07/19/2026
I Care Too As Do You
Primo: The Reckoning
Our snuggle, my struggle—a conflict of touch.
What plough is this in my mind’s eye?
A sharpened stick or a flattened stone?
The soil I till, the seed I spill.
Imagine the wheel.
I winnow the dead from my phone.
Salvation upon me, I can’t wait for the reckoning.
The flowers that spring from the colored cloth of your blouse.
I catch our robot reading a book, not minding its chores.
Crossing into the spirit world, the machine elves don’t mind.
Busy constructing the idea of a green triangle.
A tiger on my shoulder, I have gas in my tank.
My harmonica plays stars rather than notes.
I’ve heard both heaven and hell have more than three levels.
To paint the desert, I buy a bucket of translucent amber.
I shake off time ballerinas from the branches of an old tree—the tree’s bent and bowed arms—the incessant wind, a stern master.
The wind’s whistle, a screech. Its echo, a moan.
I plug my ears with my fingers.
I seek the sage with a flashlight. I get caught in the blue of my screen.
I explore the world with a box of old postcards.
Secundo: Letter By Letter
We avoid the state of the sun.
In the clouds, I see angry green gnomes; a green ogre of greed. This prompts my flight.
I scurry towards the corner of a big, blue cube.
A chair, just feathers, slides towards the stern of a ship as that ship barrels ahead.
We snuggle in the shadow of a tall building.
Your buttons, my struggle.
The clasp of your bra, no longer hooked—the zipper of your jeans, my prize.
The painting of a little green man sells over the offer.
A doorway throws out its own shadow.
The wall is our bar. Our cocktails settle into its concrete.
An elephant wields its trunk—a big, gray, bludgeon of air.
The cards we keep close to our chest, winners. The cards that we’ve strewn, not.
I dissect your name, letter by letter.
The bell on this plate lacks flavor. Its tongue, my fever.
The bandaged wings of this airplane will have to do.
I hire a piper to woo you, my sweet sweetie.
They brought a tuba.
The honks of the crude horn cause you to blush.
My arms stretch for eons, for now, my hugs, strictly long distance.
Your ears graze the tips of my twigs.
My tongue tunnels your ear.
The hat that you wore, tumbled to the floor, forgotten.
It takes time to become a good barber.
Tertio: Bio Milk
A fire generates its own wind—that wind can nurture a family.
Our home on the butte, sometimes it gets lonely.
The TV rain banished to Latvia, Tbilisi, and Amsterdam.
Drinking vodka to beat up the locals, not every soldier is fit for this fight.
I can’t find the remote to change the channel.
I open the shade that covered the mirror. The face that I see only half dead.
Inside the screen—stacks of “ones,” stacks of “zeros.” Each one, each zero, transparent.
I could count on my fingers.
Each grain of sand, each one that slides, each one that slips through a glass tunnel of time.
Each grain as unique as me. As unique as you. Grit on the run.
My mask might shield me from aging. If not, my sunscreen will have to do.
“Where did you buy your boots?
Where did you ‘uni?’”
The chatter we banter.
Our talk too small to see.
The potato I stuff in your tailpipe, the kiss that I slip onto your nape, this test tube is the first sample of artificial lactation, this other test tube we’re working on tears.
Artificial lachrymose, silicon eyes, lithium dreams.
A petri dish births our first bio ham.
DoorDash is late; its ex*****on cold.
Bio milk, bio bile, we humor the humors.
The mark of our affection, infection.
Without ni***es, we could still land a boy on the moon.
The first girl on the sun singes her feet.
We bowl at their legs to knock the pins off their heads.
My morals, my grail.
A little bit in love, why are you the one?
I could try to LOVE someone else.
A leaf penetrates the pane. A window, by definition, empty. As is a door.
I aspire to love more; the touch of your nose, your tiny neck kisses. Our hands reluctant to part.
Our fingers cling.
I go to buy sausages three times a day. I pass by your window each time.
I pretend not to look.
This road is road worthy. This poem as much a note as a song.
My heartbeat constant, I find fear, cheaper than wood.
I find anger, a recalcitrant ogre.
A mountain of guilt, a stillbirth saved in a jar,
I beg for just one more sniff.
Quarto: Old Haunts
Brought into the household, you know how to behave—you put your best face forward.
Your feet, twin fins.
You offer me your slippers.
Might I fill them with champagne?
Why are we mad always low on the bat?
Why are we mad always pushed to the edge of the plate?
It’s good to hoard goods for the underground time.
The princess pup juggles socks, hats, shoes, old and new; she chews sticks.
Keep her face away from the fan.
In a shabby labyrinth, we retrace our old haunts.
A couch by the tracks, its stuffing, food for our fire.
We bump baby’s carriage up the stone steps—unfazed, she claps as its wheels clatter.
A break in the pipe leaks a fetid still water. Our plumber says the solution is “binary.”
To paint with rain, to leave no tracks, to trace your face with my finger.
Those tracks on your cheeks couldn’t be tears.
Sadness, an old friend who forgets to write back.
Coordinating prayers, we hold hands to commemorate dinner.
To soothe the spice, you add pat after pat of unsalted butter.
I look out the window and wave—you don’t wave back.
I tell myself that you didn’t see me but I know that you did.
No tracks on my arms—the doctor checks just to make sure.
Quinto: Time Is My Lover
A watch, a battery, a ring—these things clink in my pocket.
Water seeps in, along with the air, along with the light.
That constructed from earth is never impermeable.
