April Madness

We're in a skybox
dangling by wires, a straight away zip
and I'm home
at my mother's clothesline
where I used to steal the clothespins,
feel the wooden prongs
sandwiching spring, fresh
for the bite.

The game was in how the pins clinched the edge
of nostrils, the tips of ears, whatever
flap of skin wanted sacrifice most,
you'll have to endure.

Endure until you're the last
one standing—a trick is to close both
eyes and smile.
Smile so that your face morphs another person
so that your teeth plays push-
ups and tears pour forth closed lids.

Smile as the monkey breaks
hyena laugh, the china nerves shatter,
and the dimples fold in and out the nostril
sneezes cracked the face wide.
I used to win every time.

When we're back on ground, you asked
how I enjoyed today,
by now I'm such a pro,
I don't even need the clothespins.

What is your name?

My throat is made of ash;
trembling black fingers wound
across my collar bones and deep
inside my chest. It is hard to breathe.
Here it is quiet but for the soft
wheeze of my mouth opening on nothing
and closing empty. I feel wrong,
like someone carved my name
into my nape and left it there so everyone
would know it but me. I don't know
how to say my name, all I can do is breathe.

today I think about you in the light of your own soft thoughts. sometimes I wonder if I write things for myself anymore, and other times I marvel at my own selfishness with language -- my mouth does not open for pleasantries, it does not want, it does not need to be heard or validated because in its own sort of quietness, it is scared to be heard. I spent long hours practicing for other people: "this is how you say 'ay, ee, I, oh, you,' and you again, and you again-- I twisted my own language about on itself like a confused sort of kiss that pulled at my insides and then I mispoke and choked and wished to god that I could die.

there are only so many times you can say, "I love you," and not mean it, and then you get all sorts of stingy, the only time that your body will let you make those noises is when you're really overflowing with it, when there's so much light in you that you don't know how the particles of you are kept together, like the light-heavy episodal pressures building inside of you are like stars bursting apart into something that spills and spills and sinks into itself when my thoughts are only directed to one thing--

this is something that flutters and cringes and hides in the nervous parts of your heart. I used to think that I owed the world something, that I owed a kiss, a fuck, a word for someone who wanted it, like a glance in my direction should be rewarded with a bared shoulder --

the last time he kissed up my arms and shoulders and breasts, I cringed, I promised myself that I would not say it, I would not mean it until I really wanted to mean it and I suppose that's where I put the dam.