Cuba
my body feels like lobsters
tossed in boiling water.
but it’s okay to eat them,
because they have no feeling.
their heads are quiet
and don’t scream.
They hold their breath waiting for you
to blind but you don’t.
Sunny unhatched chicks
washed over a mother’s carcass,
Skinless flesh were once were wings.
Sweet apple of my eyes,
skewer my limp throat and
slow roast in a black evening
with garbanzo beans
and semen.
I don’t think i should eat meat,
because i have too much feeling.
— aliment
you never considered the danger
in sexing a body you love
without them knowing
you love them.
you pretend it’s the one thing,
but the aftersex reveals your secret.
her warm leg lapped
across your purple thigh,
you hold her close
to feel the tropics steaming from her pores.
she fills the empty in your stomach
and soothes the spicy in your chest.she is what you love in secret,
what you choose not to reveal;you continue with nuzzles
and love-making masked
with measured restraint.you satisfy her fantasies,
and she satisfies yours.
you sex her in the open,
but you love her from
your hiding place.
— when the ache is silent
you lean against the bathroom sink,
back to the mirror,
cheating your lungs —
short breaths —
you’re wearing faded olive pants, wrinkled lime shirt,
you type black thoughts
into your phone.
what is inside you wants out,
without a release you risk melting
or perishing in a spiritual implosion;
there is always a rising panic
in the deep of your chest,
but you have Cuba
to keep your crisis at bay;
her knowing hands are as a potter’s,
and you the helpless clay
spin, spin, spin as she touches you
to keep your form safe;
her light milk fingers feel like butter,
pottery affection, wet clay hugs,
an auburn haze in the morning sky;
life on the pedestal is wet and dizzy,
her touches are your sole orientation.
— moonprints on wet clay
the distance is gray,
muted and foreign.
the love is anxious
chest, brick and cement.
the ache is hidden
in the lungs
and under the ribs.
the world is black,
warped, and confused;
something in the dark
blinds, something moves.
— a nameless coming
her love is young and unrefined.
but she knows the freedom in our skin,
the longing in our nerves,
the churn of our restless seas.
when the island suffers storms
and the whips of wind,
she seeks your company.
in the night she knocks,
and in a moonlit language
asks if you’d kindly shelter
a dazed wanderer. and
though she sleeps with you,
she is forever her own; forever
coconut water and mangrove,
forever the bending of palms,
tempest eternal, heiress
to the prevailing winds.
— forever the lunar tides
i smack her,
squeeze her, bite.
she enjoys my attention.
we relish carnal pleasure
more than anything.to date i know more of her moans
than of her mind,
and have tasted her skin
more than her thoughts.i don’t mind. i prefer the taste
of her love to my books,
and would trade my anxiety
for her calefacient warmth
any day of the fucking week.plus, she tells me to hit it raw.
— i will taste the island and the sea
this is a blank sentence.
this is how i cry:
folding socks
on the edge of a twin bed
on which i’ve spent the night alone
and before that
made love to a girl
to whom i can’t
reveal the panic in my blood
or the terror of my lungs,
off-set by her grace,
sweetened by her heat,
soothed, soothed,
in our aftersex,
wishing in the shadows
for a few extra hours,
god-willing,
of her angel touches.
— cry
the mountain
in your eyes,
the valley
of your hips,
rivers flow, rivers fly,
river gush from your lips;
you are luscious rainforest,
mango shade
beneath god’s canopy;
you are golden-eyed,
spotted leopardess
slinking through the mist,
your arms like branches
reaching for the heavens,
your feet like burrowing roots
nestled in the soil’s warmth;
your spine moutainous,
you rise as redwoods,
hair the color of fledgling eagles
learning the taste
of a cumulus cloud
on a blood-red morning.
— untitled
lace panties
outline a labyrinth
around the musk of skin.
the grooves in her body
are really keys
to a human piano
that need a warm touch
and a patient heart
for melody to ebb and flow
from its sweet interior.
— fingers on the keyboard
you gave me illusions,
folded cloud tufts,
and the foam of waves.
— paper mache and things like that
was she worth the shrill nights
trapped inside your head
at 2am
rolling in your sheets
with a black fountain pen
trying to capture her mango aroma?
— this poem is the answer
there is a silent hurt
in the deep of my chest.
a resigned throb
in the glacial of my mind.
your infant memory,
docile in my blood,
muffled, cries.
muscles and tears evaporate.
there is no escape from you,
and no will.
no solace in sleep.
no comfort in dreams.
— melancholy
i am afraid you’ll dislike my poems
when you read them.
I do not write you as lillies in opal water,
or emerald springs in an incandescent summer.
I write the undercurrent,
the ripples in your skin,
the coral in your knees,
the tides on your breast,
the salted tears kept to yourself.
I write the landscape
of your body,
the mountain pass
and valley;
how i feel with god
when my hands
form hills
on your supple thigh;
ihow you drown
me, slow, and cumbersome;
how the nights with you
are bursts
of silent fire;
how in the mornings
i smell smoke
and smear ash
on scarred walls;
i write how i hide
because i’m not sure
where the love is,
or if it’s here,
or if we know,
but simply won’t admit;
i write about the pain
in loving you,
and the ache in hiding.
— Hollywood, for her
