Our Lot, Woman

is to explain man—

is to explain, man.

Happy people stay in happy hotels

with happy windows shut and rails 

so high all my sighs reverb as rebukes.

Hikikomori

Invocations flatline in constant red—

every reach of this foreboding tech was for you.

Schopenhauer

Not that you ever rolled a smoke for me

but billowing in ennui, I quicken time's deeds.

Sown [sic]

She gathered all the silks in her wails

and thread by thread made a son.

I Bought My Thousandth Cigarette at 18

Cold fire of which I am wrought,

legitimized in print as a footnote.

Farther

Thoughts made you, only blood

wishes forbid your distant demise.

Trauma

Depth has no light but you flash 

with a thousand eyes with no lids.

I Wished Death Upon Many

Those damn ghosts I see

are never the ones I loved.

Mother's Advice

Relationships are penance

for your past crimes.

Constellation

When I look back at my lighthouses, just 

addicts, saints, and whores—you know, women.

Ascent

I only look like falling

in a capsized hell.

La Grande Morte

I keep decorating you in different lights

turning till hindsight hits you just right.

Night is

coolest be-

fore dawn. Rise.

Irish Goodbye

For P. Brady, who told me to edit myself

We were so bad at endings—so you sear

a slumber into my book, writing itself evermore.

All the feline forevers

pickpocketed past me, hung me

out when clouds burst, a broken fever.

Amnesiac

Hope lives in me like money

burned anew every day.

Fat, Gold Watch

For K. McArthy

A good boyfriend is oxymoronic, a bad one

is redundant - you say yet, you love, you love.

Qualms of the Orator

Isn’t this nice, universe conspired this night—

Coyly I lean as you whisper, I love your diction.

For Her, Who Bore and Wrought Me

A dozen times, you’ve killed yourself

in front of me, yet you still live. So do I.