Status Updates From Brute: Poems

«We observe the moon at opposite intervals.

By now you've seen my constellation, the jaw of a wolf.
Can you tell that the stars are on fire with longing?»

«(…) your first wreck,
your original lesson

in leaving a fire
to burn itself to ash.»

«You're gone & I misname the trees.»

Anguish--I divorce thee.
I divorce thee, I divorce thee whole heart;

from the wingbone of a vulture,
I've made you a harp.

Of all the washed-up terror prodigies in all Underworld--
I need you especially to stay the fuck out of my iPhone.

My mother says Why not date yourself for a while.

It's the first year
you've been dead longer
than you were ever

alive. What
would you say
about that?

I was 10--
I looked up suicide
in the dictionary--

I didn't know
anything. Without
you, we were

heavy, divided.
We knelt down
in the dirt

where the roots
were suspended
in water.

why am I the chased thing horrified
to overtake myself in the brush?

Here I am as a hairpin curve.

I woke up on the dirt floor of the old cellar I had new limbs
New inadequate gestures of suffering

. . . you are the holy thing I look to. . .

A man on the boat follows me all day, just one question then I'll leave you alone. There is nowhere a girl can go that a man like this won't have a question.

. . . when did I begin to choose this type of man who loves to "protect" me
from himself? Lately, I hold your name in my mouth
like a talisman because we are never afraid of the same things.

Nothing was so underpaid as our attention.

Just once I wanted
to hit & hold the person
who could hit & hold
me down.