Nearsighted

Things mapmakers (me, bats, the man
who maybe named America)
know:

Keeping edges,
Stitching middles,
The proper use of a plumb-line.

The Olympic sport of distance-shrieking
so all that’s eatable is known
and yours.

The art of claiming.
The delicate study of ignoring things
other people discover.

Not-asking-questions-ology.
Not giving apologies.
Squinting into the sun

As if you know its secrets, as if
it were only a tiny replica of the sun
on the map you made.

Adult Mart in Elyria, OH

Because I am a real 18 now I
go with stalwarts to the Adult Mart where
adults are bought or sold. Windows shining,
double-sided dildos arced in prayer,

and the neat rows of vibrating cockrings
in the pews, out in the garden. Here are
shapely butt plugs, blushing fleshlights that sing
in euphoric naked woman voice, or

when batteries die, naked euphoric
sea monster wailing to be found. Strap-on
Turbo-Dong doubles as a walking stick,
handy thing. We’re driving back when the fawn

comes out of nowhere,
eyes on fire, burned headlight lust.

G Reads Her Poems

G Reads Her Poems

when mt saint helens threatened to explode
they sent in planes with photographers
for history, and when the whole top slid out
the dust chased the pilots out of the blast
with a sound like human history compressed

this is on my mind when G does slam
& right before, when she dances with the aisle
and the floor and the ceiling and the walls
and then hits the stage and wipes her
hands on her fishnets and belts
diamond toads, frogs of peridot
expels words like they were authority figures--

a poem that starts with “you”
a poem that starts
“listen” a poem that starts “what they don’t get”
and pauses to smell the washed audience
sweating carelessness, fear to hear her --

when mt saint helens erupted ash fell in eleven states,
blanketed cars and trees and
bruce springsteen’s hungry heart (first guitar, lost virginity)
and G, negative thirteen years old, took notes
on how to rebel, yell the blues

things left behind

sometimes home friends ask
how i am
i don’t know how to pair “everything
is great” with “but the checklists in
sad people pamphlets in
student health—
it’s all there”
those pamphlets are always
wrong anyway that’s why
they’re pamphlets
there to be thrown out
transient.
yesterday i
traced the leaves falling out of the sun
this is my first
how the fall comes. i’m all for
the sun when it makes me born again
i could be Icarus
i too do not listen
to my father,
especially about the face i won’t
give you back: it’s among
other things i left behind
dresses hanging/gold foil stars/leaves
that stayed where i left

yosemite

When we came down the Mist trail we
were bears in the bear-warning-video
hungry hairy (strong Samsons)
tufted in dirt
willing to devour cars—

When we came through
the sea of people parted
like sheared sheep and we
waved the scissors above our heads
singing something about rivers

When we were juggernauts with
mosquito hickeys and
the mist pillowy and new lifting
all our shit off our backs
great and empty beer cans rattling
in our packs stories smoke dances
we were skinny dipping
with John Muir & his beard
—what a creature
what a creation