At some point

I had a swollen muscle

)or a body

that pretended to be

one swollen muscle)

Loaned to me by a tuft of sugar cane

I don’t know how to hold sweetness

or vastness the right way

Like a poacher caressing dirt

before cutting for some long absent bone

What I’ve been able to hold has long

been lost in a hole of the white

porcelain of one whole universe’s heirlooms

Cartography is just the

impulse to jump

off of things

The righteous have since discovered

a black hole with its maw wide open

Who can compete

with that kind of devotion?

I certainly can’t

My stomach

Won’t hold any more of

The universe’s ash

I’ll cough it up in the yard

Next to the ire and the musk

and the citrus tree

While the man across the street

gives audience with pillaging eyes

At my wither

at my pinked failure

Who will hold my hair

when that love escapes

my mothering tendon

Who will hold me through

All my wretched