I Am Beginning to Mistake the Locust’s Song for Silence


Night is lonely as unplucked
guitar strings. Desire: blue
hum of a phone screen making
neon from my skin’s damp spread.
Ugly music of two bodies
rapt in the performance of lust.
Dance choreographed for a third
party’s pleasure. The screen freezes
&, for a moment, pixelates cum
to flakes of off-white snow.
A mattress can be a kind of desert.
Mine, a drought—
40 days without softness.
My palm makes the sound
of a thirsty mouth. I am jealous
of crickets, for how they turn
friction to song.



If, and Longer

Balled below my tongue
like a seed
I won’t plant, afraid to surrender
the dream


Gratitude

Let me stretch my mouth wide /
as a summer afternoon /
and say it loud, say it sticky /
say the days and their yellow hands / and the air so open / you could walk inside it