i.

The four-wheeler is a chariot. Horse-wraiths
Kicking up a plume of spirits in the dirt.
Her arms kudzu around my middle. Out here,

In the desert, everything is invisible.
Only the locusts’ flat buzz gives
Them away. Everything native & quieting

Perennial & nighthawk black
As we ride through: the cowgirls,
The witch & the water sky-mirror-split,

The severity of squall lines. Also, the lips
Parting air like lightning & the girl
Blowing bubbles—in each one
a rainbow.

ii.

She thinks I am worth a burnt tongue.


iii.


Her small gifts, oddities,
Meet me at my mailbox.
Sheer curtains glitter
Above us in the currents, dance


In the heat that suffocates this land,
The lone harp & low grind of
Its history. We hold.


She takes me to dirt raked
Into rows, to stadium lights
In the middle of nowhere. A bed
On a porch. I am a horse


Skipping sideways down her lane, the stem
Of an American flag that’s been cut into strips
Dangling in my mouth like a toothpick.


iv.


Our shadow town Underneath the motherboard.
Our sudden lapse Of sound


I buck. This undertow, caught
Beneath hooves. Swept up by her current—


Butterflies collide with my whipped tail,
My tremoring eyelashes, my heavy teeth.


My fattest loc grazing a breast.


v.


Tonight she finds me like this:


Blood lacing my chin
Two wide eyes peering over the torso


Of a bronco from the other side.

This is the last poem for my father.
You could say I’ve been writing it
for years. It’s kept close, always
the reflection of my shadow in a dirty
window. I can imagine him now,
as ash and a fading grin,
with a little relief—what fire must feel
as it becomes smoke and then a gray
pall ragged in the distance. There
the mountains are always home—
a sideshow to the outside world
no one pays to see. Still, opinions
run wild in conversation! I’ve got
a friend there who spends all his money
on hallucinogens and bills, who barely
keeps the electricity on. He can speak
six languages but couldn’t find the words
to save his marriage. When I talked to him
earlier his voice had come to rust.
I don’t remember what I was doing just before,
but afterward I went out
into the darkest night in five hundred years
and walked down the road—the houses
full of tourists for a few days, white
Christmas lights draped from the roofs
like icicles. It made it brighter
than it should have been, and the light
danced along the surface of the salted streets
beginning to freeze over. I think
if I’m being honest, I’ve tried to protect
my father for most of his life, and now
I don’t think he needs me to. He was an alcoholic
who’d been married twice
before he met my mother. They were, in love,
or they loved one another—and so
I know what can come of that. After
the divorce we found ways to hide
parts of ourselves. Once,
when I was twenty-one
I found a sex toy under his pillow.
I was on a trip to Washington, to see
a woman I thought I would marry
and I stayed at his place—an apartment
that smelled like Marlboros and Pine-Sol
like any motel off any highway in America.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night
and my hand brushing something
under the pillow, and then I grabbed the thing
and lifted it up into the air and stared
at it wide eyed in wonder when I realized
what it was. Then I lowered it, and covered it
with the pillow exactly as before
with a tenderness that surprised me
then went back to sleep.
We never spoke about it, and he made me
toast and coffee that morning before I left.
It feels like another life now that I’m older
and married to a different woman.
Walking along the A-frame houses
so out of style they will last forever, I can see
a family gathered around a dinner table
on vacation in a house they rented
for more than the cleaners make in six months.
There’s a Duraflame burning in the fireplace
and two dogs lounge on the furniture
as if positioned for a still life.
No one sees me walk by
and anyway, I’m a stranger and I can come
and go as I please. When my father died
we made a deal I could ask him anything.
I signed my name for his remains
and the bank took what they wanted
and for years now he keeps talking, even
when I haven’t come up with a question.
What’s strange is I don’t think
I wanted him to suffer, and stranger still
is I’m sure I did. The air is thinner
though unlike paper or a second-hand
as it circles on. I look back through the windows
and the mother is collecting plates,
one of the boys lays his head down
on the table.

one night in disquiet having caused harm
& lowered expectations

when all eyes
looked toward the precious pine tree

& the murder cut still newly gifted
& i couldn’t cook for you remembering i myself

nothing more than a meal too— dreaming the enddream
we love each other no more i thought to make you only, miserable

only in this timeless tale of gods & hero it happens
again severed head held

by severing hand till death / our last bond
i watch bleeding can’t

i can’t / even / control
my own gaping bleed—

my wasted wound fester o my o my what won’t you hang
on a door to ward against

some (pre)cautionary tale do we part here
could we i mean

i don’t think there’s a song you could sing
that would be charming enough

let’s divine by kitchen knife wild belief
& contempt $5.77lb

ground meat in the meat section
with a sell-by-date (on sale) of course!

of course i’m afraid of my own body deathtrapper!
tombkeeper! sweet perishable!

cast out without burial— did you even love me

could i not say more tenderly what allegiance
wouldn’t fell—sick sickle! come

harvest here! the frenzyfrenzy
hades is a good fuck. but

the frenzied feast burned-out all its politeness burned all
of earth & heaven & the rape & other fascinations

&the rain came like dawn did once depleting our mana
our energy & our spirits were dragged out

drugged/damaged/deranged we looked upon ourselves & we ran away

i run away rather than continue in meaning
i continue ridiculous

trying to locate to locate
to locate in the outside world

where the moon hails holy night

my vast despair
my desperation my sister—

the city was built inside
the shadow of a mountain
and I am housed in the
smell of oak
whose branches
lean into the periphery
of what is as silent as a lake
everything I ever wanted
is silkscreened

on what carries the burgh
and oak leaves
in their birthday suits
I asked this of the wind:
why are you obsessed
with moving
like a ghostly speed-train
without a station
I thronged through the landscape
before I squeezed into the backwoods
and emerged on a mountain: the goliath-snake
quiescent in a body-length
that knows the circumference
of the city now in my eyes