 October. Hi, James. October. Last October, there were seven hours of light, and you spent them asleep or in love with a man with two hearts. One tucked deep in the crook of his arm, the other in the threshold of his home. Hangman, he offered you, but he offered, but you dodged the needle and thread, snuck past the blood rope and tender organ. You sat on his chest, peered down his throat for a wormhole, pounded sternum for his real age. Cold ache of a wooden floor, you made love to revive him. Saw his heart pulse, the one dangling just out of reach. Exhausted, took shelter in the curvature of his spine while he slept and swore through the winter. Sat visual, suffered. The heart and the door still stubborn throbbing. Cursing the flies, the swarm gathered around it would not yet come inside. Thank you. Thank you. My next piece is called Psycho-Pomp. It's just a great word, but a Psycho-Pomp is a guide into the next life. And here you go, Psycho-Pomp. Name your rivers, mark each one different. Dignals into their banks become a bridge elsewhere. Your laughter is an abandoned vessel. You consider this turn of phrase and look away. And I, after nights without sleep, stumble over your vertebrae, forget to be gentle, lost in all that supposition. Someone else's mouth disavowing my own. Counting new knots in my back, your interest in syntax, what new sounds? More nightmare rhetoric, apocalypse, paralysis. Every shit storm and snore thereafter, the same synaptic mantra. This is the apocalypse, and I am paralyzed. This is the apocalypse, and I am paralyzed. I think these are just going to happen in no particular order. But for the most part, they're all mad. This one's kind of sweet. Let's do this one. It's called Patron Saint of the Lost Cause, which is St. Jude. Patron Saint of the Lost Cause. I've never fucked a real saint. Many terrible angels, demonized androids, abandoned homes, sure. I like the questionable weirdos, sometimes believers, past life, card sharks, penny tails up, face down, in the dirt, I know what I'm looking for. Pick up games, nameless strays, long stretched, always hungry for attention. They collect at 7-Elevens, at the Church of Friction, at the Hairline Fracture, at Hallelujah, where ancient meridians touch where pleasures sing bright through my body. Back by the old motel, back by the highway off-ramp, no saints, just self-destructive city kids, neon fuck-ups, the collard after curfew, their cigarette tips, sodium vapor lit, eyeballs shining, quick to forgive, forget, they quiver in earnest, going on and on, about on and on and on, so forth on, all night and on, in earnest. Thank you. They're like little shorties. This is great. Here we go. I tried to write a sonnet. Well, I wrote a sonnet. And then it kind of turned into this monster movie sonnet. Monster movie loves sonnet. Let's do it. It's called In This Version. Gently now, I am not strong, unarmed, no big foot theories, nothing up my sleeve. I am out of platitudes. This overwhelming moment I've come undone, it seems. I didn't mean to show up empty-handed or this frantic. I'm sorry. Was thrust inside your unhinged jaw with little notice? I've lost my mind, but I trust you. Would you pin me in a lineup? In size are my worst to gristle, throw me to a crowd. Here comes the inevitable transmogrification. Will you turn pitchfork and mob when out goes the light? Have you seen a girl split this easy? Would you like to see a parlor trick? I'm sorry. I needed you to gasp at the blood as if we were real, as if you didn't see this coming. So invested in your discretion, I'd convinced us indivisible. But the violin rise, the ice cold staccato, the body count, the dolly back, this whole gruesome scene. Ribs thrown open, hearts aborted, inside stretched, reaching straight for the other. We might have made it. We were quite the pair, laid bare, splayed, everybody watching, you and I, so gross and so special. Thanks. That was 14 lines, I promise. Let's see. We're still, oh, sweet. This is a nice follow-up. It's interesting because I usually write poems that are three pages long, but I have a bunch of single-pagers. But maybe I'll end with the longer ones. Anyway, this is a poem about climate change. Our last fight, both of us fucked on acid and the bathroom fan, madness. Someone outside screaming, do you even know where we are right now? Deescalation is a handy trait. But then how could you say, I love you and mean it? The moment has passed anyway. You see it now, don't you love? We're history. We did this to ourselves. We saw it coming. The old wives tale repeated adage, our mothers unresolved and jumped regardless. The plumage, the flume, this furnace, these feathers, how cliche? Please don't leave that part out. We were doomed from the start. Disrupted weather patterns, this whole clusterfuck. Hey, future dweller, nostalgic robot, this body, this world, this whole thing is a trap. Nothing thrives here. So don't bother. Thanks. They are all mad. I had a really upsetting year on it. Let's see how the couple go through. I promise I'll end with something nice. There you go. This is called Notes from Hubble's Dream 2. I love you with the violence of a brand new consciousness, a gas and spark, swarming, hot, babbling, incoherent, growing exponentially, which is to say, I have loved you nebulously, petulant with want like a big, fat baby. My love is the spectacle of whole galaxies crashing, the disaster of a