Ten Poems

You as Insulated Travel Mug

with stippled belt which is where

it’s most natural to grasp you
off a morning, that house in LA

it was cold with holes in the walls
and I thought how, your doors always open

(in one sense); our blood
was not the same stuff and if

I handed you a coffee it was
too hot too; from the frying pan into

the fire you said, and how I shrugged and
here, you are grey as your morning tremor:

vacuum insulated sixteen ounce
stainless steel, autoseal, Contigo

You As The Cream Cheese, The Aquarium & The Cummerbund

I swear the velodrome dip
and flourish, I swear the kitchen plug
sinkhole, opposite the Johnny Rockets

& next to the aquarium. I swear
there are no murals of you, in your Sunday best
& I can’t swear I never told you but
only when behind the glass
& if you were here we could talk about

all the people who’ve died

You As Bathroom Essential

with beveled edges like the bench
on which we sat while I watched
our hopes and dreams as old leaf
snag on the banks of the River Cuale
while the woman washed her clothes in a basin
like I once had, and when my hands
dove into the foam, I saw them as severed
and was this how I knew I was: home:
unpacking the soap like opening a tamale
it was so familiar as to be

(honeysuckle and beeswax
fat lye glycerine
tetrabutyl ethylene
and White Pigment number 6 –
CoffeeMate: vanilla) and yes

you can step in the same river twice
including the atole Cuale
which means (turbidity)
how much water so you can’t see (us)
behind it? waxy your features, or

I thought I was looking at you but I wasn’t
and is this why, can’t stop inhaling you:
the morning tremor and your/my solution.

You As Small Space

Illinois behind the plates
everyone will have a back
and forward and forward and back
and to final up over before the head

shake and this one on the palm out
to stop-like; the reeling-like, pavement-like
climbing in your boat I was

trying to keep how much forward
I was trying to let how much back. Full

of the empty of closer-
(ness), even as you said
even though there is no
stone against room.

You As Paper Cup

with ouroboros slip to lid
on and while thinking

some again thing, off-thing
inside the bubbles

and coffee grinds are seam
to the drawn, a deserted

buffet or pillaged assembly
line with floors, roof, wall

and categories like syrup
for windows, shots, extras.

You As The Mango

I picked off the ground
sea cucumber and uneasy
interior shifting. Yet
I knew you were not
overripe and that your
vial orange would taste fine too

just a nudge against
the cheeks and tingle
being that close to gone.

You As the Sun

while eggs milk butter sugar
boil on the stove then invert; flan

caramelization is
a doing what I will what

while you are honeycomb sweating
and eating beads, or tacos adobada

and the marination in time
for tourist season translated, meat.

You As Pied-à-terre

and you’ve got said you funny
banisters, wires, missing
smashed cart and trash, hot dog –

I compared it to a bomb blast
but meant nothing negative

I saw us there; on the laundry
I was drinking roof
and you were hanging cocktails.

You As Cold Turkey

Cracidae, or the copper chachalaca
outside my window a rusty rig
engine sputtering or fucked-up axle
with eyes like a nightmare aftermath

come let’s be married in Vegas, sure
but what will we do for a ring?

Under the light of the moon my head
cracked on the tiles like an egg
you said, that time, at least I was out

but now every church bell every chachalaca
horn and release of cannons
the turkey who lives on the hill
chopsticks squabbling down stairs
I am cold; lizard face; lizard brain:
where was our pig? The chachalaca

builds its nest in March and April
which means there are chicks now, so why
are you still screaming? I knew I loved you
because I hurt you the most.

You As Corpse

and to cut to the chase is to find you, dead
in Xanadu and when I say dead I mean freshly
and when I say freshly I mean like a lagoon
and when I say stomach it I mean

it would smell like your month-old dishes
in September; the spongy mishmash
firewheeling mold and jumblecloth
red, carp mouth, crocodile tongue

the clamor of the fridge like a dog, wailing
of course in death you are open at the heart

where the land crabs have come to feast
the white worm and gnat.