My 8 year-old self holds a heart

After scrubbing elbows to nails, Mom gowned
and gloved me. Through swinging doors I saw
every body but his, cloaked in blue. On his back: eyes taped 

shut, penis halo'd in dark hair, the smell of sterility
and iodine, his ribs pried open and inside him-- a hollow
large enough for several sparrows. Just tall enough to see
and reach up, then over, then down into the hollow
with my right hand, his heart slick and pink as the inside
of a swollen cunt. Was his spirit hovering as this child
reached inside him, cupped his heart in her palm to the sound
of Led Zepplin on the radio? Did he wonder, who was this girl-
child hovering, reaching inside him--doing as she was told. 

yes, I love her

There is a pit inside of her:
deeper than she is

able to. Go. I followed her
half-way down, once. She barely

made it. Out. She can not bear
to hear some of the words. I write

and it would be easier to swallow
were she not in my throat, as I wrote,

but the psychic cord was never cut,
though attempted. Her hair was once

long and black reflecting. She
is still innocent and I can't

forget her hands. It is as if she
has died and come back

to life. It is as if I carry

her on my back everywhere.

I go. I could write her
forever. She is my

oldest lover.

From a crow's view

my childhood, blended, would be

the color worn by monks--  color

of ash,

lead,

fog,

color of wolf,

carved stone,

storm cloud,

color of hair,

whale,

mouse,

dead brain,

aura   of the depressed  

Fear 111: my face on a milk carton

A latch key kid I'd head straight for the blinking machine: red:

push play : I'm going to kidnap Sarah became not unusual.  

When my parents got home, my adopted dad would prepare

the gun, teachers were phoned with the secret word--

strawberry, for anyone picking me up from school.

(I can tell you that now.)

At night I'd lock the front door eleven times-- up 

and out of bed: that journey of heart pound 

down stairs again and again: terror plagued

those years, years after we'd left him, changed my name,
never sit with my back to a window.

Sometimes he'd call when we'd be home. 

Mom made me talk to him, though I didn't really 

want to, though he terrified me, though I hated him. 

He'd say, Tell your mom  I love her still. Tell her I love her.

Mom would listen as she stirred a hot pot, I'd wrap phone cord

tighter around my finger till the tip turned white.

Your father loves you, she'd say.

There is no data on how many children were saved by milk cartons,

but as a child the fear welled my face would one day

be on one. I hate/d milk; those faces haunted me. The rows

after rows of children stapled

on Walmart walls still get me.

how the girl became a messenger

hands shape the ground beef into a question-mark patty,

she feeds it to the girl who once grew inside her

girl eats patty, asks why do you

call yourself a whale?  mother feels trapped,

should have served girl a traditional

period-patty, tries to put her feelings

into a mental-meat-grinder till the girl's

question comes out in shreds

*

the girl begins to study whales in effort to understand her mother--

slippery so she tells no one her mother loves water and whale tongues

weigh as much as an elephant, their hearts as much as a car, so, the girl 

infers her mother feels overwhelmed, but is unable to speak 

the weight of it,

the girl runs baths for her mother, lights candles--

she'll feel most at-home here, she thinks, but she'll be lonely--

(blue whales travel in pairs,) so I'll bathe (blue)

with her   so she's not so alone

next, often, they are two whales in a tub  
girl feels questions in her belly, gathers her body

beneath the faucet, imagines a waterfall-ing
into her open palms  this goes on for years

she wrinkles nightly into thumb tips,
remembers the story of Jonah-- 

swallowed by a whale never named,
inside whom he lived for three days

in acidic darkness, before purged
on shore--forgotten, his skin, hair bleached

white from acid  and the smell
had he doubted before

he was a messenger of God,
he never doubted again  

What she wants (to be continued...)

