j.k.d.

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six haikus on Orion from Taconic Parkwaysome things won’t be caught
in fickle cam’ra lenses
most things won’t be caught.vanilla twilight
over espresso forest
cream clouds and choc’latesome things won’t be caught
like constellations—or you,
night ribbon dancer.much too vast, too deep,
to steal in a gasp. you are
a lifetime of breath.a sunken garden
an operatic whisper
a clock of the stars.some things can’t be caught.
they must be learned and lived with—
fallen for each night at dusk.j.k.d.

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My SisterMy sister and I have tried to kill each other so many times.
We have gotten very close to succeeding; in the womb we learned exactly where to kick, in the bedroom we shared we learned exactly which nightmares woke each other up.
My sister and I are each other’s worst enemy.
I map her path to every corner, follow her to her older friends’ birthday parties—she eats my leftovers and keeps me awake with her voice.My sister and I are not twin flames.
My sister and I are Laelaps and the Teumessian fox; eternally running, eternally hunting,
calling dibs and rock-paper-scissoring
over who gets to take the next breath. I know what she hates, but then,
I know what she loves.My sister and I have nothing in common.
If she's the North Pole, I'm South,
If she's sweet, I'm sour,
If she has ringlets I'm a head of brown bristles. My sister
hates olives. She piles them
on my plate, and I eat them one-by-one. When my sweaters
don't fit, she goes shopping
in my closet.My sister and I would not be friends
had we not been sisters—
but there is something annoying and beautiful
about my things and your things becoming our things
about you filling in the things I lack.
There is something annoying and beautiful about you, Sister,
like a bite mark from a pet cat
or a ringing ear
that sounds like music.j.k.d.

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your first girlfriendwill be distracting. you will be
busy drawing vulva flowers and eyeballs
during the ap u.s. history midterm
and brushing your own neck
on the bus home. you will be clumsy
and passionate
as embarrassed and excited
as puberty. your first girlfriend
will make you like your nose
better when it's smushed
against her face, your hands better
when they're interlaced with hers,
and your eyes better
when they're reflected in her pupils.j.k.d.

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Fibonacciuntil recently,
the two of us existed in almost no photos—
but we existed in every pocket of the space-time continuum. between
the crystalline Fibonacci fragments
  (rapidly disappearing under our hot breath)
the creases of candy wrappers
  (crinkling a sound, your fondling fingers)
the glittery blue snowflakes
  (packed on the ground like layers of skin)
the sparks of static electricity
  (as your coat
  brushed mine
            again and
  again
            we welded
  side to side)if stars are time capsules of light
that reached Earth thousands of years ago
we must be constellations
of past livesif matter cannot be created
nor destroyed
we must be stardust
rearranging in a waltz
meeting to kiss every hundred yearswe must be a rare comet
once-in-a-blue-moon
blink-and-you'll-miss-it eclipse
 so don't
    look away
     for a moment
    when I brush
   your neck
 nothing
  is unimportant
   there must
    be love
     somewhereyou make
  every calendar
   turn to ash
    but measured or not
   our time passes
  through us;
enough revolutions
  and soon we're
   stardust breaking apart
    into new scenes. don't
     look away now
      with every second
     our faces change
    remind me how
   we must have existed as one
      are we getting closer
    or further
            and further
                                  away?j.k.d.

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The art of coming on too strongJules is a pleasure to have in class, but
he is too devoted for his own good.it was true—perhaps the truest
and most hurtful thing
that could ever be said about me. Jules is
a pleasure. but he’s always leaving a bucket outside for rain that won’t come. he’s always
the one who has to pack up his things.
he’s always holding his breath a few seconds too long, pushing the envelope too far,
tearing up the skin on his knees to catch someone who was really just trying to sit down.I wondered if in report-card-speak
“devoted” meant “naïve.” it meant I would believe in Santa Claus for the rest of my life.
it meant I cried when I broke promises. it meant
I would always be the kid in the ill-fitting, oversized suit
with a bouquet of soggy tulips
ringing doorbells in the rain
waiting for a prom date that is fast asleep.
pathetic, ridiculous,
but nothing
if not devoted. if not brimming
with hope. and eternally chasing something
that cannot be caught.Jules is a pleasure
to sit next to. but I wish
he’d stop
pelting my window with stones
and holding up boomboxes in my front yard. I wish
he’d stop leaving valentines in lockers
and between book covers. candied paper airplanes, cassette mixtapes, and of course
sonnets upon sonnets
odes upon odes
ballads and sestinas and haikus and verses. Jules
is a pleasure
but everyone knows
he's going to die
trying.j.k.d.

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Sören Smiling/Father Smokingwe are men of few words. men of sitting
in the living room,
Napoleon Dynamite marathons plastering in our gaps of speech;
men of symbols and sunglasses.
we are men of heavy cars and observation,
we three notice the street named Valley Stream, English for dahl ström—
fresh water coursing, hidden by ancient stone.
we three notice conquering and character-building
with a silent acknowledgement
and solemn inaction,
we three live by the golden rule:
a single nod in passing.Dahlstrom is a man of few words. the further
we get from the equator, the quieter we get;
no room in the snowy mountains to pull back our scarves and speak.
instead we are men of photographs and secrets.
we are not men of I’m sorry, but rather
men of Dinner is ready,
I fixed your earring, by the way,
Listen to this song
how it bends between the evergreen needles
and reaches your chest like an icepick.
we think ourselves men of wisdom;
that silence is the mark of thought,
that stories are told in the tread of goat-sheep
and the notches in a wooden fence
stitches of a mammoth coat, of a wedding shoe.we are men of common ground. of humility,
of farmland,
and tucking our hands at our navels
like the Welsh grass tucked into a lamb hoof.
like the Irish wind tucked under a sail.
we are men of deep brows
and allyship; unspoken, unbroken law
we are men like clocktowers—
tall, stubborn, orderly. men
of few words.j.k.d.

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Touch the Rings of Saturngod was in the room that night, and she
was a transsexual ball of hot gas. transssss-
cendent. she was the queen of everything sweaty and gross and beautiful,
queen of the mosh pit—
she parted the riotous sea and we bowed down to her bass guitar, laid on the floor as a sacrifice
god trudged around in booty shorts, 50 feet tall and thin like Earth's crust, she
could make us kneel, bow, beg, or grovel
from the soles of her platform combat boots
to her scalp under thick brown hairgod was in the room that night
and I was being christened. my body thrown around and bashed between supernovas
gaining craters
like a butterfly’s wings. battle scars. god was in the room and every time I fell to the sway and thrash of the pit I was lifted back up
by divine hands
with black fingernails
and studded cuffs. we made life that night
planets out of orbit, hurling toward one another
on the brink of the second Big Bang
static friction with every punch to the throat
every kick to the nuts
or jaw to the face. god was between all of us
like sweat in our pits and
we nearly died and went to hell.but between our worship
our violence
each revelation of your dress
formed a ring of Saturn. for as violent
as I was
with everyone else
I was gentle
with you. or,
I tried to be. I could tell it was you by the softness of your skin
and because
we never seemed to fall out of orbit. you swung me and I spun you
when we separated across galaxies you
returned
luring me back down to Earth
with the gravitational pull of your skirt.
beneath god’s dark allure
we were two beautiful winged sinners, shaking cosmic dust in constellations
across the floor. perhaps
you wanted me to treat you
like everyone else
but I was gentle. you moved your celestial body
as though really in galactic motion, really suspended
in dark matter blobs and heavenly space-time jellyfish,
swirly and driftingyour moonlike face
framed by your cloudy hair
that night it had been grazed by many a rugged astronaut, many a
greedy spacecraft
looking to plant its flag. I would be
the only human being
to pass a star
and not prepare to colonize. I wanted
to be gentle. so, as the hot air of god's wrath
blanketed us like the ozone,
we were cool as the rocks of Neptune. not too close
nor too far
like planets
perfectly arranged in orbit
to eclipse, but never to crash. just to lift our helmet visors
and make a suggestion. perhaps some
divine intervention
saved us from each other. for
had we collided, the Milky Way
would never be the same.j.k.d.

