calling you Fresh Kills.
I want to keep you in my plastic
Happy Meal heart, but what snaps open
stays on Earth forever, my center floating
down a canal until it’s swallowed by a seal.
Who cares our plastic drifts as a tagalong
to the sunset, an autobiography of artificial,
a dead whale washed up in the Philippines,
eighty-eight pounds of plastic in its gut?
Damn the turtles! Customers at McDonald’s
want their straws! And we could be practical
lovers if we remembered to bring
our reusable totes into the store—you said
the cashier gave me the stink eye for forgetting,
but I was lost in my own head thinking
about my grandmother in hospice, leaving
the store with a casket of even more plastic bags.
It hurts to say my convenience is more important
than the sea. I write a postcard to Earth
—I love you, but watch me navigate your landfills
in stilettos, let me kill your buzz. And you know
I’m talking about the bees now. My hands in the dirt—
if you want to gather honey, don’t kick over every hive.
I DON’T OWN ANXIETY, BUT I BORROW IT REGULARLY
Once I believed the saint I carried could keep me
safe. He lived in a rain jacket I wore
to keep out the weather and by weather,
I mean danger. Tell me a story
where no one dies. That story begins in heaven,
ends in heaven, and includes chapters
on heaven, heaven, and heaven.
It’s not really a story but a wish, or a concern.
Sometimes I wonder if there’s one moment
when no one is dying, where we all exist
on this planet without loss—
but there are too many of us
doing foolish things, someone is always sipping
the arsenic, someone is always spinning
a gun. And then
add old age, misfortune, a tree that’s leaned too long
in the forest and a family of five
headed off for a hike.
We cannot predict our tragedies.
We cannot plan a party for the apocalypse
because friends of the apocalypse know
the apocalypse always shows up
uninvited with a half-eaten bag of chips.
This is why some of us wake up
in the middle of the night looking for a saint—
and maybe your saint is a streetlight
or maybe the sea, or maybe
it’s the moment you walk out the door
and exist in the darkness,
announce to the heavens that you’re still alive.
WHISKEY-SOUR-OF-THE-NIPPLE STORY
Like every forest, I carry a bonfire
beneath my shirt. And my mattress?
It’s a featherbed of flames.
I’d want to write you a letter about longing,
but it has so many wishbone moments
you’d break, I promise. You—
you’d end up crying or cowarding,
or being part of the crocodile-tear
audience asking for a refund. Like most
lovers, my heartstone is actually heartbutter,
a heart murmur made of wax and it melts,
it smolders, the way the moth
isn’t suspicious of a lighter
until it moves too close to the fire.
This is my danger—
I kiss the whalebone without wondering
what happened to the whale.
It’s inexperience watching
the mercury drip onto my tongue—
seeing only the beauty of silver,
not the poison of a perfect teardrop,
like him. Or her. And still.
Let’s not be the part of the drink
that melts into something weaker.
Like any darling, I trust too much.
Even a burning building has a purpose,
as the whiskey does, the nipple, the novel.
So let’s begin the story here. Near the plastic
ocean. Our shirts off. Our drinks filled.
A bowl of cherries. Believing there aren’t any.
Wildfires in sight.
EVERYONE
