The Delaware Guardian

I catalog battle wounds,
the language of imprecation.
I live in the river,
the old water splitting the city:
us/them.
They chug along,
lacerating my back,
breaking tides.
Lights out, I tidy their secrets,
the oxidate damage
fluid beneath the temperate air.
Murky flow,
conceal the dead.

My gratitude and apologies sprinkled like kisses over your palms,
like the ones I wish you'd steal from my lips.
My love is the poem you say I don't edit enough.
These aren't the good pages.

How sloppy my letters have become--premature ink botch.
I used to leave things out.
I used to invent history.

I'm becoming nocturnal. The unconscious gaps in my day. I spend hours recalling snapshots of a previous night, the shadows thrown against the white wall--curves in the veil, angles in the flesh. Symbiotic rhythm. I practice my technique and fantasize the execution.

Old love letters

They left us a paved lot as empty and flatlined as your hands are cold. "I thought I killed you." All the things I love. All the things I hate. All the things I wish I never knew. Pierrot--I thought I--what's the word I'm groping for--

The Corrosive Agent

When the pipes freeze we'll drink the cadence--clanking rusty heart. As I dig through waste to feed the gnarled life in my belly I'll remind you that I can't afford to be warmer. Maggots feast and turn to flies; they know nothing of gratitude.

There are parts of us that continue growing long after we've died,
the parts that stay warm as our skin petrifies over our bones.

We never mastered the timing.