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Meditations on Marijuana at MidnightMassive is not quite enough of a word—
marvelous, deserving of marvel,
deserving is not quite enough of a word.
Insurmountable is nearly enough,
defined by the inability to conquer,
rather than by the size…
The insurmountable sea turtle in the sky
greeted us with his soft underbelly
like mercy
He heard our voices, inconsequential
is not quite enough of a word
more like tiny,
defined by the size
rather than by the significance. No,
we are not inconsequential, just tiny
beneath the king of the ocean
swimming in smoke from barbecues
and herbal therapy.
No, not inconsequential,
but part of an ecosystem. We feed the parasites
and are dazzled by the weight
of the sea turtle above us. All comes
in due time, the turn of a flipper
the chime of a bell.
Looking up, heads tipped against the bench,
our necks like rope buckling under strain,
we can mistake ourselves as tiny—
you can mistake yourself as wasted potential—but when I turn and your face fills my view,
you are the most massive thing to me—
massive is not quite the word, though,
more like indispensable,
defined by importance,
not by size.j.k.d.

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Entry 1I started to forget the way you walk over the summer. It bothered me in a way I couldn’t articulate; had it only taken a couple months to lose something so familiar? I never wanted to forget anything about you ever again, but I knew next year it would be your smile like the waxing gibbous moon, and then your hair like crow feathers, your skin like a perfect bowl of milk. Perhaps one day I’d grow horribly old and lose your name, two flicks of the tongue like a tap dance.Things changed over the summer—it dragged on like a wet badger carrion behind my feet. I fell deeper into you, something about distance and the heart growing fonder, something about distance and the heart blowing up all over itself. Manifesting in fruitless daydreams where I make you breakfast and am at your every whim. Except the last part isn’t really a fantasy.By the end of the summer, I was asking myself, “What’s the point?” That is, the point of speaking in verse to no one, the point in speaking it to anyone but you. The point of ever looking at anyone again, because I know I’ll just reshape their face to fit yours. And some things do not have a point. Some things are not sharp at all. Some things, like this verse, these urges, this heart growing fonder, are just the weather. Some things must be spoken just so they can continue to exist, like your name, effervescent, ever-present, now nothing but the trigger word to conjuring your memory. Some things must be spoken so they are not forgotten, like your name; two flicks of the tongue like a tap dance.j.k.d.

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4 haikus about metronomesclick—your turn signal
draws a full revolution
me yielding to you.the beat of your heart
like a rabbit’s foot thumping
so sweet, so nervous.click—two sets of teeth
a passionate accident
softened by warm breath.the sputter of rain
our bodies, two sapphire shards
in their secret cave.j.k.d.

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Neverlandlooking through the trees
at those powerful machines
I was convinced we were above it all. nothing
could touch us from there
not steel, not iron
not a phone call from your father. everything
was peaceful
from that heightthe cars and trucks pummeled the freeway with their tires
flattening whatever was to come
and yet
I knew our bodies were more powerful
more dangerous, more fired up
and closer to God than a machine would ever be.I felt the wind like the premonition of a storm and
I wanted to take whatever was balancing
between us
and melt it into a wax candle. roll it into a cigarette and smoke it out
until I died. I wanted to take you
balancing
between me and the freeway
and melt you in my arms. don’t ever
go home again.j.k.d.

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One Pack Oolong/MintWhen I smoke, I like to burn my nostrils.
When I smoke, I make it a special occasion—I fatten myself on herbs and sicken all the air around me,
singe my lashes,
drown in it.
The holiday comes once every month, once every heartbreak, and I make the most of it. The whole room swims in heady air, bluish and tasting of some ancient disease. Like an aristocrat at dinner, I stuff my face, strangle myself with the chainsmoke,
choking on rapid drag after rapid drag
until living is nothing but a competition to see who can blow the biggest plume.
When I smoke, I get all sentimental. I turn the lights down low and set the music right—
when I smoke, I get all poetic, all tied up in the end of the world and me at the center of its orbit.
When I smoke, it’s like art; the smog billows up like paint on Pollock canvases
until you can’t find my face beneath it.j.k.d.

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Ode on a Broken Concertinathe cicadas were laughing in rows,
peppering the dark street like bystanders
at a marathon
their sounds the only light in half a mile,
there were no streetlamps out there,
just wheat fields and puddles and the suggestion of our bicycle reflectors. one of mine snapped off
three streets ago.it’s October, which means you are a friend
and also a lover. it means
biking season
hiking with coffee season
pizza and the broken concertina
from the music guild, two keys pushed in
no price tag—how funny we must have looked
in the parking lot
an open bicycle basket and an ode on a broken concertina. perhaps it was the crushed up leaves in the air that made our brains warm like baked pumpkin, but either way
that night if you stood in the center of Bethel
you could hear the cozy harmonies of Ireland
exhaled from our unskilled fingers. we were always ones to sing
despite it all.j.k.d.

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Meditations on Immortality as Issley's BassWith your fingers on me like this,
I could live forever. The only thing stopping a soundwave
is silence; with your fingers on me like this,
I'm immortal. Suppose vehicles never die,
only get resold and rebuilt and refashioned. Vehicles
don't die the way bodies and souls do, but they sure
carry bodies. Souls, too. With your fingers on me
like this, you'll live forever, baby. Feel it again,
the warbling heart beating a tattoo,
the music pumping electricity from my veins to yours. I'm
your defibrillator. Your arms
becoming mine. Touch me again.
I'm no object of sex, but I'm a
sexual object; you can't drive me nowhere but
I'll take you to the moon. Touch me again,
travel down my tendrils and plunge
into my pickups. You can't press my brakes.
You can only scream into my chest, your voice
wailing parallel to my strings, your voice
becoming mine. You don’t ever
become immortal, but you can
become a bassist. Touch me again. I'll carry you
into the finale, vibrations reaching out and duplicating
your hands tenfold, I'll carry you out,
let you live forever the way the ocean creates a hundred
little backflipping do-overs for each ripple and bend in its skin.
Touch me again. Strap me against your heart. Touch me again.j.k.d.

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And Then We Kissed GoodbyeShe was honey,
in that she made everything go down easy.
She made me want to take the medicine.
I knew I was sick, and so I had stared at the bottle of capsules all month,
and she would drain the ills from my body
if I could only get our mouths close enough.
She was honey—
she taught me what it tasted like to love
and that the bitter capsule was coated with it all along. She was honey;
she made the medicine disappear inside,
and then we kissed goodbye.j.k.d.

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SexWhat do they know about sex?
No, really—
what do they really know,
lowering the lights
and turning you over
to where your face cannot be seen.
Here is what we know:
the power of perfume
can make a building collapse. Sex
is the edge of your fingernail
against my jean pocket. Sex is
the yellow lights on suburban streets
cutting the dark and spotlighting your face
in my peripheral. Just the peripheral.
What do they know
about the way lashes flicker
like the wings of a hummingbird;
the way lips purse against teeth?
Would they know sex
with a blind eye,
with a numb body—would they smell it
like a candle lit over the bath? Would they
taste it like wine? What do they know
about making love but fucking, turning you over
to where your face cannot be seen?j.k.d.

