this time

for a long time tragedy was wrapped up in the dehydrated skin of my childhood
as all children who shed their first bag of skin I thought it was forever
I'd have to be naked

as I get older things get easier
again; a returning
even the hard is easier
I am still terrified (so terrified, each strand of my fur has grown a spine)
but i am not terrified of terror anymore

I know there is a skin underneath this one:
hanging on by a corner like a baby tooth

somehow I know that the alchemy
of returning to a place where I know who i am
I know how to rest; a place disappeared
is possible

somehow I know I will grow back the feet
that stood without worry or doubt
I know I will grow back the hands that held paint brushes, cupped bath water
except this time I know where home is

from Nicaragua

Yesterday we walked the triumphant 500 meters to the next beach over from the taco shop, where the green and pink plastic chairs are warped from melting under tropical sun. Where bad commercial reggae is pouring out in concrete gravel from the small blown out amp, which is semi-buried in sand. Past the taco shop where the gringos are woofing down the over-priced fish tacos in their newly  bubblegum skin-suits. The plastic tables they sit at are littered with brown beer bottles and constellations of cilantro-flecked tomato and onion bits.


We walked past the local boys playing soccer on the pebbled beach, past the textured elbows of the tide pools (hundred thousand barnacle graves crunching under our sandals), past the sounds of tourists and tourism. The sight of the cove was born head first, so that its face was pressed up against us as soon as we turned the corner of the cliff. Trees grow out of the sand, their hips tucked underground like a magic trick. We settled under one, thinly leafed, aching for water--laid out our cheap colorful towels under the meager square of shade.


Mariah hangs up our packs and our shirts on a naked branch, digs our blue water bottle into the sand between our towels, and then falls asleep instantly. Her hands spread softly across her long stomach, her wet hair drying in tight salty curls. I watch her, read a page of my best seller, stare out at the blue curling over itself on the shore, and then watch her some more. When she wakes up, she immediately checks to see if she needs more sunscreen.  She sits up and I notice a place where she has missed applying her first coat, because she has a new perfectly shaped cherry wing coming out of her harp bowed scapula. Without thinking, I run my forefinger through its delicate feathers and say ' you grew a pink wing in your sleep.'

The Tallest Man On Earth - Thrown Right At Me (Live In Joburg)

secret projects

I have so many secret projects that I don't share with you on here because I want you to see them in print. I want you to hold these worlds in between thumb and forefinger. But I've decided to let these words dissolve into the ether and pile up in your stomach like dust.

take these dusty words, and know that i am writing so many of them!

secret project 1:


TENDER:


 A double narrative of my time spent as a volunteer in hospice, and my journey to understanding how much i love women.

Today we knew each other. He is starting to trust my stranger’s face because I can repeat back to him the moments of his life. I will do this every time I visit now. I know he wants to die remembering that he has a son that also shares his father’s name. I smile at him while I reconstruct his timeline, and he sighs deeply—instinctively I take a deep breath too. He says in his brutal voice, a carcass of a voice, “ That        was        beau ti ful” My breath? My breath is beautiful? I take another breath, and this time I relish in it; I close my eyes. He nods and says “ E ven     bet ter.”

In the beginning, when we first were roommates, when we first starting calling each other best friends, it was hard to say goodnight. At the end of the day when she would have to make the long trip up the stairs to her room—the room so high above mine, it seemed to be balancing on the full moon—it was too much. Instead, we turned off the lights in the living room, or in my room, and let the purple of the night dye our faces. We wrestled out the sticks of our loneliness that were heaped inside us. We pressed our faces into each other until we left red marks. I held her hair in handfuls. I held her by her waist. When we slept, I wrapped her so tightly I grew new muscles over night. I let my breath be open on her back.

secret project 2:

PHOTOEMS 365

strangers and friends are sending me their black and white photos. I am writing poems to them.

when he was young his body liquid, it spread out wherever there was space. No sensation was too sandpapery to keep his loosely screwed limbs tucked in. He was like an animal unabashed—ignorant. That’s why him and Bif befriended each other; everything could be understood in a shoulder’s yawn, the peninsula of a knee.