gentle nudge on a planet's axes. I still love you, tightrope precariously. Everything about us is all and nothing, a fucking disaster, a game of hearts and fracture. Lovers like us, flammable, inflammable. Lovers like us, sweet kindling, blazing, kaboom and particle. We've leveled whole cities. Lovers like us are destroyers of worlds, you and I. I went on a date with someone who doesn't like space documentaries. I miss the old you, always exploding in front of everybody, no matter who saw, arms crossed, atoms colliding, shooting stars, ending planets, over nothing. Am I just speeding things? Thank you. Oh, cool. All the longer ones are left. And the longer ones and the weird ones are left. So bear with me, guys. One more short one. This is called a miss. I am first thing in the morning. I'm halved by bedtime. I'm five pills a day. I am your breath caught. I am choke and sputter. I am the lump in your throat. I am summer's last tomatoes, jewels on a dying vine. I am a final offering. I am no next time. I am the swath of birds aloft. I am the congregation startled. I am the astonished cow on your sidewalk at breakfast. I am the milk carton appalled. I am a serial monogamous. I am the lore of house and home. I am thrashing against the urge to settle down. It's been months since we've moved apart, missing since the holidays. I am still a miss. I am the nape of your neck, someone else's morning altar. I am too small to mind the gap. I am harmful if swallowed. I am a hairline fracture untreated. I am bruise. I am ghost. I am disappearing. I am cigarettes. Your bad habit left over. I am the drag and pull. I am the ragged breath. This is called terminology. It's in two parts. One, I could not stand any longer this small talk of the heart as an object of rational pursuit. Love is a coded expression. It's meaning ever terminal. What good am I then? Half alive or your pretty mouth expiring? Once, I fancied myself a flashing light, skirt hiked, slettowed, a mirror, a maniac, powder, soft, sharp, tongued, a lightning flash, a worthy opponent. To say, I was fabulous until you. Now, I am naked at best. I bend easy. I was fooled. I fell. I fold. But please, bend me further till we lose sight of the seam. And watch again. I come undone. I knew you were a red flag. Eyeliner streaks on hotel sheets, a crisp start of anonymous mornings. I thought you were a Thursday night, learned too late on Sunday. Once, your face was everything I needed to be found. You are still 1,000 names for right here, now, and never again. You used to make me laugh the way only I can make me laugh, now that I'm alone. Two, you said you'd make do that our eyes would adjust. Match after match, we'd still have our hands while I tried to rekindle. The half-life of home is shelter still. A domicile, housing, a learned helplessness, contemplating stucco walls, watching porn. Tuesday afternoon spent barefoot and bathrobe. Lately, naked is all I'm good for. Let's write it off, love. We got lost. Failed another litmus test, another slow dance, another recycled love song, another exchange waiting in the wings. How can I complain? I wanted the bend and broke. So much of you I've borrowed to feel whole. I admit my dysfunction, call me thief. I am not sorry. But of this, I am adamant. I have been my best naked with you. I played the cards I had. I didn't think I'd need an exit strategy. I know you are saving your hand for another. I've known your best. I remember everything I haven't said was once for you to hear. And I've written you another poem, different than the one we'd wanted. Love, this magic is terminal. I wish I'd known, a sleight of hand, your deck of cards out of sight behind you. Thank you. Okie dokie. So I have, I don't know, three more. This is a piece I wrote recently. It's called Echo Chamber. And it's kind of this rambly long thing. And it's my first time reading it. So let me know what you think. Echo Chamber. This hallowed worm, this hole in your chest, you've dubbed yourself chasm, love. An eye, the apple of your needle and thread. An eye, an arrow home, the sticky sweetness of a wet mouth pierced, rotting fruit still a meal. An eye, a heart worn broken sugar. Inside you are holy and inside you are poison and soft. Inside you are a cavity. An eye, an invasive species sweetheart. Inside you I am home. Inside you I have found an alchemy, turned poison into prison, into isotope to a solitude, blooming wide, taking room. Inside you I am as vast as the sea, pungent as the fruit too heavy to hold, a bone white drying, a dead tree leaning into the cold, high twist and gnarl its whole form a fist or branches or hands outstretched to praise its state stalled or evolving regardless. Inside you I was twisted once. I was afraid once, feigned dancing. Once I could not give or take more space, I wisened up shrunk to size and small and learned that lonely does not mean alone or incomplete even without. So I bore down further inside the seam, undid the void between lift and lid and lie and found whole world stacked within within within my particularities elementary. Discovered multiplicities, capitals, necropolis, canyons, lands full of unresolved cosmology and puzzled parts I'd pulled apart, each lonely facsimile smiling still. I caved, I cried, I melted glaciers a long time. Now I am a softer landing, I am worth, I am a solemn magic necessary. I mean to say inside the doors, inside your head lies another hole, another