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Καλημέρα Καινούργια ΖωήOn my bike going home,
I must pass your house to get to mine.
At just the right hour, the skies align;
I pass the edge of your lawn and
the sun breaks through onto my face
and across the dirty street. I can’t see anything
but the light.There are angels everywhere;
I search in the clouds, golden and rosy
before dusk, but instead I find them in
punk friends at the grocery store
coworkers at the bus stop
new bedmates. Ripples in blankets and knuckles.If you open your eyes you’ll get down fine.
Notice that coming home
it’s downhill both ways. Lift your feet from the pedals—with every second gravity pulls me
further from you.j.k.d.

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• part ii: the wayside shrine

Dipping your toes into worship“Obedience is the way to experience great blessings”;
those of us with our hands in our laps
and our laps on our knees
will receive.
Those of us who dip our toes into worship—
rather than digging them,
rooting ourselves in God and biting—
will be blessed,
because disobedience like that
breeds big dreams,
dreams God would only grant
if we took him down in a cosmic metaphysical battle. Only those
who want like a powder brush
wants a woman’s nose
will so easily get what they desire—but I want you
like your mouth wants smoke
like the sailor wants the siren, like
the chains pound the floor
when we dance. I want you
because wheels need traction
because rubber must be burnt
and someone has to sin, otherwise
Christ died for nothing—yes, I want you
because I have holes where you are whole,
and vice versa, I want you
because never in my life
have I obeyed the canon law. I was born
praying as though I was demanding, and
digging my toes into worship.j.k.d.

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The Devil Hides in Cornersin Scandinavia, many churches are round
like buttered rolls or yule logs
Dad says Grandma says
it’s because the devil hides in corners.
We seek refuge in bowls of soup—rather,
we protect ourselves from temptation and sin
with curves;
winding roads where nothing gets stuck.
Your eyes, black in the evening
like a wet nightdress—
we protect ourselves from temptation with curves
because the devil hides in corners, so—
I stare into your eyes,
turning green to black as day descends into evening,
like how a firework becomes alive in the dark,
eyes
like God. Your eyes, round
holy and fresh
must eventually end
in a corner.
your eyes end in a corner by your nose,
punctuated by a misshapen freckle,
and I am stuck. Is it sin to look
and find the heavens
where the devil hides?j.k.d.

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LegacyIf your ex-lover died today
it would have been at my hand—
sometimes I wish I could kill
and then I remember how I feel
about Freddie Mercury;
how stars always shine brightest
when they’re falling
and leaving behind a blinding trail
of light and legacy
and I think it’s better they’re alive
or else you would only miss them more.j.k.d.

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The Monk and the CowboyA monk and a cowboy walk into a bar—
no, they don't. A monk walks the perimeter
of the Tibetan mountains barefoot; a monk walks
slowly, thoughtfully, and knows no addiction.
A monk does not walk into a bar. A cowboy
walks on four hooves into the red sun; a cowboy
walks in a straight line, not in drunken circles—
a cowboy does not walk into a bar.The monk and the cowboy are the same soul
shared between Texas and Nepal.
The monk and the cowboy: twins in disguise.
The place where mustache and clean shave meet
The place between my chaps and your kasaya
my hat, your scalp
is the land of total
peace. A monk
and a cowboy
gaze into the distance
at the same sky.The monk and the cowboy
see all of life in the whisper of summer wind
the flickering of frogs beneath a kudzu canopy
and wholeness in a waning half moon.
The monk and the cowboy
wear no jewelry, read no calendar
The monk and the cowboy are the only
alive forces
with no cross to bear, no one to hold—
no attachments
and so they die smoothly, no screaming
no kicking
all decay into soil for the great oak tree.j.k.d.

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Absolute Monarchslast night I dreamt you and I ruled the world. we did so amicably, closely, and in love, as though tending not to subjects, but to poppies in a garden. you and I ruled so well it was more of a mother’s embrace than a monarchy, more of a plea than a demand.
you and I ruled as though we had something to prove. community service to fulfill. every lush hill and mountain unfurling at our feet, and we stepped so lightly that the lemongrass did not bend.
last night I dreamt that we lived in a gold-and-red castle with power in our hands—two things so alien I knew it was fantasy. I dreamt we had no one to report to, no one to explain to or translate for, no one hiding the spare key at curfew. I dreamt, perhaps, not of power, but of freedom.
last night I dreamt that our throne was large enough for the two of us, as was our bed—I dreamt of two sets of cutlery, two pairs of gilded slippers, two immortal lives.
last night I dreamt of us entirely in Greek, truly a dream—you fluent in a language I reached for like a reflex. I dreamt that we really were fortunate ones, with mountains of things, with the moon following us and the sun rising at our will.
last night I dreamt of us untouchable, drinking white wine in long, thin chalices, toasting to each other until the end of the world, with not a bird flying high enough to graze us.j.k.d.

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fortunate ones1,789 feet—0.339 miles—from your bed to mine.
they will call us fortunate ones
but it is so hard to feel fortunate, stretching this red string 1,789 feet, never close enough,
always fleeting and always
running from someone
omnipotent, all-seeing, unforgiving. cameras
guns
fortunate ones. somehow
this is fortunate, a kiss that barely presses your lip, vomit after sweets, my cult of loneliness
and fortune. how lucky we are
to always be on the run
to be sleeping together on nothing but sand.j.k.d.

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How Peppermint Patty Saved My LifeI spent my youth eternally turning to the funnies page—
believing that someday, I would touch my finger to your little face
and open a divine portal to your world,
or maybe if the newspaper fluttered fast enough
it would take flight with me attached,
lifting me against the pull of the western wind
and getting me swallowed by the monarch migration.
You were like the evening summer sunlight on brick schoolhouses,
like the fenced German shepherd down the road,
or the grass-stained colts playing tee-ball:
warm and familiar and untouchable. You were supposed to be
eight years old, and still
you were smarter and brighter and bigger
than any of the boys I envied.Despite the language barriers
of paper and fiction,
I knew you. Just as Marcie knew you, like a secret—
everyone called you Patty, or ugly,
but she called you "Sir." She saw you
through her giant crystallizing glasses, seer stone lenses, always in awe
and in love
with your baby-dyke knees,
your skin-scraped charm,
ancient messages
carved in the wounds.I knew you—people like us
talked to dogs
because we got benched
in both ballet
and football. People like us
spoke out of turn
and raised questions
years after our stories had ended. My favorite strip
featured you glaring into the bathroom mirror
—"Admiring your face again, Sir?"
—"No, just trying to get used to it." Trying
to carve out a garden
in the concrete
for you to poke your little dandelion head from; trying
to decode the modern world, a house that lacked a bedroom. People like us, force to steal away,
like κλέφτες to the only place institution and empire could not reach—
mountains,
their snowy peaks bordering on Olympic.I spent my youth
being baptized by the sun
as he touched down on the comic-cluttered floor
and painted your face in gold. No taller than four feet, I peered up at you
on the refrigerator door,
like I might at a god. To be Butch
was to be on a higher plane
above Earth, above the heavens,
and sprawled out nakedly across generations. Butch
was a place you could not locate on a map;
it was only through ancestral knowledge did I discover it,
only through your retellings did I realize
we had always existed.
No one spoke our language
but spirits from smothered cultures
and yet,
if I closed my eyes and sat
with my heart toward the sun,
the newspapers became massive wings,
and I could reach you.j.k.d.

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Herculean strengthI did not know
how to be a hero. I thought I had Herculean strength
but when I went to lift the world,
she crushed me with her intensity. each moment of pause
was hot with tension
and played with my insecurity in the air
I did not know
how to make sense of your form—were you
a goddess
or a monster? was I
a hero
or had Hera planted madness in my brain, too?
I thought I was Hercules, shining and golden
every one of my curling muscles singing showtunes
I expected grand bronze and limestone halls
of medals and confessions I had won—
but I was Ηρακλής. forgotten and morbid;
bastard-killer-child. half-god, half-tragedy. all of my Minotaurs
were imaginary. I did not know
how to be a hero anymore.j.k.d.

