Poetry
I thought of all the things birds do:
they nestle down together, they preen together,
they swoop on eddies in the air together.
They chirp good morning and croon goodnight,
and sometimes, they flash their feathers at each other
and say “Come on over, let’s have some fun.”
I want to be like birds with you.
You probably think I made a pact with the stars too.
But I don’t know why they fall.
Maybe they are visiting their lovers.
Maybe they tired of their lovers.
Maybe the stars get wanderlust like you do.
Maybe they are trying to light someone’s way home.
I made a pact with the birds when I was a little boy.
I fed them crumbs of my grandma’s cornbread
and memorized their colors and their names.
I promised to pick up their fallen nests and put them back,
if they’d just pop in and pipe at me from time to time,
when I am sad, when I am in love.
Morning licks
the nectar of Night off her fingertips
and hums content.
She sucks on dew, bites the lip of dawn,
she moans into the mouth of the earth,
waking the world with the waves of her hips.
You are the sea:
a hush of waves on the surface
but you go deep and deep
and deeper than the light,
a belly full of strange things
beautiful without the sun.
You wore gold eyeshadow
in fall, and green in spring
and in winter you wore
no eyeshadow at all.
In summer, you wore the sun
and all year, my love, my love.
Kiss me; my chest is a lantern
I am sundown with love
I am marigold with love
I am raspberry with love
I am blood orange with love
I am embered with love for you.
You decided to teach yourself
how to flip pancakes
until the kitchen and the cat
and you and me were covered in batter,
until you whooped in joy, cheering
in excitement, dropped your one success.
To keep the gloom at bay:
laugh every day.
Laugh a Herman Munster laugh.
Laugh a colorful painting laugh.
Laugh a marshmallow sugar laugh.
Laugh at your own jokes.
Laugh at mine.
Laugh until your ribs are so full and aching
there’s no room for the wolf under them.
You love like this: a headfirst love, an outright love,
a vigilant, attentive love,
a stubborn love, a headstrong love. You love
the way I have always wanted to be loved:
with all of your insides and with all of your outsides,
you love with your careful fingers;
you are always untangling the tangles of me.