the sound of mandolins

mite my hair going grey have something to scratch
skipping sleep for some overblown dream instead
of waking up after he's left the house. rather: what
would I have to do to have his shape correlated to
my own, my dick gone limp momentarily, thinking:
how long it has been since we ruptured the distance
between us, placated the sheets down carving this
little version of Heaven help me. got a gold book
cleft on the shelf for safekeeping of how to keep
home: burrowing into the bed, his arms, loving him
the way I could crawl, how some deer do have
thrush to be thankful for. hey, now I am hard again,
his again, thinking about it later; my pockets filled
with hometown dirt, wedding grass, sleeping pills.

lest we remember how time brought us here: walked from
plateau to plateau in grotto gowns, planting plans into our
living room furniture, the spice rack, the refrigerator filled
with rotted vegetables, leftovers—washing my hair in the
sink with silk, sun barely coming in through the bricks, his
science in the next room singing current events. I braid our
hair into his
hair into mine; lest we remember how two together
tallied this: toeing to the icebox, looking for more
cold cream, his evidence neatly folded into my own.

poem for renewed insomnia

nothing has aged, you. a mouthful of books: spit, she
will always be in this text, he will always be in this
text. my arms bent

fast-forwarding through scenes i have watched enough now, i
have. why is this so familiar? i touch my teeth. i wait. i memorize
nothing there is nothing
to remember. except this: a bucket of sand, his hands
not ever touching me, and his hands always touching me, and her
reluctance to be in the room with me after
i had spread my own blood all over the floor.

the television showed me an earthquake on every channel and i kept flipping through to see if this would change but it did not. i put both of my hands down my pants and tried to masturbate but could not feel anything below the waist. the circumference of the earth remained the same even when i squeezed and squeezed as hard as i could. i asked him if he thought anything of this and he said to lie down and be quiet, but i could not figure out how to make my heart stop making that terrible beat.

he said everything is on fire in your house your house
is burning down and i said please please i am trying to sleep.