Two Poems: When the Hard Work Is Done; To My Future Lover

When the Hard Work Is Done

I am waiting for the foxes to come
I have been very patient
Have let the stillness wrap around this place
Have let the silence
Push the dust to settling
Embalm itself against the hard wood
My mouth is empty
As the other side of a confessional
Open to light except for this
Fractured wrist of a prayer
May the child I was
Flat chested, Railroad limbed
Carry the plains in her hands
And stone the man I have become
Only I no longer believe in any open crucifix
Of a sky so instead
May the aborted state of my father
Find the open wound of my mother
And the child I was slip the plains off her hands
And drop the stones
As she remembers
How to run
I forgive the pieces
Even if I cannot find the whole
So here
In this rocking chair
In this cabin
In these woods where only animals live
I am waiting for the foxes to come
To pour through the gaps between
Windows like the ghosts of hookers
And take me
Take me with their good claws
With their bright teeth
Take and turn me to the religion
I was ripped from.
I am waiting for them
To stuff scripture
Still wet with musk and the woods outside
Down my throat
Then open doors in my stomach
Releasing a thousand silver doves
Before turning me to meat
They will tear into this cabin
The still foundations
The quiet wood
They will splinter the silence
From these walls
Stir the dust to frenzy
And uproot the floorboards
Exposing patches of albino grass
So that what remains of me
The parts not existing in foxes
May sink through the soil
So that I may live forever
In a cathedral of mirrors

 

To My Future Lover

Your body is the resting place of so many leavings
An accordion shop full of endings
A house for only attics

Your body used to be filled with little boy blood
I have no clue what it’s filled with now
But it is the dirt under pretty girl’s nails
The rope bound starving side of sainthood
Your body is a pity party of only giant weather balloons
It’s the reason I’m awake tonight
The reason my curtains are closed
And my hands smell like salt

But by the time you meet the earth
Your body will be the god that bulimics have been searching for
The alter where foxes go to pray
The heaven all salmon sink to
When they’re done mating but still a frantic Christmas of lust
Your body will be every star that’s fallen into the Atlantic
And every blind diver
Will be a topographical map
Of all the failings that led you to here
All that you have nurtured and named
The parade of extinct animals
Before they lay it down
Your body will be the reason the superlative exists
The sky’s last miscarriage
And my hands will still smell like salt

Until then though oil your joints
And chase away the squatters
Buy a new cd and sit on the dock
Jutting out of your sternum
Under the thundering chorus of pumps
Sit there until your hands fuse together
Until the veins begin from you
Sit until you see a dinghy approaching out from
All that sweltering red

You have been waiting for yourself for a very long time

Photo credit