i want to make a ritual of washing my face,
 i want to appease my peopled

when i say i am a thing/ it is gentleness/ when i say i am a thing that does not know gentleness, i mean look at my face/ look at my routine misremembering/ look at the work of my idleness/ look at the skin of my face, how i forget it/ look at all the fighting raised reddened and swollen/ look at the hives and the wars/ if i hadn’t raised water today, hundreds of little white flags/ made of body/ stuck to the tops of mountains/ of flesh/ flaked skin and the embers/ a white head/ when i say i am a thing, it is/ the way i go hours and hours wearing a face i have not seen/ do not know all the features of/ drag it around and/ make armor of it/ a body/ a shield/ i slumber beneath it, wake and bang the muck off/ and still expect it to do its job when battle comes/ when i say it is a war, i mean my face/ unaccepting of monarchy and dictatorships, pioneers blood cells/ trojan horses and flare guns until an ache or burning must catch my eye/ save us, my skin screams it/ but who am i but the steerer/ who am i but the chosen one of us/ when i say i do not know gentleness, i mean to apply lotion i scrape/ i heavy hand, every wound/ i forget myself/ i crush the angels/ i suffocate and condemn/ i disquiet myself with myself/ i drag the whole thing down, and press what i think could feed it/ straight into its mouth and hold it down/ it is the way my mother did not teach me/ it is the way they did/ whether joke or hurry or habit, it is the only way i know how/ mark my words/ i misraised a hand once, lanced a stinging blow, i only felt it for moments/ still the skin remembers——

when this email finds you on the edge of your memory/ i cared enough to call it love/ later
dear love, 
i’ve sworn/ i swear/ meet me in the shallow place/ my bed a nest/ my 
sickbed restless: my heat/ interred/ my bronchitis quick/ my laurels 
sheathed/ my sheets dreaded/ dear love i was coming/ dear love i am 
arriving/ up and lifting/ my breath ensnared/ barbs of thorns/ thickets 
of mucous/ the pills they/ wreck me/ the quarry 
a hive of tissues/ of failures/ of infection hot enough/ to run/ to 
escape/ my heat/ a trapped thing/ a nettled nest/ a mosquito mouth/ 
a tourniquet for turning turning and still/ not there to greet you/my 
arriving is forked/ held on the edge of a plate/ the rim risqué/ the 
swollen sentiment/ i’m failing again/ aren’t i/ i the ever reaching/ 
romantic/ ridiculed by my outstretched/ heave where i/ lung/ the long 
road i patient for/ the albuterol i suture stance with/ you missed the 
closed/ throat way/ i moat the mickey out/ the shakes/ a timber dear 
lover/ how i feel the rattle/ coil the curlish way my/ surrender 
partitions/ the sheets/ the weighted blanket healing/ my heart a center/ 
separate from esophagus/ from stomach/ from lungs the lurch/ dear 
lover i am coming/ i am coming/ i am coming home/ the place i did 
not build/ the place that rises to meet me/ in you/ tickling my throat/ 
with my careless chance

salem, stomach 2022 

the guest speaker 
appears on zoom; 

our summons answered, 
arose from internet’s fissure 

she surveys our tiny 
group, student quarry 

curious. i am blending 
into the hand of us 

until I’m not 
“you still exist” 

snared in body 
but the bubbles 

the multitudes, every 
iteration of me is 

scurrying, ant-like 
against a white gaze 

afraid to be caught 
out, the stake 

splintering, petals 
all piercing hemlines 

in the wind. 
you can see me? 

I’m breath-held 
camouflage glitch 

which wing to 
gamble, which me 

entrenched in hazel 
pinned by blonde 

lashes; up a brow 
goes gently, 

“the masks really 
are going away.” 

cauldron bubble, 
the laughter 

of candle pelvis; 
the orbit 

obvious as want 
to believe 

i do still exist 
smile, don’t i