2 Poems

hard animals

On a map, the world is unrecognizable / in a staircase, it becomes cyclical / a rounded jail, a tall bird cage / our every step a bite, a tooth / piano key / hard enamel / hard animal / we gnaw bones / whittle coarse edge into point / carnivores that chew chew chew / tonguing our deep exasperation / and softly, spit it out again / this pulp / this chewing tobacco / our spit filters the earth / our spit a bitter tonic like salt in the wounds of monsters.

dissonance

i. My head a split tire / thick bolt wrench limbs / my bones a tire iron / static and rust, the infiltration of oxygen / you smile and the heat waves falter / shatter in little droplets / against the palm of your hands.

ii. My head a pit fire, a storming wind / thin oxygen thin sky / the smell of a rainfall / interrupted.

iii. This mundane spilling out / we are made inanimate, we are / walking through the motions, wading in fog / tearing into lightlessness like / ripped meat / from the bone.

iv. Running gets us nowhere / I am still here blistering sympathies, insufficiencies / silences stretching their bone hands / round necks, caught on lockets / like lifelines; they call the names of your ghosts.