Caracas
Teach me how to hold a carcass
in my mouth
like a wet mango
& mija
before you go
enshrine something of the dead
between the floorboards
of your old, forgotten house
where your mother, pregnant
with your youngest brother
fed you too many avocados
as if she knew
that the distance could kill a man
like only hunger can
because the sea
is wiser than memory
and the moon is darker than fear
but a new sun will force you
to un-own
what was
left behind
in stone Spanish cities
or trampled beneath soft waves
come to rest
in Boston harbor sides.
The Milky Way as Path to the Otherworld
Black sky takes no prisoners
so here I am,
sitting bolt upright at midnight
anxiety and sparks behind the eyes
crossed
at wanting morethan can comfortably fit in a mouth
at any given time
a life of too many sugar syrups
meat caught in a blender, coughing up
nothing but dust --
high pitched notes
shattering in round, operatic soprano holes
until the day the big hands change
my starscats running wild, feral dogs
alive in their throats
otherworldly
semen bursting in corybantic circles
on a mattress,
I dam the rivers with my teeth.
Mirrorland
I am angry that I cannot suffer
like I used to
cannot shove prayers
into the wailing wall
of my own body
like I used to
pockets of guilt
and shame
buried where joints break
silos
that once stored
radioactive lust
and fear, rotting at the half-life
not quite disappeared
purified in fragmentswhere the wilderness is hostile
to border towns
the law
is not just the law, but a lesson
and the lesson
is the edge of chaos.