to be wrapped

in strands of lights-- glow

in the corner of someone's room

to eat batteries and pass

them as a highway from Florida to Nebraska 

delivers a bus full of children
to feel light as a jumping bird
to spin in a field of cotton
without guilt or nausea
to eat it all without being full
to taste like honey suckles smell
to be licked

without disappearing
to know the names of every cloud--
to be one for a day
to pray on her knees

to want

to not eat her chapstick

to have pretty handwriting

to be a monk

to climb Everest

to eat cheese

to swim with seals 

to crack a coconut on her knee

to cum

to peel her lip with her fingers

snow, lots of snow

What roses want

She hides in a garden of angry roses-- red

like the one on her mother's breast

bone, thorns tips like a record's needle, scratching

across skin-- roses want to be remembered

in her dreams, they write-- want to stain 

her permanently

red like love and pain, 

like every month's throwings : petals. She hides

in the garden, a wall surrounds her bones, her nest,

she smells roses with honey-hopes,

forgets not to move  

surrounded in silk and thorn

Catholic School Memory

Hipless and uniformed in plaid 

I hid in the closet with a bully girl
in the hopes shed like me after
we'd undressed, sucked each other's teeth,

shown each other our flat, hairless parts.
Where were the nuns

to finger a cross on my forehead in ash?
We wanted to be glamorous-- rolled
paper into pixi-stick tubes to set on fire, smoked
till our lungs, fingers burned. Her name
was Julia which had to be the prettiest
sounding bully name ever there was. Seems like
she was always wanting
to take me into that closet, I too was wanting
her long brown hair as my own.
I knelt often those years, it felt holy-- even when knees
skinned stuck to the leather kneelers at mass,
the altar boys knocking incense chambers
left to right down the aisle, dressed in white
robes. After school I'd slap-bracelet
my girl-arm, hang upside down

till my head filled with ocean sounds.

I imagined angels because I was alone for so long

They followed me for over a decade-- with their wild hair,

shiny broken teeth, lopsided wings. When I really

needed them they twittled my hair around their yellowed

finger tips. Sometimes I saw them in my cigarette smoke--

And I'd hear them in my head, sense

them staring down from the ceiling. --They read every

word I wrote. Once, when I needed to be alone, I put a blanket

over my head and wrote Leave me/Leave me 111 times. I burned

the paper over the bath tub, watched it curl like pubic hairs

before vanishing into a pile of ash I rinsed down the drain.

But they didn't go away. They whispered

is she going to eat. They laughed

too, when I 'd walk into a bed post or trip
over a snail. Though menacing, they were always

on my side-- good angels, and like me --outcasts,

who never knew when to go away.  

Run

Run

We dont have time. Dada

will soon tsunami-crash, pull

us under the sea till we float.

He's coming—quick, we

must go. Your swollen face--

a cracked mirror I see myself

broken inside, his steps

pounding—closer, into my dream-earth.

Run!--we belong nowhere.

We don't have time to belong.

Leave the cat beside the couch,
my beloved best friend-- leave him,

fast forward ourselves to a place

I climb the oak daily with each

scratch, I pray higher

and higher.

Focus on her wild eyes

Navy dress hits my knee,

cherry ringpop, tan 

pantyhose. Bus 189 slows to a stop 

at Kramer and Richmond.

Bye to our driver who looks

like MacGyver. Boys

and I get off and I walk   

home to a bungalow 

with green shutters.

I dont get far-- a blow

from behind sends me  

to ground. The “coolest”

of the bunch sits on top,

5pm sunlight, outside  

the store jolly ranchers cost

three cents. 

You stuff, You stuff he

laughs. The others
watch.  

For his protection

we'll call him Darrell.

Darrell reaches up navy

dress, gropes new breasts,

grabs handfuls

of leaves, shoves 

into bra. They scratch 

as they break

into pieces.

Dress at waist.

II

Darrell walks home, hears what
he hears most nights:

plate breaks into shards, father yells/mother
screams/slaps/groans: silence.
Darrell takes apart
his legos, piece

by piece.  Darrell lies
on his back, airplanes 

suspended over his bed.

III

Fifteen years later. Naked

ribcage, dreams of bloody

bird wings rinsed clean.

Drying off in the dark.

IV
In the blue barn I practice undressing myself.
The mare stares as I pinch a button—recalling,
I imagine my self under warm water, kissing a woman
until I'm airless, until each button—undone.
Focus on the mare's breath hitting the cold. Focus on her wild eyes--
not the Earth-feeling
of nakedness-- the screaming desire to trampoline
out of  body, twist my nipples into stones
to skip across the river.

Here's a story

of a man whose name

you'll never know, whose path

you'll cross only this once.

The ice has turtlenecked his

shopping cart full of cans,

bags. Beside the stoplight,

on a bench where you see

his breath. He asks for nothing

he's monk-still, encapsulated

in the silence of the icey

scene. If he were inside

a snowglobe, he'd be beautiful

and sad and safe to inspect

closely, carefully.

