after I was diagnosed & my friable red gut leaked blood like a new animal I’d grown
I came home to learn how to sleep & to name Crohn’s & you should ask someone out to coffee
everyone said & an ampersand looks like a pregnant belly the famous writer said
& all the sick poems I read had lovers in them kissing the belly &
their mouths linked as if by a blue stone & the water kept electrifying me
mildly as a penitent angel & sometimes I pray to thunder to be anything but what
I am & someone says to me there is nothing more universal than the love poem & I
find out the woman who once lived here stuffed steel wool in all the outlets & her husband
died shortly after & it was to drive out the hunger of small mice & you never know
how the right man will change your life people told me & once I walked through
an unfinished house & left a message on the bare lathe a coiling dragon with my name
in its claws & I set traps around the house & my life was not complete until I met
& don’t worry the pain of being single is not forever & how many times have I risen at night
listening
for god & I can convince no one there is no pain in what I am & the black sky
splits open godhead & I fashion lungs out of my breath on the window & how many
times has the female god come down & lain next to me wrapped her arm around my side &
there is no set of jeans to hook my fingers into & there is no mouth filling with cum & my
pulse
is a hammer making stars deep in body & the couple next door fight & fuck beneath the deer
head mounted on their wall & I once found a mouse the cats killed & licked the skull clean
to bare bone & am I staving off death if there is no one on top of me &
scream a white candle litany & my chronic body turns over & in the dark mouse
backs snap in half