Poem 1

If My Tits Could Speak

If my tits could speak,
they would say a body is a
perfect place to keep secrets.
A body is a terrible place to keep
secrets.

We are your tits.
We are not Judas. We know the
shudder you keep above your
bones when you look at us.
But how many times will we
have to save your life for us to
convince you we are not
treacherous. We are the lonely
sentinels of your sex in a public
bathroom.

We know sometimes you
daydream about your lost naked
tomboy chest screaming like a
dust colored beacon from the
tops of olive trees. Would you
believe us if we told you we were
there that day. That we have
always been here here, we are not
Brutus or Cassius, we are not
usurpers.
Still, you bandage where there is
no wound, you bind where there
is no break.

How long have you felt like a
pirate ship? We have always felt
like stowaways.
You study the blueprints of more
handsome vessels and dream of
amputating us like gangrenes or
frostbite. You don't trust the
timbers you were built from, you
think you are rotten. You are not
rotten. We are figureheads
cutting a swatch through the sea
for you. Can't you see us? Can't
you see yourself?



Poem 2

Adrienne

I am a howler monkey in a
nursery
I am a tomboy who's lost her first
foot race.
I say your name in my sleep.
It moves in my mouth like the
first
glass of water the morning after
a bender.
Prop me up from collapsing back
into hangover stagnation.

Still.

Sometimes I am a broken
accordion.
Sometimes I miss every bus I
run for.

1.
My phone has run out of battery.
So I lay myself in trash heap,
thinking
I am corrupted SIM card.
Eroded and stripped
miniature screw guts

Pick me over for love letter text messages.

Then some days
I am on the bus. I am heading for home.

You are too good looking to be a cell phone tower.
You, my North Pole. My magnetic orientation.


2.
We are out of candy.

Okay, I ate it all.

You jitterbug at the convenience store.
I shake the snow from my shoulders.


3.
I want to write a love poem from Wolverine to Storm,
I need your help.

How many times have you
broken open my shell,
not hesitating when you find
scales instead of feathers.

You whip my head back, you
open my mouth.
I am bleary eyed, laughed into a
coma.

Talk me out of bad tattoos and
movie ideas.
I will talk you out of MC names
and groceries you won't eat.


4.
I wish I was a composer, I wake
up to your eyelashes
harping me to learn
to play.

I wish I was a blacksmith,
all the water inside me is boiling.
Everything I am will melt,
but that second before: you are
bellows
at my ear, I am the hardest I will
ever be.

I wish I was an artist.
I wish this so often I dream that I
already am.

I have painted your body so
many times
inside my head, you are the
most recognizable person
in the civilization of my sleep.


Mary