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this is a poem about smoking
and dry eyes. this is a poem
about things getting buried,
about dirt. blackbirds wrapped
in tissue, family pets and beetles
laying smeared in matchboxes.
this is a list of all the quiet blue
things i am not doing any more,
your hands growing hard against
beautiful new fingers.

first, lists themselves; lists of jokes you
no longer tell, movies i fell asleep
in, the possibilities of constellations
mapped out with freckles. i used to
love remembering the places that
you touched- 1. clothes that you
hated. 2. my hips and breasts. 3.
red sheets. 4. benches and buses. 5.
never the ground itself, clinging.

then, having your babies; babies in the soil
like fat rich flowers, bawling. babies named
after the things that we had loved. Billy.
June. Bird. babies born stupid and
neglected, born wanted, born having
never existed at all.

thirdly, words in threes. i need you, mouthed
in bed, spat out like trees caught in the
throat of a giantess. more words. things like
sick and drunk, gone yellow bird and golden
face halo, uttered and never seen again, jews
and gypsies shoved onto crowded trains and
carried away forever, their eyes uncertain
and their mouths dry.

four, things i don't mean, like all the times
i said i didn't when i did. like i want you to be
happy without me, like i really hope you got laid
on your birthday. like lets be friends, lets
get coffee! like let's just forget that this
ever happened.

lastly, oblivion; blind grief for all the things
i have forgotten, the marks of my watery
memory that were left as the waves finally
broke and rolled back. a million fish
flapping on the beach like birds with
broken bones, gasping, ready for the
end.

this is a poem about women and children
being taken away in black trains, about
happiness and the catcher in the
rye. this is a poem about human rubbish and
flowers; cancer, names, candle wax. final
poems to people who got thrown away. this
is about God weeping and pushing diazepam down
his throat, God wearing feathers and lipstick and
snorting coke, God on a bad line saying goodbye
dear lover goodbye i love you goodbye.