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Heaventhe newborn deer
gently thrashing to be upright
skin still pink, belly still hairless,
I felt it full of milk, in bloom,
a pink lotus petal unrolled
the dappled sunlight reached its tapioca eyes
and formed golden arches along the irises
like
egg yolks
or
the gates to some
secret hideout. terrifying
and beautiful
like heaven.j.k.d.

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Ballad for Nina Simone – outtake 2I had to believe in Heaven
for your sake. if it had not been waiting for you already,
you must have created it from Earth. every blink
and flutter and skip
of your brown fingers on the white
piano keys
hung a cloud and star far above this realm
a feathery silver kingdom
for you to sleep in
once you died. I had to believe it.
otherwise, you wrestled
hand and foot with God
and lost. you had always spoken a language no one understood,
liver tugged at by the ribbon of restlessness,
bubbling with anger because your spirit spanned from Montreux to Paris to Tryon to Bridgetown but a body can only stand in one place at once—
so if there was never a Heaven at all,
you died tired and disappointed. fallen from grace. perhaps
you should have never learned to sing the blues,
for it followed you everywhere like the train of a wedding dress. onstage they called you Nina
and offstage
they still called you Nina. perhaps
you should have died in the 60s
next to the King
so you didn’t have to see the failure of the movement—
perhaps you should have been playing Bach
in Carnegie Hall
in your shimmery evening gown
with your hair piled high in an African crown
dripping with precious metals. but instead
you had to beg them: feed me! feed me!
and they all uncomfortably laughed
shifting their eyes as though
they had never felt a human emotion in their lives. you felt each one to the point of breakdown,
to the point of existential trance and true spiritual freedom,
each feeling in lights and cameras,
lighting the halls aflame with passion alone
and birthing a religion of loneliness.
while everyone uncomfortably laughed
and shuffled their feet,
you reminded them
that your art
was anything but performance. your eyes shone
brightest under stage lights
and your body bent best
when it danced. I had to believe
that somewhere, you were up there crooning Coltrane
your silver evening gown floating above the clouds
like cream on coffee
tinsel on trees
and outshining every planet in the night sky;
an afro the size of the moon
and pearls of teeth.
when I tip my head back to stargaze, I listen
more than I look
hoping to hear Nina sing again.j.k.d.

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When They Find Your SkeletonHe said:
In 500 years,
when they find your skeleton
when someone digs you up
sniffs you out
drags you onto higher ground
all they will see is bones.
When they find your skeleton,
they'll know.He said it like it was shameful. Like a mother
doing up your corset laces from behind,
tracing a long finger against where you're different; he said it like
I had something to hide. Really, he said it like
I had nothing to say. He said,
"When they find your skeleton," as though
I had nothing else to claim.He said it like he was stupid. Like
we research the femur of James Baldwin
the skull of Leslie Feinberg
or the ribs of Frida Kahlo.When they find my skeleton, let it be known
they will find it among miles of odes and verses
among photographs and clothing and CDs
collages and books and jewelry and,
really,
among
a life.j.k.d.

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Names for Dead Peoplefour hundred years ago
Juliet asked, what’s in a name?
all too many meanings—
child of Zeus
mother, martyr, lover,
divine, youthful, feather-haired
star-crossed. doomed. tragically poetic
whisper from a window at night
rush of a waterfall bending and breaking
    Ju
      li
        et
      Cap
    u
 let
the sound of rocks
skipping across the lake. Juuu-liii-et
a linger and then a halt. many things
I am not: English
French
Roman. deceased.some four hundred years ago,
Juliet asked, what’s in a name—
like loading the gun of irony
and aiming for my little head, speck in a galaxy lightyears away. so I was
star-crossed. doomed. she rested her laments
on an ivory elbow and begged,
what’s in a name? why must I eat the fruits
of a labor not mine? Juliet,
what’s in a name other than fates and curses?
and love unfulfilled
love for blue boys and their blue hearts
Juliet
we could almost reach him, one balcony
to another
but what is in a name
Montague—Montecchio—mountain—insurmountable—Montague
what other than fate and curses and labor
not your own? Juliet, the fairest girl
reached across the road to touch a boy
how many times will you make me repeat this story? how long until we reach him? or
is it just
intergalactic wafers of Juliets and Juliets
reaching
a story known all too well, sealed in the hands of every English teacher for the next hundred years,
star-crossed? doomed
to a name we did not choose; doomed
to a dead name
for dead people?I beg of you, how long until he turns
to face the window, Juliet,
and his golden-brown hair falls like a curtain
fade to black, roll credits
Juliet
and her Romeo
Claire Danes and a
1990s Leonardo DiCaprio
you kissed him on the screen
but it did not free us. I did not win his body
he did not melt from wax to flesh
you did not elope
nor take his name
nor suck the poison from his lips, O,
Juliet. what’s in this name
other than a stencil for a tombstone?there must be a way to cheat:
Jules
Jack
single syllables
with no traps
no curses.
Jules.
Jack.
Winnfield/Dawson
Verne/Sparrow
Dassin/Twist.
there must be a way to
deny thy father and
refuse thy name. there must be
a way
Jules
the ooze of poison
the eulogy at church
Jack
the crack of a gun
the snap of a spine
the burial of something already rotten.
Jules
the renewed hue of a youth once bruised.
Jack
the flap of a black wing still intact.j.k.d.

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Original SinI hate this stupid fucking faucet
it’s like alchemy, trying to get the right temperature
left side squeal right side whine
wringing out the right until my hands are ribbons and still, it scalds,
burns my feet in the tub below.but I know about heat transfer and particles racing. I know that if I press my left hand hard
  into my shoulder
    the heat disperses
      through the body
        and slows
         like a shot of vodka
        it burns until it doesn’t
         it burns until it’s smooth and wonderful
      for all rum was once sugar
and in the end it’s all acid.I hate this. your fucking
  preemptive death. we plan funerals
  as if they’re weddings. I say, do you like this one? and fluff the skirt of your coffin
  you say, no, no. it makes my arms look flabby and
I hate velvet.  Dad recalls an Italian widow at his church—she was perpetually in black, body curling like a shred of wood
I recall the black karagounes—Greek wedding dresses tainted with death. perhaps
Mediterraneans just
  wear our sorrows like gold
we pass them around the pews, because
the Orthodox and the Catholics meet at funerals. it is the one place
they can put aside their differences. aside, of course, from baptisms,
where my grandmothers—one of each faith,
voluptuous identical silhouettes—
stood to look on as I was birthed for a second time. introduced to fear and faith and the
    sensation of loss
the lack of gills. I learned priests were the opposite
of swim instructors. they taught you to drown
in what you could not yet understand. they did it at baptisms
and at funerals
where two Bibles intersect to form a crucifix—
  where everything was preparation for the afterlife. to be damned
   or saved.and so every day at church, the widows wore black veils that punished their faces
as though their husbands’ funerals had never ended. as though
they tried to leave the chapel and
failed, but mostly
to prepare for their own. they look forward not to the funeral, but
  to reunion
release and a cup of coffee in Heaven
but I don’t. I hate how your face stretches
 like a womb of stars opening
  preparing for nothingness—I hate
that we are mortals. I hate finding out you can’t inhale holy water, no matter how close you get to God.and I know about heat transfer and particles clawing to freedom if you let them but
 I can’t think to take the pain in my body and
press myself hard into the mountains
 besides
a force like that
would cause an avalanche. some nights I would rather
 sit and burn
in the water. I would rather drown in the divine bath
 because maybe there’s a portal to heaven on the other side
and there we can meet for eternity. for coffee and angel food cake    but
  I must
come up for air. I must press my hot hand into my shoulder. we must
learn to drown
 and then come up
   for air.
 we keep
living. I hate your black Sunday best
I hate shopping for your coffin
I love your red winter coats
    your satin gold skirts. no more of your face reflected in the divine boiling bath
  no more of heavens I can’t enter
  no more original sin
  no more of gasping for air, just
  breathing in the surface
your face is full and rosy like a cherub's
or a Christmas ornament. you were always
secretly
atheist.j.k.d.

