Tit Vein

blue as wind

shield wiper

fluid, it trembles,

cresting across

the pudgy knoll

of my right

bosom; a pipeline

of blood; the tit vein

wavers in its straightness,

indomitably queer

in its pleasure-desire;

a lightning bolt,

i like to think;

harry potter, but trans;

straight from the heart

to the nipple, a kite string;

it makes me

weep; my heart, my breath,

my chewing, the earth; growing

my tit like this, turning my nipple

puffy & pink; sensitive

& tender; an eye

that cries

milk; a micro

phallus i will press

into u; if u want me to,

after i ask if i can, if

u want that; &

i will take yr tit

in my lips, too, & pull

at the nipple

as if climbing

a rope to god;

as if corralling

clouds down from

sky for a bed

for us to lay; as if u are

at the end of a long string

of climbing line i am holding

onto, hanging

down off a cliff

above the sea

where we

have come many times

to remember our itty bitty

ness; our impossible

larger than life ness; now,

it feels like, if i do not pull

hard enough, u will fall &

i will never see u

again; the sea

will swallow u in its

silent teal wash & slush below;

& in the instant

i imagine this tragedy, my hands

no longer perform their hand

ness; i forget everything

that happened on earth;

how tardigrades look

like mini-elephants

but trunkless; how the light

on the pale green kitchen

counter in morning seemed to

be a god voice calling my name; &

now, then, i will hurl

my self after u; into that mystic

static; watching as u

crash into the waves,

a heartbeat before me;

our bodies will find each other

even then, even there; wash up

on shore together like whales

blitzed w military sonar; or be scavenged

by sharks & shrimp; our skulls

shells for octopuses evading

conger eels; as my lungs fill

w salt & kelp, i will remember

this morning where we walked arm

in arm, laughing, enjoying our to

gethering, until a cat, all white

ran over, in the road

appeared; a little runnel

of blood, a failed conversation

bubble, trickled down the gray,

grave street; a white minivan

tussled the corpse once more

as we mourned hapless (our bodies

in the surf, churning; the van’s

tires, the waves, slashing;

the mouth of the eel, gnawing);

an old man w a terry towel

shaking his head

softly swaddled

the cat, picking them up

as if a delicate cake; the old

woman next door came out,

texted the neighbor whose

cat it was, who came out not knowing

the horror laid before him; just a white

towel on the lawn; a red vein

stretching along its hilly

body; the neighbor unable

yet to ascertain death

like this; his skull opened

like a pez dispenser

and out flew spirits who sang

at me, urgently spitting

on to my death-addicted

mind; let us un-envision

every possible apocalypse;

let us only imagine

what rollicks w living, what

expands our embrace

of earth; may we become un/wound;

& now i cave; i become w/hole;

in this moment, in every moment;

i hold u; now; tight; tighter; tightest;

i must; in this poem; in this aperture;

i must say it; u are not

falling into the sea

from an impossibly great

height; u are not;

u are entangled w me;

on this bed; this is

here; this is now;

i am jumping

into u; not after u;

i must let u go;

u are a portal

out of linear time’s

bleeding & busted fist;

so i hum u; i hum yr

hand in my hand; on my

jawbone; inside of me;

in every future present

past noospheric possible;

we tree; our roots

twist each other;

underground & above;

our branches, arms;

interlaced;

there is nowhere

we are not another

Tendernest

The coyotes capering in the creekblood yowl into the night

knowing there is an ear(th) who will catch & sow their ceremony

into the sky’s tapestry of listening. My mother dancing

in the car is an ocean breathing luminous fog on the coastal crag.

The nests in which we are transformed to kin, gleaned from the duff

and shive of earthskin, make architectures of relations, ecologies

of care. All our incessant dreaming imprints time onto the blanket

of our softening animal. Every flesh a bluff, a sedge, hurricane—crooked

river where once we rose wet with halos of fire. My daughter,

who will never be & has always been, bears the responsibility

of the moon-violet humus, the continent-shaped cloud, the zinnia weeping

for the gale’s long kiss. I swaddle her in throws patina’d with one million

grandmothers—hands, hooves, scales, chlorophylls—tender

with the soft hum of untranslatable asteroids. There is nowhere

we are not the land. Strumming the wheat, breathing w mosses,

bathing in cloudlymph. She calls my/our name, now. Perched in her teal

lawn chair out back below the red-framed window, she is an

estuary of holding. The spirits are us and their/our seed is a palimpsest

of centrifuged marrow, a body we’ve been singing, in one form

and another, into words since before the sequoias even knew

about us, before the chittering cypress groves felt the wind’s

clutch, since before the mountains rose in cacophonous

harmony with the brightly dying lightward. Before even,

yes, lungs learned to long for language.