Resolutions

Be the carapace, inside and out. For example,
wear a cold rain’s steam off a Texas lake
and nothing else. You thought I’d suggest
we glitter maternal instead, keep our ovens
on all day. Do live for a week in the house
inside your mother, though. Suckle furiously,
the contents of an old white man’s
coat pocket, and keep a growth chart
near your voice box. Hear it now,
the womb debating us, while the curl
of words sifts through aged breath. Make room
for a baby on this list. Dress inevitability
in lace and stomach lining. All that unwanted
hair, those veins that listen. Transcribe
the stories of porch furniture. In a darkroom,
develop and eat your selfies whole.
For a comfortable voyage, stir the webbing
between the ears, like the flesh of a turtle’s neck,
twice weekly, but no more.

A Spill on the Grid

In a dream, I’m perched on the head of a pin,
five hundred feet off the ground,
where clouds open their tiny mouths. In the flood,

it takes years to find the larynx
of a suburb. Tea bags steeped in the corridors
between brain and skull, until graduation from

the gradient. Not in a dream,
a bullet gets an education on the school bus,
into her head. Alone together,

we group or gun. We ride the bullet,
we whisk the lungs through caves,
until the dirt finds its home in our bones.