He says: I want it to smell / like the real thing. // The real thing / is a landscape // of work and death–– / the names of our ancestors // slack in our mouths, / just the art of loving // your family line enough / to reproduce it.

I am a child of wayward fruit / trying to touch a violence— / its bruised shape, a mirror / of my own dark face & hers.

I return, sitting in the audience, listening to conversation like a sermon. How do we keep each other?

and all I want is a naughty video / for the holidays recorded, rewind, replayed: / food, sex, survival, and surveillance

black enough to decrypt the wave at its crest

when I imagine myself / I am always leaving / I couldn’t draw my own face if god asked