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Meditations on the Autumn ΠανηγυριSeptember croons. It smokes like a cone of incense, making no sense, settles like a fog, September smokes cigars through the forest
over a bonfire
in the shape of a crop circle. So how is it
that in the drizzle of September, in the grey muck,
the zonaradiko bounces like April? On the concrete my sister and I were completely paradoxed
by the little black slippers and how they levitated
in the church parking lot
aloft like crow’s feathers,
winged slippers,
how, that day, it became spring in September
and all the koritsakia became songbirds
sprouted wings and took magical flight.We had trudged in our wet sneakers through puddles to get there, strung along only by our fraying connection to each other, to home—whatever that meant—
and here in the guts of September, Greeks had again found a way to dance. Dance, for a meager crowd and in the ugly weather, and yet
a boy of no more than sixteen pulled a mantili from his pocket,
a red stream of wine,
floated it over the air like a paper sailboat
coloring a rose
and suddenly April
spread across the tri-state area—
the kind of April that bubbles up in your throat like a tulip bulb and makes you want to shout—
seeds sprayed up through our mouths
onto the crackled blacktop and through the gaps,
and took root in the soil.The priests had never seen a thing like it:
spring in September, and we danced
all the way through it.j.k.d.

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the bareness of Butchconsider the bobby pin a suit of armor;
the mass of long hair a blanket.consider
the bareness of Butch, the explicitness of it all
the same love and freedom as a naked body,
the same anxiety and fear.
how many times can I wrap this
string of pearls around my neck
before I start to choke?
it may save me from a stab wound to the throat,
but it squeezes my airways shut—
how many times can I cocoon myself in skirts
before I lose the light entirely? maybe
I'll come out a butterfly,
something beautiful,
something orange-yellow-marigold spun like silk from a spindle.consider the bride's veil. the ideal woman
is lacy and disguised
camouflaged. consider my dress a means to an end
a means back home in the deep
because Butch is too loud. too obvious
too honest
but then what happens when the Femmes aren't safe either—
they just blend better—
what happens when you fail in both Man and Woman
and your carabiner of keys rattles
like the bones of a skeleton? a premonition,
a deadly
prophecy?consider the sheen of makeup
the barrier of fishnet tights
the long, piercing earring
feminine things are weapons. purse straps
and acrylic nails—
they see me naked, unarmed,
and tell me, it's easier. it's a privilege. it's
a joke. as if men don't know
the difference between a dyke
and their own kind. as if rapists care
what the victim looks like.consider Butch to be
a constant state of bravery;
a constant state of fear, and
the decision to exist anyway.j.k.d.

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Pansy GardenFriday, July 21st, 2023.
I haven’t been reading much, and I still owe the library $5.19. And that’s after I paid them a dollar and ten on Wednesday.
The only way I can get myself to read now is to go outside. There’s something about the still muteness of my house that makes me restless.
I knew it was going to rain—I sat in the dugout, under the metal roof, awaiting my own doom, when a man and his sons passed me. They carried their bats like weapons. Each one gave me a once-over, assessing my value, the boys already perfectly in the shadow of their father.
I pretended not to see them; I wasn’t ready, I guess. I had been practicing my boy nod—hardly a nod, more of a jerk. I had also been practicing my boy sit, my boy leg cross, my boy walk. My boy laugh—“heh-heh.” No, that wasn’t it. Huhuh. Hohoho. …That definitely wasn’t it.
The point was that I needed chemical reactions and sky-scraping blueprints to get it all right, when none of them did. So, it was easier to pretend I didn’t exist at all than to pretend I was the kind of man they were.
It was almost mathematical, and yet, the way my internal quarrels had to manifest were sloppy. Unthoughtful. Boyish.
In order to be a boy, I had to stop handling myself delicately. If I walked with too much grace or spoke too lightly, my empire would come crashing down—I wouldn’t be a boy, but a pansy. A failure of a man, and thus to them, a woman. To them, woman was nothing but an extension of man. A girl’s childhood looked like performance, looked like the endless race to appease—a boy’s childhood looked like the endless race to escape a girl’s childhood.
It was unfair. For me, and for boys. I didn’t quite understand why, in order to be a boy, I had to stop being a girl.
Not just that—I had to lose my eye for beauty. I saw the way the men had looked me up and down with my book out, wondering why I wasn’t playing sports instead. Was I insane? I had to lose my affection, my brain, and replace it all with appetite. Men did not find women beautiful, I had to learn. Men liked control. They liked the view from the tops of pyramids and the feeling of action. Action from the veins under their skin, action from naked bodies, action from bombs and enslavement.
But then, did I know any men at all? The men I knew liked holding babies, liked to cook, liked to garden and learn. My father took me to museums and antique stores, my brother made art. My teachers spent all day looking after classrooms of kids. It was all “women’s work.”
The more I tried to be a boy, the more I realized nothing meant anything. Nothing was nowhere; it was all soothing semantics. I realized that when you tried to break a gender down into science, you got nothing but oppressive dust. Men and women chased and ran from each other like rabbits, beginning to lose sight of who’s who, forgetting which they’re supposed to be. In the end, they all collapsed on top of each other and ate each other’s guts. Too tired, and having worked up an appetite, gender dissolved and humans were back to the need to feed.
Or at least, that’s what I believed. And perhaps it was true, that we all worked like stage performers to fulfill some impression of gender, only to find that we were digging ourselves deeper into the ground. But for now, none of that mattered. None of that mattered to the men who gave me once-overs and debated the possibility of my breasts and speculated about my voice. I supposed we were still at the running part of the chase, not the guts-eating part, because for now the only thing that mattered to them was that I hadn’t practiced enough.j.k.d.

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I Started Smiling at Work AgainThere's a man that comes in from time to time:
thick eyebags, stout. Buys his instant coffee, his six eggs, his artisan cheese, but I know him by his scowl, and the way his eyes never waver.
He sets down his pickings with his eyes boring into mine, as though trying to see through my skin. Skin pulled around his jowls by invisible wire.
There's a man that comes in from time to time: old, scathed.
Reminds me of myself when I was younger, and the shadow of a man was dark and endless. The difference between woman and man was brightness,
tenderness, flavor. A man who smiled was no man, but a pansy. A man who giggled had no pride, only shame.
There's a man that used to come in every day. Now it's only time to time.j.k.d.

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The Only Way Is ThroughBaby, this town ain’t big enough for the both of us. See the peace protestors
and hear the cumbia
hold my empty can for me
while we sit on opposite sides of this bench.
It’s Sunday and somewhere someone is getting married, somewhere the sky is the color of tablecloths at a family barbecue. Somewhere
a hymn is coming to an end.I stuck my hand into where your heart should be
and when I pulled it out I only found
an oozing black nothing. The drip
of void fell from my fingers
and I mistook the shape for a woman. I’m sorry.So now we’re here—or rather, I’m here and you’re there, you’re holding my shirt and my book and my vase and I’m holding nothing. You’re holding my heart and I’m holding nothing but black ooze.It feels something like a home video on repeat—I know how things end, I know everything, but somehow I believe if I keep watching it back I’ll see something new. I believe I’ll pull you out of the screen and into my arms again.
No, this town just ain’t big enough, and now the only way is through
that hole in your chest.j.k.d.

