The Goddess is a Man

I live next to a concrete river.
A father is my neighbor.
I may have been myrtles and snakes,
pharaohs and girls.
I might sit on my steps with coffee.
The porch light is probably on.
Traffic patterns time.
I know where I live through touch.
This man is searching, this man got.
Where I live now, mothers write letters
when their sons feel clack
clack clack in their stomaches.

Women send mail: woeful letters and coupons.
They ask for thoughts and they ask for
the miracles they need.
Women don't address these, and I find them
strewn in the street.
I've read the same writing for years,
and i've not responded the same response:
on a postcard, I didn't tell someone to be okay enough
to feel through the pain – there is more coming,
I didn't write, so don't let it hurt you.

I look for smudged ink on manicured hands.
I stand in the paper aisle and watch which
stationary disappears. I hope that postman
allen will hand me a spit-sealed envelope,
but he searches through his mail pile
and moves to the next house.

Women don't send their letters to me.
My neighbor gets mail enough for him to ignore.
Maybe he is the Goddess.
If he gives hope, I'm going to hope for him.
If they are just bills,
I will think my thoughts anyway.

A Letter to My Grandpa If I Sit With His Again

Remember that I mistakenly sat on your lap,
remember that. I was just tall enough.
The plaid blanket rested across your knees,
and I slipped when I tried to climb up.
You couldn't reach down for me, so someone else helped.

It was seventy degrees at Christmas.
The tree outside the kitchen dropped brown seeds.
Winter weighed from the opaque sky,
and we took its complexion.
My pink face and blonde hair bleached in low light.

I wait for you when I've grown up.
I'm sitting in the dirt in the shade – it's too fine.
The chickens you had scratched the soil
too small for a garden.
They will build a house on this, by the way,
and cheat on the rent.

I'm going a little farther than you did -
and a little further. I'm going to inhale
the dry wind to callus myself against the desert.
And I will call you over to rub your palms
on the powder on rocks .

There was never water near this dryland.
The ground cracks with no rain and moths
cover the concrete. I found a little plot of land
that I can have in June, and water will never run.

A Conversation with Birds

After this exhale, my coffee changed taste.
I'm jealous or warm wine, now.
Yesterday, it was the jumping ocean.
I lit a cigarette to swallow
the ashes – they sealed over my teeth.
Like finches that swallowed fire.
The birds said to me
in red text plus ampersand,
“Assuredly, the rocks will rub you raw,”
and they whispered in brush strokes.
I wanted to sift further and deeper
into the stones: sun-beat and broken
by salty waves, harnessed and cracked
by intention. Someone put them back together.
And the birds spoke,
“you are my very own rubbish.”
Their color broke under my heels.
I will eat funereal flowers.
Downstairs, I will change my mind
and disregard the past.