In an attic, the voodooed lambswool of my
childhood, the crawl of hunger through
the schisms in Ceylon satinwood. I return

to the chessboard of its floor, to the amputee
in the closet; to the limbless mannequin
of a fox-born elegy that drags its sharkskin,
through the gut of my gap-tooth.

This is where

my arms turn into a diary drunk on apologies
This is where I lied, I laid – blood sainted
by an aria of amphetamines

The snow owls came to kiss the scarecrow
a blue ruin’s grotto grinning under
my bedroom window. This is where
I housebroke a scream, sold it as a song

to the jaguar sleeping
in the rock garden of his knuckles

He was a porcelain rose – tumor & blossom
spit-shined, pumiced. I was the milky elbow
of cinnamon wetting the tea cloth. This is
where the ichor blurred us to a liquid heat

I watched us each stain the other; cochineal
as a knife’s teeth ghostwriting quatrains
into the journals of paper-thin kneecaps

We unfurled tongues in the other’s mouth
like teenaged fingers curling a coo around
revolvers in a Russian roulette. This is
where every bullet is soft like a birdsong.

Where everything was once timeless as lightning
Where every loss murmurs the same sharp name