I think I smothered your child
in the quiet churn, muzzled
her tiny African mandible in the mucous
of my undone motherhood. I braided

the black cables of her hair into bone
marrow, burned her fingernails to crust,
crushed the song of ashen atoms twisting
in the thimble of her throat. I wanted

you to save her, to hear her when
you mined me. I was only silence
for you to plumb, air too thin
to womb for your songs. When you stab

a brittle matchbox with a staff
of dynamite, something is sure to burn.

There’s always stone
or brick or concrete
Is there a difference?
It’s cold and my back
bones are grinding against the mortar
or caulk if it’s someplace cheap

A stairwell or backstage
or a construction detour
Soundproof and damp
even in the thick of summer

I’m pretending it’s a coincidence
that he found me, an accidental
finger on his when he hands
me a pencil, a crowded room
that forces knees to touch,

deliberate perfume on my elbow
when I reach across him for the water
pitcher, the slow pour from its lip
to my glass, he asks

me to meet him after last bell
on the catwalk, and I am
merely writing poems, sneakers dangling
through the lighting grid when he arrives,

he asks me for a casual cocktail
and I shrug as though my humming
hadn’t instructed him. I’m a startled hen
when his strident feathers burst

iridescent like a manhattan opera
That we kiss is happenstance
even that we kiss again
That my knuckles knit to his

in backs of taxis, as though I hadn’t
scripted him pinning me over
and over, alone, in journals and bedrooms
At the end, I exhume my desire

It’s a common rock
from my mother’s landscaping
A secret I swear to keep

Let me now unravel screams
knotted in the knoll of your tongue,
simple throttled terror scraping
languid through heavy bones,
shrill your silly iris to umbrellas,
whatever. You like it.

The throb of throat to fist
is like the antechamber of waking
to wafting breakfast smells, pop
and sizzle of bacon blending
with late dreams; the body shivers alive,
grateful for its many tendons. Let me
now give your mouth a definition.

I will call it hurricane, pouting
against the sturdy shore of my shoulder.
Jokes and promises splattered desperate
into the urn of my rigid hand, morning
is your only witness, no
one will believe you.

Let me now define the femur
rocketing against me, the low
shaky favor a clarinet asks
when it cowers in the corners of an orchestra.

The sloppy slap of thigh
to belly, the slurp of sweat
slick breasts pulling away and
away and away from the center
where we stick. This is sin.
The hungry din of gnats swarming
over a picnic.

The pawing carves me out.
I’m nothing. Confetti of voice
and fat, canvas to be bled and
scraped and bled again. Browning silver.

Watch my fingers become thread
with the linen, my face a pillow
case, my brains down, I won’t
even swat the fly on my cheek
because my cheek is a crown
of batting, seams unraveling
on the fault lines of the quilt.

While I’ve been poking around on the theater scene for some time now, this will be the first professional production of a play that I’ve written. It’s going to come hot and quick, so make sure you don’t miss it.