I know the weight of the moon when she’s xanthous;
the orthography of straddle is no mystery to me—
the shape of your ghost, a pornography of orchids;
each mixtape a love letter stippling the walls.
Coarse jet coils, your hair grows a cancer on the carpet,
the blight of collective nouns gone six-years-stale.

&

Tomorrow, I will paint my eyes and shuffle
to the laundromat. I won’t curl in your caldera
when the breach hooks me like silk, when the silt
of your erasure dusts a thick curse on my collarbones—
your disdainful contrapposto an indictment
in the jamb. We are senseless and dripping

with lexical perfidies. The moon dreams
in integers, clumsy as lead.