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Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda. – Dante Ogni altra cosa, ogni pensier va fore, E sol ivi con voi rimansi amore. – Petrarca I loved you first: but afterwards your love Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove. Which owes the other most? my love was long, And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong; I loved and guessed at you, you construed me And loved me for what might or might not be – Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong. For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’ With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done, For one is both and both are one in love: Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’ Both have the strength and both the length thereof, Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

I’m fond of frogs, and every day I treat them with affection. I join them at the FROG CAFE— We love the Croaking Section.

God sent an angel. One of his least qualified, though. Fluent only in Lemme get back to you. The angel sounded like me, early twenties, unpaid interning. Proficient in fetching coffee, sending super vague emails. It got so bad God personally had to speak to me. This was annoying because I’m not a religious person. I thought I’d made this clear to God by reading Harry Potter & not attending church except for gay weddings. God did not listen to me. God is not a good listener. I said Stop it please, I’ll give you wedding cake, money, candy, marijuana. Go talk to married people, politicians, children, reality TV stars. I’ll even set up a booth for you, then everyone who wants to talk to you can do so without the stuffy house of worship, the stuffier middlemen, & the football blimps that accidentally intercept prayers on their way to heaven. I’ll keep the booth decorations simple but attractive: stickers of angels & cats, because I’m not religious but didn’t people worship cats? Thing is, God couldn’t take a hint. My doctor said to eat an apple every day. My best friend said to stop sleeping with guys with messiah complexes. My mother said she is pretty sure she had sex with my father so I can’t be some new Asian Jesus. I tried to enrage God by saying things like When I asked my mother about you, she was in the middle of making dinner so she just said Too busy. I tried to confuse God by saying I am a made-up dinosaur & a real dinosaur & who knows maybe I love you, but then God ended up relating to me. God said I am a good dinosaur but also sort of evil & sometimes loving no one. It rained & we stayed inside. Played a few rounds of backgammon. We used our indoor voices. It got so quiet I asked God about the afterlife. Its existence, human continued existence. He said Oh. That. Then sent his angel again. Who said Ummmmmmm. I never heard from God or his rookie angel after that. I miss them. Like creatures I made up or found in a book, then got to know a bit.

I’m gently rowing and the birds look sewn to the surface of the water as it undulates to the sound of Sean talking beautifully about something I don’t really understand. But all I’m picturing are brown paper bags with little grease spots near the bottom seams that have recorded the way sausage rolls have touched them, or the thin waists of dogs as depicted in medieval hunting frescos, or a cherub’s fat little hand gesturing to a vista where smiling families are meeting to picnic with the animals that God has also saved, or I’m thinking about the mechanics of bagpipes, the legs and arms and the fat belly and the long neck with its holes. This has been the best day ever. Sean smiles. He’s wearing shorts, and so am I. It’s sunny! Mine are so short they may as well be underpants, and I still don’t understand a word that he is saying.

I don’t like what the moon is supposed to do. Confuse me, ovulate me, spoon-feed me longing. A kind of ancient date-rape drug. So I’ll howl at you, moon, I’m angry. I’ll take back the night. Using me to swoon at your questionable light, you had me chasing you, the world’s worst lover, over and over hoping for a mirror, a whisper, insight. But you disappear for nights on end with all my erotic mysteries and my entire unconscious mind. How long do I try to get water from a stone? It’s like having a bad boyfriend in a good band. Better off alone. I’m going to write hard and fast into you, moon, face-fucking. Something you wouldn’t understand. You with no swampy sexual promise but what we glue onto you. That’s not real. You have no begging cunt. No panties ripped off and the crotch sucked. No lacerating spasms sending electrical sparks through the toes. Stars have those. What do you have? You’re a tool, moon. Now, noon. There’s a hero. The obvious sun, no bullshit, the enemy of poets and lovers, sleepers and creatures. But my lovers have never been able to read my mind. I’ve had to learn to be direct. It’s hard to learn that, hard to do. The sun is worth ten of you. You don’t hold a candle to that complexity, that solid craze. Like an animal carcass on the road at night, picked at by crows, taunting walkers and drivers. Your face regularly sliced up by the moving frames of car windows. Your light is drawn, quartered, your dreams are stolen. You change shape and turn away, letting night solve all night’s problems alone.

The eye’s desire for relief. I’m the tiger lily bobbing in the heat. And also the neighbor, shaved bald and lifting weights on the balcony. Each petal is the receipt of a shameful dream— a thought we hadn’t wanted to incorporate lolling from my parted mouth. But you know it’s mistakes that make life happen. A cardboard suitcase of beer for the traveler. And if we get too close to the words on this page they soften and warp into an animal lace, some net whose logic won’t reveal itself. I pull our eyes back because I love you. But then you draw them back further still because that sounds like an excuse. The whiny version of Love Hurts loops and curls like ribbon through a scissor, being pulled across the blade. The money in this poem’s easy, if you don’t mind having no thoughts and sitting in one place, while your body changes shape.

