“Love is a story told to a friend; it’s secondhand”

I don’t know how I used to stand it, because I can’t stand it now, and have not listened to Neil Young on purpose for years. Sometimes I bump into him in boutiques or the far reaches of T.V show soundtracks, but it never goes well.

When I was young, I was strong and could stand to hear a voice that fragile. Now when I hear him, it hits me like a twist in the pleura, a sort of center-of-the-body twist that also affects my stomach and even, vaguely, my butt.

1.

I gave my best young self to Kieran when I was a teenager, and came over to his house with my record player. I brought him a strawberry plant that I had grown over the course of a humid June; we drank Negro Modelos and ate strawberries and inhabited our naked eighteen-year-old bodies while Out on the Weekend played. It was my idea and he was only half-interested in being there. This relationship continued for a few weeks which felt like years, both “anticlimactic” and “cataclysmic” in nature, which is maybe the nature of teenaged affairs.

I can’t remember if his house got robbed first, or if he broke up with me first, but either way, my record player was stolen from his bedroom, (along with the weed plants in his backyard, and the puppy Pit Bull that tried to eat everything,) and Kieran broke up with me. I emailed my dad about it; he was in Costa Rica. I think I said that I was sad, and my dad said, never forget that men are fools.

This was a long time ago now. Kieran is turning twenty-eight next month and we are friends again. He lives in the flower fields of the central valley. I live in Oakland and wake up cold every morning. I don’t even listen to records anymore. They used to mean so much to me. I listen to Spotify now, or podcasts. The other day, This American Life started playing on my phone as I shopped for a duvet cover at Crate and Barrel. I thought,

I’ve become one of those really normal people.

I can’t remember very much about that affair with Kieran. As I have mentioned, I was young and innocent, which means that my own somewhat extravagant drug use came later, wiping memories from my brain as if by squeegee. I was scandalized by the cocaine on the coffee table, ambivalent about the Pit Bull puppy, alarmed by the screeching of the stray cats outside. I doubt Kieran ever said anything noteworthy, as I seemed to take note of none of it. I just remember his body (creepy, I know,) his single tattoo, his John Lennon shirt with holes in the armpits. I remember driving him to work and trying to get him to like the mandolin solo in Maggie May.

I can’t believe I’m moving to Los Angeles. My plan, and desperate desire, has always been to never live nearer to my hometown than I do now- about six hours away. It’s not because I dislike my hometown, although I do. It’s because I hate everybody from my hometown. Except for the one or two people that I love. And although I love them, I can’t seem to bear to see them.

I carry either a myth or a true dose of sorrow. It means that I cannot see ex-boyfriends. It means that I have to carry on and pretend that I have forgotten even more than I have.

the following night

I. Morning

Sometimes I see mushrooms in my dreams

large and nearly white as stones,

they speak silently of rain,

and I wake up.

II. Night-time

It rained today. Almost as if

my mushroom dream was a

movement of future/prediction,

clairvoyance or wish-made-truth.

What prescience told me that

my dream meant rain, I don't know.

Because dreams mean rarely more than

despair, a muggy unknowing and

the approach of latent wakefulness,

like a sound that reaches me.

I'm so uncertain, it's a jitter

in both sides of my cage.

III. The Following Night

I've been meaning all day to say:

that Phil is moving into a trailer

in the woods. He says more

or less that he may bloom

or just decay.

I can see him there with his french-

press and meticulous sandwiches.

He's such a wonderful cook. He is loving

with beets and greens, every

meal a last meal.

IV. Interjection

-I mean nothing by it- I am full

of love but it is a directionless tumult

gush, both rapid and rapids, leading

nowhere: I exist within a halo of spray

blue-green and luminous

tender riparian vortex, wide-open

and trap.

V. More Rain

More rain came today, with

a generosity, sudden thrashing

that I had always suspected

God reserved for love.

It is sad that it doesn't really matter.

The sticks are tossed: for

years, we'll read them every day

fire by fire.

