Street Dog // Prayer
Street Dog
My body is something I toss
into time & the sand
climbs upwards.
Sidewalks overlap themselves
with every direction
I can walk away in.
The barstools spin bodies
off like vinyls, there is room
for me to stay & wet
my tongue on gin & tonic.
If there is a bedroom, then
in it, Springsteen makes me
question my place of birth
by repetition:
I dream again, of your hands
as neutered, like a dog.
There is no bone
to dig out
of your khaki pants.
I wonder if rebirth is still enough
of a spiritual experience, if grief
becomes your mother.
The way even she asks,
where did your body go?
makes her the greenest grass I could find.
Prayer
If I fucked you
under the low
metal light shades
above the kitchen table, after
my 4 am meal,
I wonder what God would think—
God only being my mother:
I’m wondering what she would think
about me eating at night.
The starving doesn’t work anymore—
Lithium has left me wide-mouthed for miles.
If it’s the prayer
that makes Gods
out of holy things, then let me pray you
into something I believe in. Make you
a golden stallion with my mouth—
my teeth never looked so good
biting into anything.
We could be our own missionaries,
open our bodies like bibles.
Bend your palms
like knees into the hollow
promise of my collar—my throat
is so inexperienced in speaking
of a future, it’s just another sweet
spot for you to touch.
What do I have to do,
to make this a good life
and less of a choice?
I got my hair bleached: spent a good hundred
bucks to walk on the water
of my own eyes and say:
she’d get some.
To riot a day
where there is none.
I am hours of youth,
I am bright lights and unforgiving
face shape.
But I am in my body,
I am sex and hunger and kneeling
at the feet of night.
Don’t come for me, don’t come.
