Poems
words coat the object
↓ the venom prays to its simplicity as it kills you
sets clouds loose under your softening fingernails
producing the type of smile drawn on a tree with a knife
you have more than one enemy
and i am more than one of them
↓ sleep is damaged at this altitude
all commas are hammered flat for use in acupuncture
the vertebrae protrude like questions on your back
i walk my fingers one either side of your spine
stop at the point on the neck most likely to break
↓ the roof answers the rain
countless decisions fall in places other than memory
your body floating to the surface of your white dress
eyes leak through your skin as i move towards you
you have swallowed my head with one word
↓ words coat the object
you untie its outline and feed it into raw space
you index my anatomy with the same science
keep my tongue on a shelf in your library
it says i was not with you when we disappeared
↓ cremated echoes are an uncommon freight
newly embossed onto the lips of your inner ear
they are extruded as spokes into the whispering wheel
listening was too hard for your soft voice
you transformed my deaf face into a stain
↓ you are in this thought because you had nowhere else to go
for some reason i agreed to plagiarise your existence
with simple carpentry you turned my chest into a bed
arranged twelve eggs in the pattern of a still clock
in this instant we stop evolution and repair our shadows
↓ you attach a signal to a wire to illuminate your name
harden its spelling with the black polymers in your breath
this line incised and served through our forms by the draper
our old friend who placed us side by side in his window
encouraged us to comb the arrows out of each other’s hair
↓ i have patented the contents in your mirror
my image of your image cannot be reproduced
we have slowed the light enough to put it on a leash
our paralysis is in itself a sin
when we sigh we are guilty of murder
↓
ants
how long will a thought last
in a swimming pool filled with ants
how long will an ant last
in a swimming pool filled with thoughts
drowning resuscitates itself with bodies
instigates a banquet for the partially submerged statistic
water itself presents itself as a scoreboard
a surface untallied but not thrown through her window
spider
the spider in the dream
that kills the spider in the dream
that kills him as he sleeps
its web left in his waking mouth