But for me:

because I am bone and

also bouquet,

flesh and also flash-

flood,

nothing matters more.

In my state of marginal

illness, of marginal wellness,

nothing matters more

And all I can think of is the noise I might make when expressing physical pain

I see myself in you

in the way you are a smudge of light in a dark

space, strange lit-up bug hovering

beside the entrance of roaring

vacuum

anomaly of energy

I read your poems and

I keep thinking that you’re talking about masturbating,

but I’m the one talking about masturbating

and the vision of a golden hand reaching up

through me as if searching for

keys on a hook

hanging from the roof

of my mouth

it still hovers like some drug

vapor, and all I can think of

is the noise I might make

when expressing physical

pain

because I am groaning

beneath the heft

of this life

and I labor beneath the laboring

body, coral bones of

some ghost as they batter

against the oppression of

our strange and

stratified timelines-

Life lines

I’m going to have to tear whole

cliffs to

sand with my fingernails

I’m going to have to bottle sweat

and sell it to myself as a cure

Made a Life of Letting

True love

keeps falling out of the bed. Every time I’ve scraped the vertebrae

to kiss it

it is gone

like a nightmare meeting

morning.

How do I allude to a morning that happened quite

specifically in my own left

eyeball:

I used to say years ago

we’d make the love that would

crack

me

like

ice

-but the past is nobody-

-the past is a landless bastard-

the past is not

landed

and is no land at all.

I have made a life of finding my own

darkness unexceptional

I have made a life of letting men

I have made a life of letting men

slump on my breast

You should be ashamed of yourself.

(Shame is like mold, it is the bastard of nature.)

As if I did not possess my own

humble cuneiform,

I am going to hold him in my mind

and cut his arms off arm

by arm:

I will hold him in my mind

until lovingly I push him off

the deck.

At the marina, cover your

lap with microfleece:

Put the seat back. Like a child.

The cypress sways, and the light will lower

from brutal to gold.

Listen to the old song, the one where the girl says,

if you were a shepherd I could love you.

I would like to forget how you fell out of my bed.

(If you were a shepherd I could love you.)

I would like to forget the morning on that indifferent

cliff. (If you were a shepherd I could

I would like to forget

Thinking about Preetom on a Tuesday Night

"I lift my skirt for the economy"

I.

When I am seen only

by the specific needle of light

emanating from Preetom:

I wonder

II.

Preetom is an alcoholic drag

and his body resembles something coughed up

by a muggy wave

when nobody was looking.

(I don’t mean how it looks

how it looks could fill the shelves

of dreams)

but how it moves when it denies

my wincing agency. I tried hard to cough

that tuneless

song of reason from my little cave.

It’s like that time he said

have you ever fucked a flower.

And I imagined a beauty

that could disappear age.

But he imagined a force

that could make him feel

something.

I wonder what Preetom is doing

right now. He is watching anime

I wonder

what kind of animal I am

through his cracked prism:

like, he put my foot in his mouth and

like, he did not listen to my brief

tuneless song of reason and like

I was waking and torqued beneath

and like.

And like I gave a

small coin that currency

and like.

Now Tuesday night does

its thing all over me.

I made my bed to lie

on it and think of Preetom.

Mine in the Dusk

Mine is a bog

near the coast

of a planet

at dusk

another planet

than this one which is verdant and saturated

in past

mine in the dusk is a

feminine body found resting

in a fen

(those spores have been in her mouth

16,000 years

sixteen thousand years)

mine is my

beloved wrapped in strips of polypore

mine was made tender by a spear

mine was made small by time

and those spores have been sleeping

on her teeth

for sixteen thousand years

mine lies beneath stratified

sphagnum moss,

dreaming vapor and mist:

her body is here in the bog but

her eyes are fixed on the tumbling

sea

and heavy

history is heavy on her chest

her skin is perfect beneath

peat,

her bones eviscerated

mine is flanked on both sides

by amanitas

phalloides unfurling

like clouds

know me,

know me,

never know me,

tired madrigals

throwing voices,

speaking in rounds

are all mine