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Armageddon as Coffee and Cigarettesthat day, your television could only show you fires in Attica. I wondered
how many you had seen in your life, but
you only marveled at how the reporters spoke Greek,
a flashy green light in the heavy ocean depth of memory.on the second day, you saw Olympic medalists, and they spoke Greek, too.
I wondered about how the ancient worlds of hemispheres overturned
like pages in a textbook
keep coming back to haunt and delight us. I wondered
about disgust and awe, and conjured a line of tourists outside your home.on the third day, you went to church—rather, church went to you, through channel 59. you were baptized twenty times that day. I wondered if that was why your brain kept resurfacing, returning to the blank slate, blinking at the world like a baby. the priest never let you breathe, and neither did the flame and smoke, but then, you never changed the channel.the womb of stars never seemed to leave you alone, opening and breathing,
occupying the other side of your bed, inching closer
and closer, until someday you'd end up
with it atop your sleeping body, in a bed with room for one,
opening and breathing until it stole all of the oxygen from your bedroom.
or perhaps, I wondered, you felt no rift in the air. perhaps there was no womb for you, only space. only stars. only the television, and the bronzing lick of the mother tongue, droning from another technicolor dimension.
only Greek fire, inextinguishable to Arab conquest, often-imitated-never-duplicated, undying secret recipe running in blood. immortal fire, striking traitors: the closest we have gotten to godly.so that day you rode a raft of seaweed and driftwood, like every day,
you teetered and tottered, kept afloat only by the photos on the wall
and the wallpaper hugging them from behind. I wondered
about who came to mind when you thought of me; a distant and awkward body, no soul and a blanket of hair? a butterfly with wings folded? I wondered about who came to mind when you checked the mirror each morning; I conjured a foot of white hair breaking plastic pins and spilling over your shoulders.I wondered whether anything was different for you, and conjured the same woman I had always known. she carried a crumby container of stale wafers and s'agapw para poly, flowing fathers of fluency; Greek touched an old withered place in the brain. it reanimated the ash of villages disgraced, swept clean the rooves of island churches. when the television showed you fires in Attica, you marveled at how the language stuck its hand through the dirt with a golden ring on its finger. I wondered if speaking to you could make you do the same.and when I opted to be silent, I watched you adopt a second grandson. I wondered if you were hoping to have birthed me yourself, a shred of youth painting itself on your face again. I watched you make life simple again: the world was nothing but a good boy and the rain pelting the ground outside and the television speaking as though there was a husband within. as though there was a god within.on the last day I realized that your world ended at the backyard, at the corner of your driveway. life was never thicker or harder than the fattest raindrop that hit the asphalt.
on the last day life was nothing but your kiss on my cheek. your little arms. the tears upon your waterline told me that if nothing else existed within the walls of your house, love did, and it was not just the act of recognizing a face or a voice but a feeling of flooding fluency. it broke the black dam and crashed into Aegean tidepools, flushing each critter and rock with a shower of foamy warmth. love was muscle memory, tongues tipping against teeth and cheeks puckered upon phonemes. if everything and everyone else left the front door on the last day, what remained were words you had heard since birth. φωτιά στο χωριό. ανάμνηση της νίκης. ουσία του Θεού. σ’αγαπώ. σ’αγαπώ. σ’αγαπώ.j.k.d.

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Five Foot FiveWhen I get my driver's license
I'm gonna make sure they put down five foot four,
not five foot three,
'cause I'm five foot three and a half
which is really four
if you're rounding up, and
who doesn't round their height up–
When I get my driver's license
and they take my photo,
I'll stand up so straight
that I might have to put down five foot five–
Good things come in symmetry,
in rhymes, repetition, alliteration
good things make you feel bigger
than you really are, all good things do
except you, who makes me feel
five foot two.j.k.d.

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SeedsThe plastic container of watermelon chunks—
bite sized pieces, eight crushes of the jaw each—
seems bottomless. We devour them and begin to ache with aftertaste,
with retrospect, regret…
As children, we were afraid to swallow the seeds;
stomachs too small and tender to bear the sprawling weight of melon vines
Do they spiral like limp arms, like
drill bits and tendrils of smoke, or like
dark coils of Palestinian hair, like
Arabic letters twirling on cotton, like
plumes of steam billowing from bowls?
As children, our stomachs were too small and tender to bear signs of life—we ate slowly for fear that the seeds
would be fertilized by our bodies
and explode into gardens inside us. As adults,
we know better. We have grown-up fears,
like, how many calories in this sweet cube of life?
Like, how many will I get to myself?
Do I have any seeds in my teeth?j.k.d.

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Laying Down to Diein a bed of dirt. Laying down to die
in a hole because there ain’t no coffins sold
in this neighborhood—
laying down with the last bit of might I’ve got
because there ain’t nobody to help me
lay down and die.j.k.d.

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My waxy cocoon performs C-section on itselfI believe in butterflies; I believe in the something within!
I believe in the gaps between lines
but mostly, I believe
in butterflies. I believe in a true form
scratching to be released
with a knife so fine it reflects no light. I believe
in epiphanies and migration and rebirth—all this to say
I believe in butterflies. I believe
in guiding the process along
in trial and error, striking the right vein
to set myself free. I believe
that shoulder blades
writhing under my skin
are the seeds for wings. I believe
I just need to believe.j.k.d.

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Live Through ThisYou should get a tattoo of a dedication page. I know
exactly who it would be addressed to. I know
that you would ask me to design it
and that I would do it in an instant.
You should get a tattoo of a massive black raven. Tell the artist
to color it in all the way—
leave no skin cell unrotten. That way
you too can be consumed with a piercing pain. Keep going
back to them, say you're unsatisfied, tell them
you don't think it's enough quite yet.
You should get a tattoo of my name. Make me
a permanent fixture. I don't care
if it's a horrible regret or a fond memory. Make me
a permanent fixture. Memorialize me
while I am young, like a tragic rockstar.
You should get a tattoo like a gash across your heart. After all,
I don't think anyone
could stitch you back up.j.k.d.

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Unidad 6, Lección 1: Navegando por un conflicto románticolet’s have our next argument in Spanish
no more English confusion
only the bare essentials:
words we learned in grade school
or through television commercials
let's have our next argument in Spanish
so we can slow down—
so we must think of our next conjugation: ¿Me doliste
o te dolí?
let’s have our next argument in Spanish
because in Spanish, I don’t know the word
for heartbreak
or regret
or future
or ending.j.k.d.

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One Perfect Nightthe two of us dream a lot—
I dream of a single story home,
two rocking chairs,
you dream of past lives
and miscarriages.if the two of us could have one perfect night
we would have to be old and married. we
would have to have no zombies clamoring
at our door
no future unturned
no past unsurvivedbecause I am a lover inside and out
because you are a lover only when conditions allow
and I would allow anything for you.j.k.d.

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Special Needsme and my
special needs, me
like a pacifier child
you and your undivided attention
and I
who cannot understand
the carrion suitcase you’ve been dragging
nor the way you look over your shoulder
like you left something
at home. I
cannot understand
the way your dress gets caught in the turnstile
we miss our train
so the skirt stays intact, well,
I've got special needs
I stare at the fabric
the whole way home.j.k.d.

