vision quests

her body wants to push a fever

sans peyote tea

the new ink, setting slow

it’s in her breath and bones

a dull ache and weight

a mourn of never was

in each shallow exhalation

flittering shadows

on the back of heavy lids

a long deep ohhhhhm

on the brink teetering

her body wants to push a fever

the same old fears

Nestled on the knuckle of my left thumb

there’s a c-shaped scar

with large hash marks slashed at intervals

from black waxed thread

a tiny woman in tall heels painfully stitched.

It covets a glass shard close to the bone, grating.

honu

This morning I stopped

in the road for a large man

who motioned with his hands urgently,

then emerged again with a shovel

bravely scooping Honu

gently and gently laying him

in the tall grass; cars piled

behind me, behind him,

no one honking.

Honu, about his business,

slow, going into the brush.

she think she pretty

Evernew, she walkabout

all bobble-headed

in her skin, bones rattlin'

each stomp a waddle,

a heavy drag then lift of the foot.

She don’t care,

She think She pretty,

coy

Gilgamesh skirts Valhalla’s shore

Where Ragnorak once turned and went

She coos and calls, and throws him bones

While he plays quite the coy gent

some summers

Some summers the heat just…

sinks in bone deep, overtaxing

the body, the brain, the heart;

Shade affords little reprieve

and cool water turns warm

well before it hits the lips.

Even the sloughing of skin proves vain.

Even the shedding of...

things burrowed deep where

some summers the heat just

sinks in...

yet it all feels further
than the nearest star.