The light turns

a warm green and you

look away. You
look away.

Dear fish heartbeat,

Dear fish heartbeat,

I can no longer hear you, though you golden and glimmer, pulse in the low waters of the Kentucky pond, with its frozen lip you have slowed to the turn of a ballerina on her last, toed revolution, have slowed like a forced waltz, a dying hyena beside the river. Dear fish heartbeat I can not feel your beat in my body the way I once could when I passed all the raped-of-tree fields. Dear fish heartbeat, I wail like a pack of wolves whove lost their leader, but, light coming, must go; for they can not carry her in their mouths. Dear fish heartbeat the dog curls warm in my lap; I miss you.  

I wish for a way to say this beautifully.

I was 16.

He was 45.

I was in a chatroom.

So was he.

My mother slept.

He picked me up.

He gave me a drink, started to kiss me.

Please take me home now.

I'll take you home after you do what you came here to do.

It's a school night. My mother might wake up. Please.

I'm not taking you home yet. I promise to take you home after we have sex.

I don't want to. I want to go home.

Not until we have sex.

He came fast. He refused to take me home until the next morning.

I had just enough time to get ready for school.

My mother never noticed I was gone.

I told noone because I had a serious boyfriend.

I didnt know his name.

I didn't know I'd been raped.
I wish for a way to say this beautifully.

Why I dream Olivia Benson

V

I sold knives in stranger's homes, diced

carrots on tables. I believed

in their steel-- knew how sharp they were.

IV

The detective told me my rapist's last name

was Justice. The kit wouldn't be back for

at least a year. I didn't have HIV.  

III

Two days after it happened the hospital called.
My Potassium level was heart-threatened-
low from all the fingers down my throat. A butterfly

needle into my vein, I watched the IV bag empty

itself into me.

II

The day after it happened they said, pluck
50 pubic hairs. Either you can do it or we can. Gloved doctor

said no bruises, no torn flesh. He hmphed and left,

my shame-- raw,
warm yolk, cracked
over my body.  

I

19 and you know the story: short skirt it's true

it's trite my cheeks rouged from drink

that night. The house-- a strangers I can't see clearly.

When I woke he was inside me, mermaids
swimming in my mouth.

0

A cloud of cold deja vu leaves itself

in my eyes, layers over layers--

grape rhymes with drape rhymes
with freight but I must tell it, must tell

the not again of it--why

I don't buy those beautiful
brown pears anymore.

Untitled

I.

Perhaps it was just the lighting

it seemed I crumbled-- right there,

in the light stain in the corner,

light all over me, light over my whitened

skin but now I am unable

to linger.    Must go.

Ever since The Crumbling,

the constant electric inside

makes me
want

to kick : it is the medicine

and yet it still is.
I am high voltage

and there are many blinks.

You probably dont get it,

but anyways,

II.

the boredom kills me.

For example it's a day my tights are warm

and striped and blah blah  

anyway. The day drips

slowly-- drop; drop

in the sink of the day.

How slow the day

is, how bored

the cows--

I know the icicle dreams, Earth

I know the icicle dreams, Earth  

The trees' leaves are tongues of labradors--

flicking in the wind, little tongues with nothing

to say. They are listening tongues.

How many of us are there, pray-dreaming like this?

I know the icicle dreams:

I know grandeur and wishes, in every,

 dripping drop.

To Metaphorically and Literally Drive like a Trucker *

 To Metaphorically and Literally Drive like a Trucker *

drives, always

the sunrise, always

the sunset : different scapes

without a hat on, mountains

with different names. Drive like a trucker

drives, naps in the birds eyes--

snake of the wreck pile-up.

Drive at night when meteors,

drive so you burn, so, at times,

speed outside/still inside.

The road is your frame, when

the music's not playing

you live in the whooshing.

At the stop, you go

to their offering of numbers.

They give you an 1188

you wait to hear

called so you may

become clean : you wait : you

look at magnets : you put

a quarter in the stuffed animal

machine that gleams fluorescence--

the clawed spectacle drawing you in,

the light on your face as you

get closer to the bear you

will try for, drawing you in

as the fields draw you, in

whose arms you so want to be

taken, you are so often

moving like wind.

When they call 1188

you're alive and loosened over time

as you peel the clothes

from your body : your skin,

you realize is precious and scarred

and the hair on your shin reminds

you of your immortality.

