ryestain

without these glasses,
I can only move 19 inches
between fadeouts

listen: you can't keep turning everything into a movie called
every 30 seconds

& echo locating in a vacuum
echo locating in a noise jar
how sound travels: unfold a warm body

your husband is honest
one day, I will unlove you

run a marathon
it's easy: forget about stopping

don't abuse your past
beautiful words need the truth

all sound travels on four legs
& unfolds space
into bodies

we were at a party at my house
are you leaving soon?

Turn off the lights
& shut the door
& heat up

LETTER TO THE DEBITOR

your clink.
your wobble job.
my head is leaking heat, go on though.
you reap what you eat.

your name on a grain of rice.
your name in a fortune teller
pretelling, botched luck
slapping around her memory.

"i was sitting with the wives
of geniuses while my wife sat
with the geniuses"
this is how you learn to
unlucky your tissue enjoyments.
it is all Flex and Plunge.

year in a car, year in a car,
season on ventilation.

don't go to bed
sulky like that. don't go
at all. get in my pool.
assuming our
temperatures match,
you won't freeze dead.

i may make you make noises.

JELLY BELLY THUNDER THIGHS

I’m dedicating songs
to you. I’m dedicating
orgasms. I used to think
of my English teacher that way.

I used to know Pippi
Longstocking’s entire name
by heart. Now I could probably
just Google it. Remember

the bicycle gang
we created? It was cold out.
I used to be badass. Now
I’m just bad-about-responding.

I like my dreamland
Even when witches are after me.
I don’t think
you have a disease.

And I don’t have
to be fat. I don’t have to kill myself.
But I might
have to be dumb.

When I dream about your body it’s wrong
like a specific Picasso.
You should
Wikipedia that shit.

SHOOT SASS & TWIST ONE UP

Slicing it up

for response, there is so much spitting

in the eye with these

brief missives.          I want more

wringing out.

                     Depiction of action

                     not the actual

           elimination or reduction

less winging off

a page in the ugly dark

like its coming

between you and sleep

Pull another 

day and don’t

blink 

when a sun sings in through, like night’s wrecking

ball. 

                     In the building’s

                     upper floors, vined in above 

                     the walking, remembering too,

                     a tea, glazed glass

                     binoculars and the leaves

                     a new clarity on the prehistoric fronds

                     an infinity of green ovals lit 

by the breezes. My eye reads 

the scratches on the lenses

like an old PlayStation game and if I applied

lotion like that, could it somehow be

buffed

to sheen? Could the irreverence be eschewed

like a prayer but point them out

instead of skyward. Phone, fax, email

or text your requests, just as you would 

cordon up the dough. None 

of this amounts to anything more
than a little reality 

television. You’ve got this, tiger. 

this is my missive:

bright page flipped or a rip

this is what happens: ugly dark

a poem without eyes or muscles

night's hymnal uses sun's light

to sing to witness

and this is its prayer

but I can't see anymore

fuck these stars

fuck that bloated moon

there are only pages

and this is how I say "I miss you"

One Right Thing:

I don’t wake with intentions,

those that caused

you to make tri-level

houses possible,

with blankets and

pillows on every chair,

sofa, and bed.  You may

be licked by fire, but I’m

touched and tasted

by things far more

real—

on the chairs, sofas,

and beds.  I don’t intend

to ever lay beside you.

But I shoot spit

at you, skyward.

outer senshi

stuck in a super slow golden eclipse

i'm a calm bone-whittler, full of bruisy calamity,

i'm the hardest softest hardest softest

all my correspondences back to earth

use the phrase:
let me know
let me
    know, think of a gentler request;
i've been up against and grinding
since there were sharps enough to cut,
my spatial interruptions
getting blunter, blunting my blunts til they're a twist
of remembered edges
                the essences escape still
i'm a wad of bluffs
i'm a buffalo gal, i will come all over
then expand, merge, bifurcate,
ox-bow around a little

forgive therefore this loyal telescoping;
pardon these plain quakes,

the sound you hear that's like 

twenty hungry guitars circling,

                                           i got taught 

to be careful of a steady winnow, forgot,

i did rupture.

my wavelengths bear no sheist particles,

when i find a hill i got to roll down;

remember grass, climb

 

can i be expected not to remember too 

a tongue
that was sun-colored,
a clutch to be impressed upon,
a real stand-out 

son of someone

you probably don't wake with intentions

in cold empty wind space out here,

say without alarm i wish

every moment from now on to be
the marrow your thoughts gnaw,
and the sweet star-dew they lick
when they wake from fits and 

stray to dreaming