My grandmother used to say / we can never truly know someone.

I will let you bury me. Pretend it’s just / a fantasy if I would desiccate / in your backyard.

This patio, where many joyous times were had, / these will be the last of them. 

English proved to be comical at best. / I was in 3rd grade when I was finally fluent. / But I’m jumping ahead of myself.

i never thought my purpose a violent one / until I met her 

every now and then / a banshee hijacks my lungs then / screams / through my opened mouth

it’s so easy to bare my teeth / to growl / claw my way / through whatever you thought I was.

a casino of speckled memories vehemently / spurning cremation.

Not water lilies floating behind Plexiglas / or the icy stare / of van Gogh’s self-portrait, / but the ballerinas

One hundred fifty Canada geese float in my blood. They know something about the cold and constrict the vessel-ways…

Picture a corsage / made of 44 dandelions / picked to test the / lung capacity / of a 23-year-old

We arrive soaked with June’s torrential downpour. Monday morning plaits into a queue of bodies, each engaged with the business of waiting.

Keep off the grass. Keep off the grass.

At the end, I kept the nails long / for you. Now, perhaps, because of your leaving, / they linger and lean over the tips of fingers.

The axe, lit from the back / as it crashes through the glass // protecting half / a pixelated heart

She’ll say it is a guillotine, hotel / room maid, first one inside this suite to scream.

The clouds turn red, then sickly yellow, then red again. It’s only a matter of time before the burning flowers start falling from the sky.

A court-ordered Manhattan left stranded in the aisle. / She dialed wrong and spawned God.

It’s complicated, what I feel toward the building trades. A deep allegiance and solidarity with other workers of all trades.