from Mammal Pit

But there were days too
Birds without beaks
Bloody harmonicas
Suckling the heavy knowledge
Out of a pair of boxer shorts
There was mold on the sky
And we called it August
Every morning
With the world inside our mouths
Lining up to pick the minutes
Off the squat chokecherry trees
I died a lot that year
I talked to angels
They wore wet leaves
And ‘tater nothings
They were seven inches tall
And lived behind the playground
By the NRA headquarters
They loved to play with me
I loved to squeeze them like rude fruit
It was good to be a child
In 2007
I had a computer in my toe
That could tell me anything
But what I needed
What’s death’s favorite color
I would ask it
Can you burn death like a man
Are death’s dreams loud
Like avalanches
Sometimes I dream so loudly
Other people hear them too
Is death a good lover
Does death have asthma
What is death a student of
Labyrinths of dust
In a field of burnt poppies
Do people vomit when they die
Is that what ghosts are
Mute pollutants
Blackening the soul’s wet
Avenues
If somebody dies at a party
Do their buddies keep drinking
Does death think about me
In the evenings
When the sky is striped
With miracles
Does death have bad tattoos
Is death’s job thankless
Do the years line up like bowling pins
Or blindfolded men
Facing a wall
Does death believe me
When I lie to it
Is death married
To everyone
Is death allergic to the living
Or are we its favorite food
Is death a PhD
Is death a virgin
Is every death
Death’s masterwork
Or does he fuck some up
Mine won’t be perfect
I can feel it
I will try to milk a clown
And it will stab me with a raisin
I’ll try to swallow the sun like a lemon
I’ll summon Edith Wharton’s ghost
And she will choke me with a map
Of New York City
I will grow sinister like mulch
I’ll marry a haunted microwave
I’ll go skydiving
In a pint glass
I’ll remember far too much
At once
And it will split my airtight skull
I’ll convert my whole apartment
Into an ant farm
And forget, repeatedly, to feed them
They will find me where I sleep
The moon will crash into my eyes
Like a dirty potato
I’ll eat experimental music
I’ll buy an electrified toilet
Or maybe my life is a pirate ship
And I’m the plank
That I’ll walk off
But it doesn’t matter
If it’s pretty
Death will always be my favorite book
I like death’s tea-stained pages
I like the way death smells
Like all the hands
That have held it
I like death’s author shot
You can’t see anything
But it still feels sort of right
Starry afterbirth
Blue fingerprints
On every waxen page
I like the way it starts
Death’s opening
Sentence
“I work toward a wound-buttered world”
Death said
And I agree with him
Death scribbled all over
The empty pages in my eyes
Death only writes longhand
Death’s work is full
Of careful imagery
Lions licking the tattoos
Off of their handlers
A cereal bowl
Full of rainclouds
With little lightning bolts
For added crunch
Men dreaming of knives
In such excruciating detail
They wake up with paper cuts
Saliva wife
Death has an agent
Death did a reading at my college
And I got his autograph
I couldn’t read it
You will one day
He said
And he was right
When I died
It was the first thing I looked for
It said Death’s here for you
xoxo
And I knew that it was
Death was on me
Like evening on water
Like soot on a brain
Like spittle on diamonds
Boobs on a face
I have never been myself I think
Without death telling me
What I could be
Maybe death drew me
That’s why I look like this
Gutter mustache
Allergic to tables
My eyes are shaped like feet
I have dead lions
In my underwear
My fate is six feet long
And oil-lipped
And I try trouble
I bite cars
Brother
I look like traffic court
I look like I watch Paw Patrol
I look like a bronze age
Zookeeper
I look like old sunlight
I look like the end
Of a waterlogged novel
I look like human hair
I look like I have water
In my organs
My hands are broken
Like cracked water
I like to smell water
I like to tease water
Water is my only friend
Like death might be
Or at least it feels like it
Death and I grew up together
He was like the sunlight
Caught inside a lime

We’d go into that phonebooth
By the precinct
And call the mayor
To say we’re watching him
Those were the good old days
When death and I
Were like each other
Children get older
And they forget about their deaths
Whenever I turned 20
Death and I no longer spoke
I was busy
Dangling my appetites
Smoking my hair
Crawling down the throats of livestock
Biting doorknobs
But death knew I’d be back for it
You can’t forget
Your death for long
I know that now
My death was always in me
And around me
Like the hours
Quivering inside a clock
I missed you death
I was sad without you
I was not me
You are my family
The sky
An empty August sky
Without the authorship of clouds