

We hold her skinlessness in hand
like a webbed and blunted jewel.
For every false divide, in a split second,
She would give it all back.
Wipe clean the concept of redemption.
It is never an ocean wide, but a raindrop quick.
Restitution, not a long march, but an instant.
If you are the only hand this bird will ever know,
then all relation is anew.
There is only the offering of palm and awe.
Your damaging goodness nor guilt will ever soothe.
We must know her by releasing her,
if ever to know her again.
He is elbow-deep-down into his thievery,
A copious pint longer into the lie that he aims to heal.
But his poetry was fierce, and even brighter his laugh—
Though no one loved him empty more than his can’t.


I am a heart residing outside the safety of ribs,
worn by your hand without manacle.
We are ruined when we get what we want.
And then ruined when we want for what we had.
There is no one I want to bury my ravished heart into
more than you.
And that too, is how She loves us.
As a Tuesday longing for Wednesday,
waiting for the sun dance of salt flats.


Songs, say the elders, are echo-location—
striking surfaces wet with rain.
It is only in drought that he calls Her,
and ever so quietly, only in name.
The talon cut on my finger is slowly fading
From the day the north bird came.
Her head into glass just to find me,
I linger in the losing of the mark.
After the fluid of spine, we called her sweet water.
And now I give her nectar name unto you.
As a stubbornly sirened and winded way
To now work you into the cut.


If you beg her follow, your call is clear:
An offered hand must be true and sweeter than glass.
The spires of bridge grow weary as a redbook page,
Tired still, this ancient bow,
from the abyss of your wait.
Messages on mirrors in your aftermath
but never forethought.
And in broken rooms she offers you this soft remind:
That she flew through glass just to find you.
For fuck’s sake she’s persistent.
And the wolfdog won’t rest until I fly her.


One path kills the spider others.
The choices today are the rivers and lymph
of her body ‘morrow.
And no human limits a life with the missed,
but rather the debating
of what’s gone missing.
He missed here
because he stayed there.
And he hung himself
not by the choice,
but by the wondering
of choices flown no.


The missing of you
is an ache that doesn’t fade,
but I have befriended it.
I bring you unto yourself,
in naked trembling,
Shuddering both of us,
to tug at your scars
with a dull knife.
In sweat lodge,
I bring you the night as friend.
In a pitch black world,
one must look upon thyself
as the only steering light.


The murmuration of our love
still directing my turns
and begging my follow.
You are the trapped bird
whose cage I ache to rattle,
to love big and evermore,
without defense.
You, my foggy bridge
and holy mountain,
you continue to be my yes.
But for one truth to live,
another must die.
How then, shall you have me proceed, my beloved?
In favor of our dearest Earth or against Her?
