reclaim (written for LGBTQ graduation at the University of Arizona, 2009)

go. be like a giant, and go there singing.
carry concrete and in the other hand, carry water.
share not only teeth, but all the edges of your mouth.

go there, and be useful, hold up a mirror.
cartographer, be a dream, and go there dreaming.
in the shape of a spoon to draw the drawbridge, then spill out.

go. be like a garden, and demand more weeding.
demand a fire extinguisher. a welcome mat. sequins.
in every room demand a doorway. a window. a world.

go. be like a drag queen, and stop the bleeding.
rescue fear from the throats of the almost dead.
retrieve misplaced sharp things from the lungs, the heart, the word.

go there, and be critical, be beyonce.
terrorize simplicity. sit on a stairway and think of nothing.
bathe in all the liquid that still struggles in our chests.

go. be like a god, and make a lovely mess of things.
go. be like a telephone wire, give someone sturdy.
go. be like the flying thing not flying, and seek rest.

Thieves (for Lisa and Eve)

I am convinced that there are sounds
with which my sorrow is unacquainted.
That there are arms who mean more
to the body they fell upon than the hands
by which they are inextricably known.

What publicity may mitigate for the breathing.
I offer you handlebars: all the liquid
that still struggles in our chests.

That we may hold this space gently.
and believing.
That our heads may float to Heaven
and garnish our ears.
What comfort scams rampant and allows:
say grieving.
What language mimics is oblivious:
plead rest.

Dress

The plan, with you, was always easy. Plan empty and
call it open. Plan midnight. Call down
Heaven when in the throat of the suffocant.
Plan cigarette and call it cigarette.
Call down glass on the generous of the eyeball.
Call down canyon walls careless. Call it bleeding.
Call down DNA when what we harbored
was shiny. Call it political, politicians. Call it drift.

policital and all, in glass

let there be silence. and plenty.
let there be end tables. breasts. buoys.
let there be exit ramps. breasts. balls.

when, what essentially I made off with was your stair.
like a tunnel grieves a view of the sky:
all the emptiness between my teeth is a gift.

pray down the mirror our reflection says we
see through. your new lover on one side of the street.
your new bicycle. and then, therefore, you.

pray down a rope around the syllable
that haunts us. the narrative that continually takes
itself too seriously. a symphony of strangulated rests.

our music undone periscopically.
the pornography remains inexhaustible.
a white flag fading at the root.

and what void can we still find our way into.
victimless.
a hand signaling daylight to the sky.

a myelin mouth frozen open in the bedroom.
what you recognize is not me, is (not) me.
that, inside the body which is not your body

to defibrillate, your plastic hands articulate a bruise.
(I love you more with your pants down.) pray down an overpass.
because a demonstrative is lingering in the airway.

all pedal and unfrozen – will you see me?
pray down a casino and then a cornfield in the coda.
(prayitdownprayitoverpassmeoverprayitdownpassitoverprayitback)

tooth enamel is the strongest substance in the human body.
shame is not something we carry.
it multiplies in the recesses of our mouths.

because one hand still reaches into the empty.
pray down the pressure of your hand on my body.
a violence of comfort and request.

shoulder gratitude

let that it be visible

and sooner: your hand-

ing me row. and the dribble

of a belt coming down. let

that arthritic in a game-

room is still gaming. weather

inconsequence, yes: hands down.

A Congress of Bring and of Invisible: The Language of Heaven is No

city, in which the body is disappearing.

city, in which the aorist is resurrected.

city, in which I cultivate disparation.

city, in which the body permeates know.

city, you are rampant in the earlobes. a staple

furnished blithely in a tree.

city, you are Freudian in your constancy.

city, you are the permutation. of go.

_

city, in which the feet stutter reckless.

city, in which the vertigo is unnamed.

city, in which the throat throws persimmon.

city, in which the sheets are an impediment.

city, in which I trouble you, like rain.

city, in which the surface is disappearing.

city, in which the manhole never leaves you.

city, in which the visible is a treachery.

city, in which her hair breaks, like shame.

city, in which the whitewash is receding.

city, in which the finally falls out.

in which the body is neither promise nor

kindness nor dare. city, in which my back is newly token.

city, in which the broken are uneven.

even and faithfully bound.

_

city, in which your fists are a miracle.

city, in which there remain 2 types of teeth.

city, in which we revision a thankful girder.

city, in which the violin is a fever.

a girder we must fashion from our teeth.

for the city in which the falling has already happened.

city, in which the arm of every chair leads with leave.

city, in which you protect things by erasing them.

city, in which my tongue is frozen black.

city, in which the brachial is unnerving.

city, in which your hand is opportunity.

city, in which your hand defines my back.