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SprinterMost of us will write poems about equinox—
or of solstice, great
blinding, burning change sweeping the nation and all its children.
Most of us will write, “At the turn of the century,”
Most of us will write, “Suddenly,” “All in all,” “And then everything changed.”
For most of us, change is a sentence. A single word, a moment that occurs and then is over, bringing in the summer or winter or what have you.The rest of us
get stuck in the mud; the sludge of February 26th,
the quicksand of July 10th. The rest of us
are forced to live our lives slowly in purgatories
standing across the street as the muck threatens our sneakers
and the sewer grate teases our bicycle wheels—
dumbfounded, led astray.
For the rest of us, change
drags like a carrion
against the driveway.
It exists only as a painful bruise; no cause visible,
no remedy obvious. Only the mark of something different;
agonizing,
indefinite.You changed every lightbulb in the house. Fluorescent blue
like a factory of death, or a pharmacy at midnight.
You cleared the green. At least, that’s what I saw,
though perhaps it was also the weight of winter
slogging away at foliage and sweetness. It doesn’t matter.
Doesn’t change
Dad’s gutted barn,
nor his antenna still proudly atop the roof,
nor Mom’s stone urns,
still blossoming like a widow in denial.No, no blossoms to be had,
no equinox to flip or bend beneath a bootstrap.
No blossoms, and such, no blizzards,
only mud and sludge—caught
under the fingernail of pause. Of standing
on the sidewalk, dumbfounded.
You changed every lightbulb in the house.j.k.d.

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Your Absencea condition in which I lived for so many years
and yet, today, eats me—in your absence, I count the bathroom tiles
a gooey passion tracing a path in the grout
and syruping around the drainin your absence, I wonder what I used to do
before I was so parasitically attached
to your carotid artery—probably
wait for someone like you.in your absence, I miss you—for who wouldn’t?
I go limp, pulled by the wrists into the ground
tigerlily yearning for cool earthin your absence, nothing makes sense. I hurt
in new places. I build a strawman version of you
out of tissues and stray hair
and lose imaginary brawls.j.k.d.

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Some DaysSome days we do have perfect days—
days where snowflakes catch on my lashes
and I touch you just right, not too much, nor too little—
some days we do have perfect days. Some days
I peel your oranges in one perfect fell swoop
I kiss you with no teeth
I don't spend all afternoon replaying us
in my head
waltzing on the hand of the Doomsday clock,
wondering about butterfly effects
and how I've hurt you now.j.k.d.

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I Do This Thing WhereI stop talking and I don't know why—
the acid in my stomach rises up like a tendon of rope
and seizes me from the middle. I Do This Thing Where
I want to make you squirm
to level out our playing field
and make you feel from my body; I Do This Thing Where
I try to make you afraid because
that pinch of concern in your face is like
a confession of love
or a renewal of vows. I Do This Thing Where
I can't explain myself
and I'm sorry
I thought I stopped, but I Do This Thing Where
...and now we're all scared.j.k.d.

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Appeal No. 181,926at Christmas all the candy cane stripes will be red tape. all the
greeting cards will be
N-565 forms printed in the school library
all the letters to Santa will be
formal pleas for mercy. there will be no angel atop the tree, just the lack of something;
we will not sing hymns
nor make prayers. we don’t have time for God
when time demands we worship landlords.for Christmas I would like to be treated
like a human being. I would like to speak
without having to
be private
or implicit
or poetic. I would like
for your face to not settle down into snow
numb, not with realization,
but pity. with polite sorrow.
I would like no spectacle
no survival
no unimportance
no small talk.
we beat around the bush
but we yield no berries. we are polite
but exchange no kindness.at Christmas, I want everything to be worth it.
the hack and gag of wrapping paper tearing,
the things that got us here,
will always be like flesh and bones underneath an excavator crawl
but somewhere I want it
to unearth your happiness. the gratitude
that blooms
we are always spending something
but it’s never
time together. how much longer
will we live in a bartering world,
in a 2-inch wide newspaper ad
fighting to fit in all of our last words?at Christmas all of the candy cane stripes are red tape, and yet
we have not missed a single year. we survive
on the hope
that this one will be the one
we are treated like human beings. that
out of the woven ornaments reading PEACE
a flock of doves will fly
into our home
and lay eggs for our next breakfast. for all
of our next breakfasts. that
our meals will be so filling
we can afford to never eat again
we can send flatbread fluttering over West Asia
instead of pamphlets and missiles.
we can swear at immigration officers
and have fruit trees grow from our spit
and nature will be irrefutable,
no matter law
diplomacy
or declaration—at Christmas, we deserve dinner
too.j.k.d.

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Dueteverything takes two—
dishes. the laundry. the lists.
except my mother,she takes a thousand
people to help her like dwarves
sons on sons on sonslittle militia
of sons standing at the sink
hands aloft, outstretchedeverything takes two
dishes the laundry the lists
me the minutemaneverything takes two
directions, the wind, the walls
except for motherher pointing finger
could drop an avalanche deep
into the glaciereverything takes two
except my mother. so I
must only take one.j.k.d.

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tutorial for lesbian dating/living/breathingI got too emotional. my eyes beat
almost fully out of my head. they were red
half crying, half stoned
yet never stoned enough to forget everything
from that night. you said something like
it’s easier
when you’re femme. I thought of saying something like, I know, no kidding, obviously,
tyler said something like
you’re so motherfuckin’ dangerous
but I don’t think he meant, You, that You
could hurt me, could get in the way,
could pull a gun from your belt
I know he meant you’re dangerous because
I’m a boy and
you’re a boy
and no gun is more dangerous than that—I said something like
I said
well, it doesn’t matter what I said, does it—
I already messed this up. what do you even do
harassed on a date
I went home thinking, what a mess, what a problem, what a mess I was because I was fucked with, I was made a joke of and I was looked at sideways sideways like bottles on the dining room floor sideways I laid but didn’t sleep thinking of what you would later say of me to your sisters
it doesn’t matter
what you said. I couldn’t even stay
‘til the bleachers were empty
I couldn’t even finish
the record
got up in the middle like a sick kid in class
and threw up in your lapafter the fact I blew my nose
and part of my brain came out with it. that’s
what it is these days
my brain coming out bloodied in
a palm or
school desk
you keep saying something like
I’m sorry that happened to you.
me, too. so
what now?j.k.d.

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TantrumOn the edge of seven p.m. all the stars were falling
one by one, fingernail to edge,
dropping from the sky in corpses of light.
All the stars fell from the black sky;
one crashed into my head on the way down, leaving a wound in the sky
and a black hole in my skull.Some of us catch every last star, save every dinosaur,
I stand on a great galactic stepstool plucking them each away like strings on a flaming harp.
With every star taken it got darker—
there were no archangels in that sky,
just me pulling the white-hot stars
and yanking
and picking
and plucking.I didn’t want anyone else to have them. I didn’t want anyone
to know what I was doing—
I moved like a thief in the Louvre as though
the stars were never mine to begin with;
as though it was a crime to want,
although now it wasn’t just wanting,
it was claiming. Hoarding
something that should have stayed put in its natural orbit.But I like locks on my doors and I like to cling to trees and clouds.
Standing on my stepstool,
I never once let go of my crutches,
never once stood at the top without help, so entitled, and yet so sheepish;
I didn’t want anyone to see me
what I was doing. I stuck to my stars
like a child not yet walking. The only way I could reach them was to pretend
I was a superhero—
every star a step further into delusion,
a regression into innocence.
If only I could
drag myself away from the stool, or at least
my hands off of my eyes
when I looked down.The final three stars were arranged in a triangle—no, a constellation
that must have been fused to the sky around it
(but I was more stubborn).
I fought Orion
tearing them down, I took down Ursa Major
but I could not look her in the eyes
as she fell. Every star
not a single one had fallen, every one stolen,
no matter how small I tried to be,
not a single one missed me on the way down.j.k.d.

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hudsonvalleycraigslist listing no. 716 from jamboree532 bed 2 bathe at $3k /a month. freshly rennevated townhome. no pets, had a bad accident once..... CREDIT SCORE MUST BE EXCELENT. no sympathy . No sob stories. this generation loves sob stories but I will give you something to love: this beutiful deck out back. only $20/hour to use. Please do not forget that as your landlord I own you. in the glory days of america the power went to the pepple with the land, and that is why they call me “lord”…… gas oven and heating. washer and dryer in unit. yes you must put in quarters each time, no it is not included in rent…. The things u are handed on a silver plater are the things i had to fite for in the GOOD OLD DAYS. when work meant laber, not social media....... On street parking, passes at aditional fee. message me for leasing, NOT offers. Peace.j.k.d.