You are naked somewhere in the middle

of Nebraska. A spider on the ceiling

is watching the hot water hit

your back and it's almost more

than you can bear.

*with gratitude

Train

I was freed and reunited with my mother-- who,

like a stroke victim, did not grasp the immensity

of what i'd been through. No more chamomile

feelings, or else it was chamomile all the time.

No in between. No mother slipping away slowly.

I'd had my head out the window of a train

passing through a tunnel. Nearly decapitated.

I should never have had my own head

out the window, but I have this thing with wind

and locomotion. This app on my phone reminds

me to stick my head out the window every time

it's 11:11.

Every now and then I have to move. The pain

is a ball that rolls towards me, forever. Deer sit

in the periphery like unmoved chess pieces

not covered in dust, but slick as seals.

My ballerina self has light on her face which is

looking up to the moon. She is transparent, lace

in her lungs-- something fibrous: an illness which

looks like snowflakes covering the seen

of a wreck.

It is hurting to hear the dog cry--

his howl

echoes. (His heart is sick with something

like blue fingers

warm and bruised.)

The dog howls like he's never feared.

Ache. He howls like the bright,

blank page exists an hour later.

The dog is still

howling.

It sounds.

He's just realized he's lost something

precious:

a part

of himself

:

it's still hurting,

the dog howls.

what if you go find the dog,

he comes to you--

you feel the sadness in his head.

and his sadness then kisses you.

A more beautiful blue

In the morning I will try

to describe a color to you

you've never seen before.

It is like

a more beautiful blue.

By the way, I can look at any color

and be okay. I can hold orange

within my iris, take it with me

to a place it don't mean a thing,

anymore. Orange don't mean a thing.

At night the colors stay outside where

they're supposed to, mostly.

I sleep with the windows open.

Meanwhile, the tower is famous because it leans,

deer bound in and out-- tails

flick ing white

in the-furthest-from-surrender kind of way.

Deer medicine surrounds : muggy :

quick in/quick out, daily

leaves crystalize. Some fall.

All summer the summer

was soaked, wore its hair plastered to its face--

so soaked roses, cukes drunk

on all the water, yellowed and endless

the months

:

the deer are still

bounding

in and out,

bags

of corn

are

being

cut 

open

by ourselves.

We don't aim

to kill them,

but the

others

do.

Every

morning

I watch the morning:

540 rise, stars lift,

sky—some beautiful

being, worth the linger

of our eyes.

The summer was soaked,

garden was soaked fruits,

which I ate, sometimes

on my knees, sometimes

cross-legg-ed, ankles

pressed in

to the earth.

Being buried to the chin in a pile of warm dryer clothes feels like:

the Earth is healed, the streets smell sparkly

and lack cement. She is able to be in her body--

each muscle, unlocked is weeping into

the finish line. The finish line is a light

beam. The quiet

is safety roaring's arms in which

she is.

Her muscles no longer

weep. They wept until 

they dropped

away. 

She is all that is left. 

She can look at any color and be okay. 

The stuttering stops-- that word 

in her mouth lets go of her tongue and as it

is spoken, it floats away.

I want to free all the candles

A sparrow with a broke wing

outside the door versus walking beneath a

row of trees filled with flittering sparrows.

Both were part of that day the hay stacks

were draped in blue blankets in the fields,

they asked can the cows keep up, can we

milk them smarter, turn their shit

into electricity if the milk doesnt obey?

It was that day-- day I fed the dog

her vitamin, carried a full bucket

of yellow corn to the deer house, watched

for the wave

of its flicking, white tail.

It was the weekend I came

home with blisters

in my mouth, chigger bites

on my breasts, laid hawk feather

on the dash of my car. I found

a rusted apple beneath the seat.

It was the week I pulled the nails out

of the blue carpet that you never said,

If you make it to the end with scars-- a toe

missing, you've lived well.

You said instead I'd need to replace

your mother's candle-- the one

that melted that summer

onto the table outside, the white

one youd kept on the mantle for looks.

Science gets into the body.

Science gets into the body.

Davinci drew from death.Though his drawings

were beautiful, they were not always anatomically

accurate:

he always drew a hole near the heart where

the soul could escape.

These are the limbs.

How wonderful our brain is.

Some lift it out of the body,

cut into the skin and have a look:

Some hover over shoulders of cadavers.

