In Which Strangeness is Caught in Our Throats

I ate an Avett Brothers record
for breakfast
You prepared for your double
knee replacement and

on a Tuesday an abscess developed
on our shared tonsil

I am slowly learning about compression, or
I am slowly learning about bleeding

The insides of your cheeks
taste like Earl Grey:
bergamot and heat and
thickness

My mouth is so full of stems
I choke up hyacinth when
you kiss me

Dust collects
in a lung because
it needs any other home

Volume sleeps on my tongue today
because teeth can sometimes look
like pillows

What Was Caught is Now Released

I delivered the blood of your throat like a baby
puddles of clot and saliva

slipping through
the interspaces of my hands

I’m having a hard time remembering who I am today
The insides of me not focused,
like tired western sepia through Technicolor capability

I can never tell my mother how much I miss the lake
because she knows
I would rather be holding a bowl under your chin

Your body is a red-streaked carnival
blue ribbons tied around your maypole arms

When two sides of an abrasion stitch
back together, what do they say?

When they are kissing closer,
what do they whisper?

Even after all this blood has dried
it will leave a stain
on the porcelain of our sorry bones

Contrast of Hue

Make no great demands
on your vision. White does what we do not expect
white to do: weakens the luminosity
of adjacent hues.
I am trying to describe to you
the feeling of remembering. Words

fail now, but discover the photographs
of other people’s children. The beds of
pick-up trucks. Black and white dogs
with red collars. The variations numberless.

Hold them in your hands like I am doing. Focus
on lines in faces
and not on pity. Undiluted colors
at their most intense moments, suffering
the burden of brilliance.