2 Poems

The bed is hot. I hold two twigs beneath my pillow

and think of him            star drunk in a pasture, popping Advil

            and whiskey, saddled on his motorbike glowing

like a green knife.         I snap the twigs in four to stow

away for later. He sends a photo he took pine logging

out of town:                  the mangled strawberry corpse of a dog

whose head he chopped.         He texts [these broken acts will fetter

me, it’ll take my head to fashion debtless debt]

Green nights like these I feel much like a decapitated

body, hands searching the dirt for my face near twigs and three

-ply sheets         I text [gawain, i dreamt we were new-tongued]

Much, much later, he sings outside as I’m falling through

the hours, dewdrop skin and tooth, with heavy naked

breath.              He knocks. What music do our voices make?

He enters gripping an axe, then toes his shoes off standing

wide, grin white, the dripping canine head in hand.

             I say [Put those in the fridge] He does, all sore and heady,

wrapping an arm around my ribcage as he sinks in bed.

He moves his lips on mine like a burning house caving

in.                                  My nails thumb drum on his cymbal heart [Okay,

I hate you]          He finds the twigs and builds an emerald fire

between our breath.       The folds of shadow burn, nightshy.

This glacial stream falls downward into ice trapped pools, a blank

white canvas unmarred by touch and even further down the blank

sting of water spills in sheets of blue. This winter is a pale

fanged bat that screams and screams to fill in its nightly sheer-eyed blank.

I lie in the backseat while you drive, hands changing radio stations,

still cold from touching January ice. The first song is blank

space, though static warped. When you sing nothing comes out except

a burst of breath and rotten notes, the air all warm and blank

of conversation. Will we find a noise that’s worth the effort

needed to keep on speaking? Answers are means of filling in blanks

until we die. I hope when future people unearth me I’m cold

enough that I look entirely the same and my tombstone’s rubbed blank

of my name. What was that stupid thing I was never meant to say?

Whenever I try to think, all I get is [ __ ] and [ __ ] and [ __ ].