There is a lot of light, an antiseptic smell.

We ask them: take us to the body:

Mostly skin,

with flaps, parts of the body lift out.

There is a bin marked hands and arms. You open it,

and the hands and shoulders

are soaking in preserving fluid.

You reach in and grab whichever

you like.

There are heads cut in half, --half-faces on a table look

just like meat. After you warm up, they are just heads on a table.

They are assymetrically cut to keep the teeth and jaw bone.

The dental schools usually get the heads.

 yes, blue please

 Oh that blue I am all of it, feverish, they are talking about eating a tongue/ they are saying it is rude to eat a tongue

In the corner is a smooth blue creature I want to touch,certainly.

now they are recalling how they once covered their elbows because it was civil

I am feverish, the sound of the word blue

I'm listening

how much is improvised versus composed

A creatures smooth blue hands, my blue veins--

the see-throughable-ness of my thigh in the light

I hear a blue sax in the background

it happened in the middle of a hiphop song

Now they are talking about beautfiul blue brains/ the old oak is the beautiful thing 

its rough skin on my face, a textured blue

It all lasts forty minutes: this blue

conversation. A man on the radio is grateful for all of it--

her fingers along the wettened blue clay.

something magical  

She is feverish, blue-spined

dare I say ascending

to holy, blue, sainted

There is a smooth

blue creature in the corner

she wants to touch

its bald, blue head

He didnt rape me

This is not that poem.

I remember the room where he saw my head

at the end of the barrel. This is how it feels

to be seemingly powerless, to know life is in the hands

of a man's finger on a trigger and

crazy thoughts inside him walking a tightrope.

Haha I said so he'd have a way out,

if he wanted. (I was

walking through a blackwashed

room. Sensing. No one

could see my eyes

were peeled open moons. They couldnt have

been more open.)

Like a doctor without gloves

I want to touch

the inside of a pumpkin with my eyes closed. Let there be thunderstorms.

Let the operation be outdoors all day and let it be

consentual, or else there is no hand.

I know there is no other way

to become again clean. As in viscera clean.

As in I am dirty through and through.

It is holy to want to

clean one's self this way. It is holy to want

to enter a thing and leave, covered

in what it knows.

2 yolks.

The hummingbird purrs concurrently, flies

to my eye-level and stares. 5-6 seconds. Pleased to make

your acquaintance, Ms. Hummingpsychic.

Last night I dreamt my lover's reason-to-stay-awake memory. It somehow soaked

through like blood : the fear-humidity in which it is difficult to breathe.

I once knew how to say hello to a stranger in a language I'd never heard.
I didnt know the stranger spoke this language.

As a child I held an egg and asked is it possible

to have 2 yolks inside? I cracked the egg

and saw

Ever since I saw a tree it's been this way--

Sads in my Happy. Spread through

like smoke through a vent

beneath a bed in which

a child is sleeping

at night. I can feel them

in my eyes. --A thickness, a paint mixed in

with the wets that gloss my iris

when I smile:

Dont be sad she said be happy

I am I said, I was trying to smile from my liver

I was smiling : feeling

the Sads in my true Happy, eyes and crinkled

skin. 

This Vaginal Day

To the cab driver who said he’d buy me a car

if I’d have sex with him:

Exactly how many times humming 

with your dick in my mouth

does it take to buy me a hybrid/ Can 5 

missionaries be traded

for 1 ass fucking/ What is the going rate exactly

for a ride I am not propositioned

Later on the subway 2 girls 

in thighhigh skirts/ A man touches 

them in ways 3 times their age/ Pinches the youngest 

who smiles/ Says stop/ 

50 tongueless watch

Just before the butterfly flew into the woman's head & scared her

the dog is filling his time with God it is how

it wants to live the dog is howling in the field:

heard, recorded and understood for its pain by

the woman on whose feet is cut-grass, inside

the woman is herself howling  

Glossary of My Mind

Every number has a meaning. I am an eleven ( 9 +1+9+1+9+8+1) I have devised

a language through which Universe speaks to me in numbers,

or did the Universe devise the mathematics? Who/what comes first is

a truthless way to ask. --There are no poles here,

no bipoles, no messages on the radio.

Every color has a meaning-- it is either good or bad or untrustworthy

Imagine a sky of another color-- a green sky, clear weather

is, can you imagine how the grass would feel plating

such a sky green sky? Blue is more

the color my soul always has been.