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LABEL CONTENT HEREI started working at the warehouse last week. it’s the hardest job I’ve ever had—the boss gets real mean, sporadic, impossible to please. but really what’s hard is packing the boxes.
I couldn’t brute-strength my way through this one. every box a subsection of my life, my being compartmentalized and stacked up for safe keeping—
I thought about hanging up the apron three times today. how could I ever be asked to fit sixteen years of life in feeble cardboard barriers? how could I ever achieve
something so heartbreaking? in the warehouse
we all work like animals. emotional warm machines. every day I dread knowing what will go next. I dread the labels I will have to write atop the cardboard chambers:in this box, every poster, every painting on my wall
gathered like a sky of stars over billions of years
in this box, every book on the shelf that my little eyes could gorge themselves on
in this one, photographs. snuggled tenderly in bubble-wrap to obscure the faces.
I never was a crier. I was never one
to get emotional on the job. but the closest I have ever been to death was when
I stared up at the tower of boxes, the top so high it began to disappear from sight,
and the tower swayed and threatened me
more than any man
I saw myself in boxes, sealed up like meaningless cargo, stock to be bought out, how it all could topple onto me at any moment
and I was afraid. nothing but this had ever scared me, not the squealing machines or the robotic coworkers or the big boss and her squawking voice. only the boxes
as though my life was only cargo.j.k.d.

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Looking for a ThirdBUTCHFEMME PAIR LOOKING FOR A THIRD. WANTED VERY ALIVE.
Hand of iron. Heart of gold. No smokers (herb OK). Looking for a third lung, a third eye. Looking for a third pair of arms; broke one in a nasty accident (samurai, alligators, etc). Butchfemme pair looking for a third pair of hands;
lost one to a nasty accident (paralyzed). Hand of honey, heart of glass.
Butchfemme pair looking for extra body warmth; one went cold. Must have a sense of rhythm. Be into romance, problem-solving. Foodies welcome, cooks more welcome. Butch looking for a third. Likes curly hair and big noses. Butch looking for a pair. Likes dykes. Likes love. Butch looking for a pair. Loves you. Smokers OK. Butch looking for you. Will love you dead or alive.j.k.d.

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My Friend, the Black HoleThree months Lane had been filling that black hole, feeding it. He liked the way the petals make no echo when they hit the bottom. He would say it's because they're still falling, floating gently like gull feathers upon beach sand. Another flower for the void. Another endless journey of affection.It was that past June that Lane had broken his pitching arm. The boys on his street were baseball boys, and he had surrendered his summer to injury. So, there he would dwell, in his room, feeding the hole from his window.One Sunday night Lane craned his neck through that bedroom window and down below at the hole, and it had started crawling up the wall. It was subtle, so that no passerby would notice—but Lane did.He felt a rush of love break through into his veins, and nearly knocked the vase off his desk trying to get the flowers into the maw. Every flower that it consumed made the hole larger and hungrier, and Lane believed that finally the hole would come into his room and be his first friend in months. His hands itched at the thought; they longed to be around the black hole.Lane forgot how many flowers he sacrificed that night. They were petunias, a new kind that the hole had never eaten before. He thought he'd found the hole's favorite flower, and wanted to ask how they tasted, how they looked on the way down. The black hole grew indescribably massive, swallowing not just flowers but the entire side of the house, until Lane ran out of flowers.Through the portal of the open window went his blankets, his pillows, the art that hung itself on his walls. Anything tender that the hole might like, Lane gave it up, waiting for the emptiness to become, to make him whole.But the hole did not become anything. That night Lane lost his bedroom piece by piece, his toes one by one, until toes became hips became shoulders and fingers and eyeballs. Lane became a part of the black hole, and the black hole did not become anything.j.k.d.

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UnlovingBricks, hot and sticky like shoulders in the corridor. I talked to everyone about us
and the shape of the hole we left
in the world. The way the air tasted different
and the wind blew in new directions.There is no forgiveness to be given. No crime
has been committed. We are just planets
in their typical orbit and it’s the season
once again. Fool’s autumn: the morning
atmosphere is merciful, but the day is cruel
and grasps me in a metal hand.Trucks line the street. They patch and fill holes
but it’s a neverending job. People look different
once the summer has ended. When we came back to each other we were unrecognizable, like the neglected road.Plaster is laid again. It smells different but it goes in all the same places. We don’t know where it’s come from but we need walls to build a house. So the plaster is laid again. Wood goes back into the fireplace, and the smoke from the chimney puffs eastward now.j.k.d.

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Entry 2: How to watch your life change in real timeStep one:
keep quiet. Your mom keeps texting you, and so do your friends, and that girl you said you would break things off with—but you won’t respond.
It’s not really your own will, you just
have nothing to say. You do a lot of thinking;
what’s the point in speaking everything aloud?
When things change, you get all quiet, and nobody likes it except you, but
you don’t
need to tell
everyone everything.Step two:
don’t be alarmed
by your dad’s new place.
Don’t be alarmed by the echoes in the empty kitchen, or that housefly that snuck in while you were moving boxes inside—or maybe it’s a wasp, you can’t tell, not while it’s blitzing around, mapping out the new space, knowing it’s not supposed to be in here. It’s lost, obviously, and scared and confused and perhaps that’s more important than whether it’s a fly or a wasp.Step three:
think about lunch. Don’t think about
girls in the gazebo and girls on the patio
and how much they look like one very special girl, one that’s up north now where things freeze, one that won’t ever be back. Instead
think about lunch and the library and exploring a new neighborhood, think about how quiet and green LaGrange is, think about the Angus cows and the hikes and the good things that you barely have to look forward to see because they’re just like home. Like the present. That’s all this is—a version of the present.Step four:
hang on, and do it tightly. Don’t transfer to Spackenkill, don’t drop out of your hard classes, don’t leave your old bedroom without looking back twice. Three times, for good luck. Hang on as long as you can, because for the last two years you’ll have one foot out the door. One foot in Poughkeepsie. One foot in your mom’s place, one in your dad’s, one foot in the past and one in the future.Step five:
fear the aftermath. Fear the sun after the rain, because it means you’ll have to be confrontational. Rain means danger, means hide your ass, means forget the kindness and gentleness and duck for cover.
Sun and petrichor means come outside. Face the wind. Start talking to everyone again, start thinking, start writing, start meditating even though you said you were too cool for it. Start having time for mirrors again. Time for girlfriends and crying and Thanksgiving dinner.
Once the rush is over you’ll realize you didn’t escape jack-shit, and pain has legs, pain catches up to you, pain strikes from the back without warning. Once the rush is over pain comes back on quiet nights where you think you’re safe, just eating or just cleaning or just moving furniture.
Fear the aftermath, because you start to forget the good things, but the bad things haven’t let you go. Because nobody’s asked about anything, because they’re polite, and they won’t bring up what you haven’t mentioned. Or because you’re really good at putting foundation under your eyes; you’re really good at showing up and distractions, but the time for distractions has ended.Step six:
start journaling again. You couldn’t open the damn thing the whole time, which is ironic, and counterproductive, and eating at you. All you have from the moment are a few experimental poems no one will ever hear and some text logs.
It means you’re a little useless, it means you get quiet when things change. It means a fresh start, and close-brushing shoulders, and butterscotch and onion rolls and I’m so glad that’s over with.
It means that October might become your least favorite month, that nothing will ever be simple again,
but it also means you lived to tell the story.j.k.d.

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