e-merge

this morning I could taste the grout

lathered between the brickwork 

of my breath. I was reminded 

of how glad I was to have seen you 

last night, though we do not know 

each other anymore. Some weeks 

tone toward air trapped in a drum.

Perhaps we were not each other's 

to know. I turn to the smaller pockets 

of my heart, its juice against 

thick internal cloth quivering 

between your voice and my memory, 

now a torn open outdoor condiment, easily 

forgotten because we were laughing 

towards the end, unattended, at nothing 

that exceptional; nothing famous 

in the way we reflect one another’s 

immaculate namelessness. As if I am 

a crystal lip of flint just cool 

enough to the touch. As if you are 

a rich society created by a rich fire 

suddenly erased by a jug knocked

over. Bitter is a word to inherit for

survival. Lungs leftover make it a job  

to be unsung. But we are out of work;

we are singing. Somewhere

I am a wide open ancient sphere

in the great seizure of many trees, 

their leaves loyal to warm celestiality

amid caustic municipal aperture. Nowhere 

and its animalia and ancestry 

and ammunition. Far away, rust reads

as chocolate; dusk—quietly

swallowing a tsunami just a few inches

below what I wished for you and you for me. 

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note:

I’m reading this Thursday at a bookstore called Page Against The Machine.

2714 East Fourth Street, Long Beach, CA 90814

6/15 @ 7PM

Hope to see you there!