There is nowhere to go
without the dead
hawking my mind’s pink maze.
The city is ruthlessly lovely, though,
with its long-lupine sky falling
upon the mountain and the sweet thrill
of its waves clinging to glamor, oblivious
to what seeps into the earth, what
has sunken the laundry of the heart.
I get it. Why trouble the afternoon moon?
Why waste away the water
with a thick slice of red?
I walk through an alleyway
of saliva, soured with white smiles.
A couple asks me to take their picture
in front of the gum wall. Sure.
I become strange, beautiful in my whiskey skin.
Seattle carries herself passionately. So much
metal today. So many frames
moving in and out of others.
How many times has the city healed
with time and the revving green,
the rotting moan of a seagull?
I walk. A friend texts [the news].
Ah, they have killed me again.
Art, in its truest form, repeats.
Outside the museum, I static
beneath a black man as he hammers,
working away. He is without a face
but sadness still lurks. A month of this:
black men hammering their grief into me,
my grief becoming the rarest wine.
What can I say, the city is rimming
with pollination. They were
here, and then I wasn’t. I confess:
I forget all their names.
It was bound to happen.
Everything leaves—the sun-eaten pavement;
the wet mouth of rain; the throat
that threw, It’s never enough to love
a thing, you must do the work, too; the body—
except the trees that, in this city, become
an emerald flare of hands
reaching out when the winds pulse.
How many times must it be said?
There is [blood] parading the streets,
I reply.
The market bricks with whirs
and wears the violent churning of noise
on its lips like balm.
I drink a cup of coffee, sitting
on a bench overlooking
the Sound: there is so much blue.