vaulted heart asleep. It dreams afloat and flight of deep down and untouched you holier than you and I then and now older than eternal, ephemeral and deeper still you and I an echo chamber. You and I as one another and another and another and. That's kind of weird. Did it work? I promise I'll end happy. So I have three more. I know like the one happy poem, the one happy love poem I have is about my dog. So those are like three away. This piece is called, birds do not mate for life, not even a genuine pair bond. This is, I don't know, like these pieces are kind of quirky because they're not really the way that I write, but they kind of came out of me. So here we go. Birds do not mate for life, not even a genuine pair bond. Keyloid, your fissure is your rose, is your river, is a calling. Try to be smaller, unseen, sink. Your heart slips, your sleeve, your scar map, stars, pocket, fault line and meridian rings on a tree ranger. Core, past lives gone, a rye heart worn broken. Finch on my forearm, another bird stone dead, red handed, pair bond unbound, dead half flown and my half in hand. Our once shared dangers, Roger, daughter. Consider yourself armed. Consider yourself just moments. Consider yourself concrete and careful enemies all. Blackbirds do not mate for life. Curves and tripwire, Romeo, fissure. They smell you, come. All men, dogs, the bloody drip dry. All faults stoned and calcified still, water eternally metallic. Copper, sink, smell. The red handed, come, spill. The iron fisted, come, cursed. Bone clipped, teeth clatter, nerves ticking, thumbs all tongues clacking. The pot boils, meat pilfered, haunted, hunted. You haunched, blood cursed, coursing. You wait, your blood cursing. Thank you, two more. Okay, sweet. So these last two pieces are the nice. This is a piece called The Name My Father Gave Me. Here are two notes. My name in Korean is Nool, and it's the common word for sunset, but like specifically it means the crimson glow that kind of chases dawn and dusk, so it's like the last bit of red at the end right before night comes. And that saying Red Sky at Morning, Sailor's Warning, Red Sky at Night, Sailor's Delight, everybody knows that? Okay. The name my father gave me. One, namesake, your hesitation lingers, pink, horizon, a past already. Sunset, daylight cannot be contained. What is wild cannot be lost or claimed by designation. An organized personhood is still of your own free will. Getting out of bed at all is a display of hunger. Walk long enough and far. You are bound to run into your heart. Always the last place you look. Here is your lover. Here is your home. Here, your two small hands to hold back an ocean, still the storm to cry out. Namesake, your father is gone. Endlessly moving west, you herald neither dark or night, move on. Do not shout for the echo back. Forget the man who called you unlucky too much. A failure where light forgot. Forgive the men that you could not love, but foolishly tried. You are not wrong. They were each bristled stiff, ready to wolf you whole heart. And here is a dagger. Do not spare another. Two, Red Sky come morning. The storms in your mind are of your own making. Look to your hands, can quiet them. Hands that kill and cure. Hands that pray like children reach for other hands that span the years between. The slight of your hands, what are left of miracles. Crimson glow of dawn and dusk. Here, you are a simple metaphor. Rush hour traffic, another day's end. Here, a nicotine crawl the same sorry tread. Elsewhere, you are the first slow blink, unfurling, color four running. You are blue. Rewarding the earliest of birds elsewhere, you have just begun to rose gold the sky. Linger there, unnamed, neither day or night. Where your father is a lover, careful. Curtains drawn, a dawn, a promise meant at the time. And your mother is a dream, her lonely spine peaceful, a silhouette unaware, and you, her shadow still asleep. Thank you. Okay, sweet. This is the last one, aptly named dog poem. Christine, you gotta get better with your titles. Yeah, and this is my love poem about my dog, whom I love very much, who's past, but dog poem. Not all of us can say what's needed in the ways we need them said. Some dogs get off on good behavior, others have a prey drive, their instinct to hunt insatiable. I've seen my neighbors mutt, brown, bolt, ecstatic, blocks and blocks, shock, collared, howling, squirrel, painfully determined still. Even the most amicable, most eloquent, Benji Franklin, Mr. Noodle's or Evelyn Wolf will take off given the opportunity. They can't help it, this gives me hope. Is there a trick to reassurance, an inflection, a hand gesture to say, and of the times you are alone, when stillness is a pinprick, is a bed of nails, is an ache without end or form or telling. When the words won't come home and the worst keeps calling, look to the dog, an old holdout keeper of your shared wild past. Her one eye opens, eyebrow raised, the moment you stir, or stay unable to face another morning. It is true, the body fails us, as do words, but never the dog. Her weight against you, sturdy, who wants to stick around despite your failings. Her steady gaze, a wink, a limp that recalls the joy of the mad dash. Nothing so loved can be lost completely, stowed forever, deep down. And how good, how gentle, how perfect she's made you, impenetrable to even us, cunning as we have become, at folding the spirit to obedience. Thank you.