I’m thankful that my life doth not deceive Itself with a low loftiness, half height, And think it soars when still it dip its way Beneath the clouds on noiseless pinion Like the crow or owl, but it doth know The full extent of all its trivialness, Compared with the splendid heights above. See how it waits to watch the mail come in While ’hind its back the sun goes out perchance. And yet their lumbering cart brings me no word, Not one scrawled leaf such as my neighbors get To cheer them with the slight events forsooth, Faint ups and downs of their far distant friends— And now ’tis passed. What next? See the long train Of teams wreathed in dust, their atmosphere; Shall I attend until the last is passed? Else why these ears that hear the leader’s bells Or eyes that link me in procession? But hark! the drowsy day has done its task, Far in yon hazy field where stands a barn, Unanxious hens improve the sultry hour And with contented voice now brag their deed— A new laid egg—Now let the day decline— They’ll lay another by tomorrow’s sun.

I married in the world’s black night for warmth if not repose. At the close— someone. I hid with him from the long range guns. We lay leg in the cupboard, head in closet. A slit of light at no bird dawn— Untaught I thought he drank too much. I say I married and lived unburied. I thought—

I mean to say I mean I keep meaning to I mean amending I mean correcting I mean qualifying I mean collecting I mean X + X + X and so forth I mean all possible values I mean adding I mean and also I mean pileups happen when you can’t see where you’re going I mean where you are I mean your hand in front of your face I mean my hand I mean if that’s all I can see I mean if that’s all I’m looking at I mean that’s not all I mean there is no end I mean this isn’t the beginning I mean only means I mean blow the house down with breathlessness I mean a house of breathlessness I mean the walls are braced against themselves I mean brace yourself I mean to take the house down with its own components I mean throw the whole deck at it I mean two-by-fours and oven mitts I mean rocks hucking them at walls of rocks I mean self-healing walls I mean with insipid pocks I mean BB dings in street signs I mean bullet holes in stop signs I mean to riddle I mean all signs point to “yes” I mean eyelids are designed to admit some light I mean sound I mean boom I mean faster than gravity I mean I am not equal to the work I mean I’m over my head I mean hovering I mean levitating I mean light as a feather wide as a plane I mean fight as a feather (infinitesimally) I mean I’m going to talk about it I mean talk about it by talking about talking about it I mean write about it I mean scrape it all towards me with the edge of my hand I mean like a spray of crumbs I mean pile I mean to pile up and get on top of I mean for the prospect I mean for the pea beneath the mattress I mean to feel the ceiling I mean to figure it like a mime I mean just imagine it I mean kiss it I mean I’m already running out of air I mean steam I mean fire I mean fight it I mean feed I mean with fire I mean fire is not finite only fuel I mean light is not finite only illumination I mean things to illuminate I mean to throw shadows I mean I have an important question: is this important?

What you need will come to you at the right time says the tarot card I overturned at my friend Nathalie’s house one evening. I was wondering if she said something worth hearing,What? I’m looking at her face, trying to read it, not a clue what she said but I’ll just say yeah and hope. Me, Tabitha, and her aunt are waffling in Waffle House by the Mississippi River. Tabitha’s aunt is all mumble. She either said Do you want a pancake? or You look melancholic. The less I hear the bigger the swamp, so I smile and nod while my head becomes a faint foghorn, a lost river. Why wasn’t I asking her to microphone? When you tell someone you read lips you become a mysterious captain. You watch their brains navigate channels with BSL interpreters in the 
corner of night TV. Sometimes it’s hard to get back the smooth sailing and you go down with the whole conversation. I’m a haze of broken jars, a purple bucket and only I know there’s a hole in it. On Twitter @justnoxy tweets I can’t watchTV/ movies / without subtitles. It’s just too hard to follow. I’m just sitting there pretending and it’s just not worth it. I tweet back you not being able to follow is not your failure. It’s weird, giving the advice you need to someone else, weird as thinking my American friend said I move through London like a Hotep when she actually said I’m used to London life with no sales tax. Deanna (my friend who owns crystals and mentions the existence of multiple moons) says I should write about my mishearings, she thinks it’ll make a good book for her bathroom. I am still afraid I have grown up missing too much information. I think about that episode of The Twilight Zone where an old man walks around the city bar selling bric-a-brac from his suitcase, knowing what people need — scissors, a leaky pen, a bus ticket, combs. In the scene, music is playing loud, meaning if I were in that bar I would miss the mysticism while the old man’s miracles make the barman say WOAH, this guy is from another planet!