17th Street Review

When God said “genesis”

We went ahead and mistook it for shame

I’ve seen dogs hold their tails between their legs after

Pissing in the wrong place — 

We are not the only creatures

Bound and abandoned to bad habits and self aware ness/ I know after a long winded harvest of mean dreams and super villains: that a Mecca of art like stuff awaits on the other end,

This awkward cannibal keeps eating finger nails and hair follicles because — well shit he means well and is trying to stay off the hard stuff, i.e. human flesh — the boogey man is a misunderstood sociology professor/ who drinks too much and misses his daughter/ my fingers are swollen from clenching to the attics in mason jars/ I wear a necklace of fireflies that I don’t know much about/ dark times only await when I stand still long enough/ words are stagnant with their history/ violence leaves my body every time I choose “Love!” And we are Mavericks on Sunday’s/ she is a Pisces/ so is my father

I am a Virgo so is her father/

Her hands do enough work to engulf both my collar bones —  I collect her laugh for Monday’s/

Violence leaves my body every time I choose “God!”/ all my friends are made from

Sky paint and retribution

All my friends

All my friends

I choose to love them radically/

I do not like hugs and forehead kisses

But I love the sound of a women’s voice with my ear pressed against her chest —  I dream in places that remind me of my mother on a good day/ another poet shot himself in the mouth he combusted into dandelion seeds/ I’ve spread him out in corporate concrete hoping for release/ she illustrates “love!” With moon dust and fish scales — 

How God it is to know this/ an African woman was dreading my hair when I was 10 she read my palms and said I ought to be a writer, I wrote a story about the water when I was in third grade, my mother has kept it since/ she is an Aquarius and bares high water like horizon shards/ my father is a Pisces and has fins like a Pegasus/

I wrote a poem for my grandfather, signed it with all my love and god does not belong to me

And god does not belong to me/

But there is a swell hummingbirds between my ears because they work hard to stay alive — 

I work hard to stay alive

So do all my friends

All my friends are awkward cannibals staying off the hard stuff,

I bite my nails and used to pull my hair out and burn it/ I blink too much when I’m nervous because I am taking snapshots of time/ I only know the sun and moon and fireflies/ I did not know you can shake them

Dead in mason jars/ I did not know that I’d been playing dead for many years/ i revised the fireflies to shed light and edit death as a less tragic thing/ I told god there are starving babies and a war going on/ so please let me be/ he had none of it/ he has all of me/

Water is just outer space/I saw a turtle the size of a living room once!

Chickens are tiny dinosaurs and human beings are little apes — 

It makes me smile when I realize I live in a sphere/ I want to learn god all at once so does she/ so do all of my friends

I’ve been called a firefly a second time in this life/ there are not many rooms for coincidence/ I walked into a coincidence maze and it was satirical and strange/

I walk into a god hole and it was unsettling and big/

I do not know the difference between fireflies and lightning bugs/

I know they both huddle on the upsides of my heart,

I know they are small and seek the opposite of oblivion — 

I am also small and seek the opposite of oblivion

I believe in the dark sides of “god!”

I believe it doesn’t make them any less godly/ just elongated thick skin

And there are no tricks here/ just a cacophony of some new things to learn.

Like the way violence sings out of our bodies and manifest in mercy.

Brutality walks into a room/

Filled with fireflies and rainbow fish from the moon/ I give you my hands unclenched and divinely feminine

To say: look how far we’ve come.