my humanity feels heavy in your hands
even the stray leaves on my balcony
ache
I’m yours—
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Ghost Town Eyes
Sometimes you don’t talk at all. You just stare at the TV, thoughtlessly running your hand up my nightgown. Slightly uneasy, I remember a time when my brother, bored senseless in the back of the car, would trace secret messages on my arms, and I’d try to guess what he had written. I wonder what you’d write. Maybe Am I my brother’s keeper? or perhaps It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Maybe you’d just write, I really like your upper thighs. Sometimes you talk a lot. About how difficult it was to leave Italy and how the pizza here tastes like cardboard and sawdust. You tell me how much you love your daughter, and how hard it is to live so far away from her. Lowering your voice, you quietly mention that your mother died when you were very young, and that you’ve been a fuck-up and fucked up and desperate to fuck and a sad, sorry fuck ever since. You tell me about the accident that rendered you partially blind, and even though you speak without tears, I feel the cracks in your teapot deepen. I could say so many things, but I simply touch the skin underneath your ghost town eye, spelling out all the things I could’ve said. Then we go to bed, and I become the haunted house you so desperately want to live in, having put to sleep all your ache inside my body.
Men on the Moon
but what if I died, Mr. Sandman?
would I still dream?
would the moon still love me
and spend the night?
Flowers and Starry Signs
someday we must sever
like the stars and the moon
though I dream of forever
starless nights come too soon
I will whisper our names
during those dark hours
tracing the branches of my veins
until my life lines
draw starry signs
and wild flowers
Eyes for Pennies
whenever I struggle to find the right words
I remind myself that poets would starve
if love was grammatical
A Love Letter to the Arabic Script
there is something ancient
about your noble nose
your curved lips—
Allah writes poetry
with the arch of your back
21 Century Eve
I want to have the courage
to take out my bones and
toss them into the sea
a jellyfish
swimming against the current
Tender, Loving Kraken
eight arms, three hearts—
your love must run painfully deep
Caution Tape Around Your Hips
I want you to undress me
the same way Autumn undresses the trees
outside your rain-splattered window
Martians at Vaclav Airport
I will change my bedtime prayer from take me with you, Elon to don’t forget me, Prague, for it’s either the most beautiful city in the world or the rest of world is just ugly —
