2 Poems

O, god of Augusts,

you take. You take

until I am left with tinder grass

and cracked riverbeds. You steal

the sweetness from fire. I lie

on my back in the dust

with my face to palest blue and curse

my own mouth, your chapped hands. I look

at you the way two locusts stare

at each other with flat hunger and know

the emptiness tearing at the other’s throat.

Autumn slipped his hand around my throat

but it was already severed and spilling

cut up words across his IKEA carpet.

Don’t think I wasn’t embarrassed, okay?

Even then, his fingertips throbbed as he

felt the Adam’s apple in my neck, a

gentle, bodily distance between

head and shoulders. It’s a mess.

I can’t speak, or else I’d tell him to either

just snap my spine back together like

Kinnex or Legos or whatever, or

let me go. Drop my head out a window,

make do with the body on the floor like

Nike of Samothrace with her wings

out and her head gone. Why not

peel off my arms too? Make me a

quaint statue of victory, Autumn.

Remember your conquest? Now I’m

silent for the first time and it feels like

testimony. Tell me everything

you thought was true about God, your

Victory’s all ears, even from the pavement,

waiting with the patience of stones to hear any

excuse for this mess of a rug. But instead,

you say “whatever. Just pop your

Zaleplon and forget about it.”