Terrified By Nature

Illustrate this: this storm
and the one
between collarbones and pelvis.

Illustrate this storm, it’s so seismic.
My body caving like wet paper grows
all tenuous and slow, and minute
sparks communicate along all of my
jagged byways, lord help me.

Lord help me the sun has been gone long enough
that I feel it like the beauty of the absent bedmate.
It’s the sort of thing that makes you fall asleep watching television
and I am buckled and unbuckled in this black pulse.

I could talk about relief and how I wait all day

for it to come home, I wear only a little, something sexy,

I await the arrival of that tongue

I attempt to speak, but I am
wrought of chalk or spewing smoke.
I’m catching my lip on a sharp thing,
I’m terrified by nature
and terrified of its blatant premonitions:
dead gull wing wavers like a discarded
single page.


Dead hill surveys penetration of
little mesa, fracking drills dipping
up & down.
Storm hovers like blade
but never drops.

So I attempt to shake the bottle up:
I’m adjusting my cleavage for summer, and I say,
love me for this shivering jelly or don’t.
Love the abrupt last quake of this
listing rock as it pitches toward fire.

After all,
I am the vicious ghost of forgiveness unconditional.
I am the vicious ghost of grandma’s deck chair,
ritual and mastectomy.

I’m dripping in the blood of the beach, the contents
of shark eggs, the slickness of seaweed, the sweat
of summer cleavage, the dust captured by claw,
the night captured by morning.

I am leaning out toward love and I
will lean that way forever,

terrified by nature.