Holes can have holes.
Upside down, the world my screen reveals, fragile as straws.
Your eyelashes long—I am impressed—your eyelashes swallow me whole.
Butterfly kisses. My eyelids crave more.
The grass for the cat grows fast and straight. The clothes that you dry on the line, minimal.
The artist draws me as her. And vice versa. No law against that yet.
A solitary parrot squawks for love.
The parrot careens.
Its careen carefully calculated—its crookedness, sublime.
A goblet gets dented; this planet unable to spin.
The day gets longer and longer. Night as far as the near Antipode, as far as my sheets.
I sweat in the night.
The slithering of this pen; I tell it to mind.
Dotting the “T,” wrenching out nose hairs to my lungs to pump.
I look to the alarm clock for meaning. I wake up at the same time again and again.
This I count.
Time is my lover. Regularity, my friend.
I dare to sleep in.
I turn on the news.
My hound, she bays. I hear her torment.
My heart aches with her whine.
In the chapel, the unkempt clutter on the floor distracts from the faded frescos above.
Gray stone walls look on.
Mice in the radiator. They squeak as it groans.
How to translate grief into language; how to goad language into deeds.
In sweat pants, drunk, stalking your memory online.
The curveballs of remembering, I swat again and again.
The stitches of that duplicitous pitch elude me.
Your beauty sticky like gum.
I like my warmth candid.
I appreciate your frank and open culpability.
I brook YOUR freckles.
Only fire is up for the deed.
Only fire can settle the dispute—the horse we both claim.
Such is the state of the stead. Homesteading isn’t for the craven.
After our s*xual congress, we wipe sweat from our brows; smoke in the air, palpable, dense as flesh.
The earth has finally moved, night’s sweet shadows approach on lantern feet.
I shrug.
Untouched, you accuse me of selling out.
But I had nothing left to sell.
A great, empty bag. A huge, paper sack. An enormous, gleeful cheat.
You hold me so tight as to blind me.
I bury my nose in your neck.
Your smell consumes me.
That of the s*x paradox, that of parallel bodies, that of your gamy musk.
Let’s lick ourselves wet.
Sexto: To Stop Or Not Stop
The birth difficult, there is movement; there is danger.
The baby’s name capitalized, turning it from a suggestion into a shout.
I feel my knees weaken in front of its diaper.
The mockingbird mocks me. I channel the CROW.
Mud in a puddle, a catch basin clogged—in the City, it’s cool to be cool.
In the hinterlands, you need to be like everyone else.
No one’s themselves. No sore thumbs allowed.
Your bum makes a good drum. A troubadour sings of an unhinged cult—they swing their lutes like bats.
An imploding moon overhead, the cistern too crowded, word, music—you croon “YES.”
Scaffolding props up the Tower of Babel.
The one language within, that before words.
We fan the flames of involvement. We plink; we plonk.
I find that troubadour’s lute annoying.
No clean tights in Bohemia.
“You can have anything you want.”
I am too shy to ask. But you already know what I want.
Inch by inch, pinch by pinch, just enough pressure to please.
Your bob, your weave. Me, helpless to defend.
You sucker punch me into submission.
I rub the front of your bluejean shorts. The aroma that I summon, squishy and soft.
Your zipper proves stubborn. It doesn’t matter.
I have plenty of time to fumble.
The tan of your legs, your ankles, your knees.
Practical anatomy.
You don’t stop kissing. You won’t stop kissing. I can’t contain your name.
I call it again and again, not sure if I am asking you to stop or not stop.
On the walk to my next class—I hold my hand to my nose.
The whiff of your shorts still with me.
I sniff it again and again.
You have marked me as yours.
This is our last time.
Distance is a good tonic to cure passion.
Septimo: I Vote Early And Often
In the blood hut, we wallow, in the blood hut, we bathe.
We wager for moons. The pool balls we clack, our table as big as all space.
The Big Bang, the ultimate trick shot.
The Dreamer pushes off their covers.
They are not who they seem.
“You kissed me in all the right places.”
Your nightgown fell open. The smells that we shared.
Our eyes meet.
But I do have to go. My students are waiting.
I don’t want to stop looking.
I am learning how to not stutter. I am learning how not to care.
To come or to culminate, I’ll let my Latin tutor decide.
My apartment, overrun with spider plants—as long as I dust off their leaves, my plant buddies refuse to go dead.
My hands map your body. They cup all of your curves.
A campaign sign on a lawn with a white picket fence.
I vote early and often.
We win in a landslide.
I find the silhouette of an intellectual baked into a wall. Their beret, a decadent smile.
When the bomb falls, a tart and bitter moment—I swivel my coffee.
The waitress finishes her shift.
Her cigarette is anxious to see her.
A maze without mice, I observe from above.
Murdered on a Monday, the crossword isn’t cover enough.
23 across, 4 down.
There isn’t a box for that letter.
Once the classics are mastered, it’s time to clap.
It’s time to strip love from this poem.
We strip.
Seeing each other naked, we know what is to come.
It’s hard to slow down.
We don’t.
You press against me, your frantic fabric, squeezing love from my stones.
You, wild halo of hair, hard pebbles for eyes.
Two hard ni***es protrude from your chest.
Your eyes and ni***es look through me.
You moan.
You ride me into the ground. Your hard floor, our mattress.
Nothing could constrain your reins.
I try to keep my eyes open. I try not to cry out.
I try to hold on; I don’t care.
Or I care “TOO” as do you.