_

city, in which she will look hard and look harder and unsee me.

city, in which I tend not to play music.

city, in which I desperate to become unseen.

city, in which these hands are my hands when I hold you.

city, in which I love you is a belt coming down.

city, in which the cement arrived in us.

city, in which smaller sounds prevail and I abuse them.

city, in which my mother says son.

city, in which there are 2 fingers. 2 fingers and no space in between.

arrive in us, contact, arrive.

city, in which my mother says you to me.

city, in which my father says none.

_

city, in which I know nothing about the pressure a woman reels

depending on the placement of her knees.

city, in which you were putting on your clothes.

city, in which the ears were a cacophony.

city, in which we know the gentle lungs are working

by the way the breath abandons the troubled mouth.

(ir)Retrieval

That _______ was born Melissa Dawn Tolbert December 24, 1974

to a woman named Jeannie Darline. That in this

we decorate almost. We mean (we relegate) we mean.

That the hopeful bearded face becomes a tyranny.

(That what we believe in is a form of refraction. The back turning

as a word, upon itself. Draping the neck into sound.) That there lies

a calloused form of predicate beneath the Rupaul.

That the body which is her body is a decency.

That we draw can(n)ons around permissible and rest.

That a book I received I then decided to return to you.

That I do not know forgiveness for the things we choose to leave.

That, like the after image given to a closed eye.

She is prologue. And simultaneous. She is domicile.

That this is not therefore. (salient.) That she bring.

She remembers that there are names, kinder names,

for the accidental bruising left by witness. And

sedulous in her canter these are illegible. With a mouth

full of tinder. and forget. With a hand, not a shade,

and a gleaning. That she may liquefy all outposts. and fall back.

That there is a causal born predisposed to a reachliness.

That there are fists with which my mouth has not met.

In what became known as The Topography

of Unrequited Laughter, You Fucking Suck, and The Pedagogue

of Sixth and Silhouette. It is not so much that transferable

is in the offering. (Although I am ungentle and

in between, dear Ramona.) That you come home

anyway. And bring the telephone of your liking.

That you block discreetly and settle spring between my mouth.

That we are a history. On a good day. A context. The path

of a paper airplane drawn optimistically about the edges

of a room. That my hands do still so little (grieving)

to listen to me. Usurpers of sleep and yet

their genius is temerity. That they memory

they memory they member. (non-consensual.) They member

they memory they rest. In this, they encourage

disparation. They gentle Hustler, Man 2 Man,

and Too Deep. (we are patching this in on film.)

That the bathroom is guileless in its obscurity. What we

reach for when placing a _______ in the mouth.

Do not hold your hands like a lift to me.

Lying just below the derivative of undertow. That they

are given twice as empty as sound.

It’s not silence I’m afraid of, it’s commodification.

(on peeing on, seeing on, Out.)

Masturbation’s just not the same without menstruation: what

with all the delectable injectables: where what’s obscure

outweighs antiquity: to obdurate cheekily: there’s little

that’s been improved here: he’s in and, clearly, she’s out.

Faux hawk □ (:when it all comes down to hegemony)

Chin stache □ (: i.e. and/or even the pathology of and/or)

White speak □ (: gephyromania is interminable and dis-ease)

Ellipses □ (make that a double check) (: with regard to virile mangos,

friends, and (more important) money: the subtextual consciousness of queer.)

I press curiously tender to your Arabia. (oh baby i)

My labia swell and Really. That’s so neat and all.

But it’s the rise of the dicklet we all cheer.

disappearing wheelbarrow, I wish you wheelbarrow.

the whiskey rash reel off the hand.

the ballyhorse leg is a spoonfall; applesauce

class in a round. hermeneutically sealed

in a braindrop (we are) fucking shit up

with insistence. the barrel chain bounty gives

ground. Mercedes! Mercedes! Despite the genuflect.

how much plow could really you land in a day.

despite the eyelids and the pants that fall

accordingly. despite Rothko, repatriation,

and the parallel. what will generous make

broken in the handoff. (we are) (tiny) a population

of peligro. despite the temperature and armistice of when.

(we are) rebar: for rent or for rain.

(So that there is at least one flag you will never know the weight of.)

(So that the chair has many permutations.)

(So that you move forward as if through a jump-rope.

The handles molesting your hands.)

(So that there are peepholes in which we are still lingering.)

(So that my tits are still tits in the summertime.)

(So that as long as I hold you I will continue to pour my hair out.)

(So that lack may not measure thickness, nor health, nor sound.)

That the body which is my body is a relevancy.

That the new body which is irrelevant is a test.

That there’s never been a man in the room. That,

were it not for one man fucking me back into existence,

I would have sworn to you that I thought I saw two.

That there are now tears in what was supposed to be

impermeable. That either way I am unable to be conceived.

That the body which is my body is indeterminately.

That there is little room for the tiny tufts of toilet paper.

That I will hold them in the verisimilitude I continuously

refer to as my chest. That this is somehow a demonstration

of bravery. That better models of logic are exemplified

by this drain. That erosion is what some still believe in philanthropy.

That this is a prayer shawl. That still we refuse to call her by her name.