The way a dog can seem like a deer is the way I can feel like

a tree that knows the hammock beneath it is now my writing place. I am

making myself into a pedestal where things that sparkle

honey or blood may be stacked.

It is time to leave World 1 and 2 behind. World 3 has begun I am equipped

with guards-- in fact 3 armies wont let you through

w/o the encrypted p*ss*o*d after which you think you're in, but it's a phis sad

to keep the real world safe.

I am growing cabbage. I am less afraid.

I am less everything.

It has everything to do with my cycle

and what I dreamed/ran from. I already know

because of what's happened that every thing/body

is a springboard into God the same.

My colors may clash today but that's okay.

I'll keep waving at planes.

What do a double shot glass, a piece of driftwood, a bottle, the stem of a martini glass have in common:

What do a double shot glass, a piece of driftwood, a bottle, the stem

of a martini glass have in common:

the monster left his footprint stamps in the mud

inside me, but if you could somehow

crawl in with the other objects, please, then repeteadly

bash your head on the soft rocks inside me,

that'd be great thanks

of course you may get dizzy of course

you may need more air, but let's pretend

that you aren't/dont need

and somehow the Stegossauraus ache inside me

is alleviated with no aftershock

Self Portrait 2

Her suspicion was all you could dream

Remove items from mind and sink in

to hammock     it is sad/breathes you in

and out of itself like it is alive

in that hurtplace, drink from the

cold glass bottle your heart

is a great engine

pulling you into

Lovely

taunting 

dreams of her,

                                      sink in

to that time her beloved strings went missing

you dont play/you loved her/you didn't have keys

but all she could do was fear you,

but still, she was all you could dream for yourself

Self Portrait

• did you know I mowed a heart in the grass for you
  incase you flew over in a plane you'd see it
  incase you happened to be looking real close from up high

  loafe with me/rhyme with me I want you
  

  • to lull, transparent hips and gentle
    part swiftly arose part swiftly a rose
    around me

  
  
  

•  

Through all the cricket sounds

I loafe in summer grass rooms-- shelves intoxicate me

it is my mouth in love with wood here and naked, nipples whisper silk

silk are loosed to kisses: a reaching of trees-- hills, of me rising

the earth of all poems, millions

of eyes shall look at the beginning

and end of this act--

in the jars on the shelves are bulbs and frog hearts

beating,  my tongue is a worm and thristy
for the dark room where it senses
its way

Recall

Last night a woman in my mouth refused me, refused the journey my tongue offered. This was the end of night. This bleeding is the beginning of day, perhaps what brought me to my knees-- little things in the stacks get me. The coward placed 2 circles beneath my tongue-- easier than a hive to dissolve, and my tongue welded them together like it must always be a maker, 2 sweet tarts filled with numbing powder and soft, but soft, went the night so I couldnt feel the ache-- blue ache, then green fading yellow and lighter, lighter till it disappeared. Be the day circles, triangles, deceiptful Softs or an unyielding lover, it begins with my tongue's memory. One never remembers the medium nights. Who wants them, I lie raised on deck, a blue heron in the pond, feet covered in patties of duck weed, a pot of turtles and snakes stew beneath ,  fearless or ignorant is the baby heron? I am sitting on a hive, recalling my fifth step brought me to my hands, write hand impaled by the needle it fell on, recall a stream of blood means relentment.  

A Recognition, To George Sand by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Read by me

http://hawkhop.tumblr.com/post/54022559931/to-george-sand-a-recognition-by-elizabeth

they will be unable to

in the beginning god

came to you those hours you in threshold stood

in the frame-- snowy

right knuckled, ciggy-

holding-finger

out door, you turned back, kept

with softlight over your shoulder

the memory would be

wholly warm if you could just

forget
your arm

god came then

those threshold hours / months/    years

in the kitchen

or wherever you talked to the frigidaire/ who was god it was kind

of an accident/ it was before you knew you'd have the power

to exonerate them all/   not the sky eyes above the sheets but

the others all the others

who come after, who came before and washed

you through with voices, eyes,

leafs and numbers:

8s, 11s on plates you count them
you ask them     stop breathing

in my ear, please leave my shoulders be

the Voice-Washers will thencome,

to wash, wash, away numbers

you will ask/  are they washing away god?