And I don’t think I’ll ever feel wholly comfortable in this island town with only four stoplights and one main road.

But it’s fall now, which means that mild December snows are approaching fast, and all the people are starting to look fragile

And thin and sort of sad in the way that shrubs seem to know they won’t make it long through he winter.

Before the frost comes, though, it always rains real hard here, like we’re stuck in the middle of an unnamed hurricane,

And once the rain settles, the air tastes a lot like tobacco. It’s times like these that I have to resist the urge to stoop down and claw at the earth

Until my fingernails are the same color as the sandy Carolina soil. I’m afraid, I guess, of taking some part of that soil

And making it part of me. Because then, I might be tempted to start to grow roots and pull some nourishment out of the soil.

See, you’ve already got me drinking Kentucky bourbon more often than wine and it feels like everything’s starting to shift

As if we’re all in a sort of whiskey haze and watching from a vantage deep in the Appalachian mountains.

Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the opposite of that that is really life.
-Joyce, Ulysses

Last night, I dreamt that I read the last chapter of Ulysses
in its entirety while waiting for you to decide how you took

your coffee: heavy cream, no sugar, was the response,
designed, I believe, to make me think about the soft,

taught whiteness of your thighs.
In that same dream,

we spent an hour clinging to each other before a Warhol
diptych, painted in reds and greens before we went home

to the kitchen and you leaned over the counter, heels planted
firm, and swayed to distract me while I, bobby pin in hand,

glued the last bits of rigging to the mast and unfurled
cloth sails on a model ship in the relative vacuum of a bottle.

seem to know that most of them probably won’t make it through the winter.
Sometimes, though, once it warms up a bit, it rains real hard here,

like we’re stuck in the middle of an unnamed hurricane, and once
the rain settles, the air tastes like tobacco; and I have to resist the urge

to stoop down and claw at the earth until my fingernails are the same
murky color as the sandy Carolina soil. Because if I take some part

of the land back home with me, I might start to put down roots and
pull something out of the soil that’ll make these barrier island beaches

start to resemble home; I might start to sympathize with those boys
who drive around with their sons down back-country mud roads in pickup

trucks and wave red-and-blue striped flags; or I might start to feel comfortable
drinking Kentucky bourbon instead of imported vodka, and feel comfortable

in a town with one main road, four stoplights, and a damn lot of leisure time
with nowhere to spend it.

from clear plastic tumblers. They are not microwave safe, and neither
are we, and try as I might, I can’t remember my formative years

as keenly as I’d like to; and when I bring that up in conversation,
we take turns wondering about the future and how we’ll remember

sitting here, in pink plastic deck chairs, talking about the sky,
and the particulars of the Milky Way: how bright and eager

it looks in the naked night sky, stretched out over a black horizon
of crashing waves; how its edges looks better in infrared, painted

in reds and pinks instead of the murky blues and yellows that our
eyes assign to it; how we’re not at the center, but instead spiraling

around its galactic core, in the orbit of the Local Spur; and how it’s expanding,
accelerating at some alarming rate calculated by physicists and

confounded by conspiracy theorists and stoners, all of whom sit around
large tables and pontificate on how long we’ve got left, how long it’ll

take until the Galaxy spirals out of control and destroys itself. We
decide that we’re racing it to the bottom.

trading
blows with humid air
ghosts.

I need to stop writing about sex.

She started,
“Write what you know.”

Blue Crab Claws

As he ate, blue crabs, fresh,
stripping glistening meat from
cracked claws with bared teeth,
his elbows grazed the shell fragments
gathering on the table like barnacles
stuck fast to waterworn, shipwrecked
wood: barrier island coral.

Pulling on a cigarette, he imagined
the smoke swirling around each tooth,
flavoring his tongue, gums;
he felt it in the mucus of his throat
that thickened in his lungs as he exhaled grey
ideas of slave cotton and civil war.

Pausing to steal a breath,
he realized that the air tasted like tobacco:
salty, smoky, Southern,
full of Bible quotes, barbeque, coleslaw,
dreams of flight, and pampas grass.

And as he cleaned the empty shells
from the wooden table on the porch,
he talked cream-colored sand, with hints
of pink and red, flaked brown with
shells and history and, finally,
some semblance of home.

Union Pacific

We sat, seventeen, wrapped up

in the steel trill of traintracks,

the dank of farm air caught

under the cuffs of our jeans.

You whispered wanderlust

in between hollow whistles

as we walked back, ryegrass

nipping at our knees, our backs

turned to the trains chattering

transience behind us.

In your car, we kept time

on the dash and counted stagnant

green road signs of the cities we’d escape to,

where Orion paled to skyscraper-lit skies.

And at each pit stop, we’d grip fast

the leather of your seats,

planning roadtrip summers,

marveling at the snaking maplines

we traced with our fingers, touching

nails, biting lips, and nervously tonguing

the future caught between our teeth.

Coal Dust

Your house tasted green,

like the cabbage roiling away

on the four-burner stove, white-baked-

brown from spills and scrubbings.

As you cooked

gwumpkies, stuffed thick

with beef, rice, tomatoes,

onions, grown outside

in soil turned by your hands,

you were forced to switch pans,

back and forth, so as to leave space

for the potatoes that you had left

for me to peel under the lip

of the laminate counter.

And as I learned,

grating horseradish, rolling

out pierogi,  punching down

warm, rising sourdough,

the stove boiled away,

the broth and the water simmering,

whistling the same, even tones.

In the spaces between chores,

we danced to polka records

on your old turntable,

the brittle black discs so scratched,

they relied on your humming to remind them

of their rhythm, the accordions and fiddles

whining in step with your feet,

which danced patterns colored

with the grey and blue memories of your

Pennsylvanian coal dust childhood.

The train chattered transience
as we pressed back to your car and
further home, keeping beat on the dash
as you counted stagnant green
signs of places we’d visit, and places
we’d never see.

In the space between songs
and at each pit stop, we’d grip
the leather of your seats, planning
roadtrip summers years in advance,
marveling at the map lines we
traced with our fingers, touching
nails, biting our lips, and
nervously tonguing the future
caught between our teeth.

He fumbles through the dust
And the chitin carcasses lining the pressboard shelf
That sits in the corner of the basement,
Knocking over detergent,
Roach killer, mouse traps,
Before finding the stale,
Now empty bottle of bleach.

He digs his hands
Into the pile of underwear,
Socks, and undershirts,
Catching small chips of paint
From the floor under his fingernails.
And he swears, flinging the colorless
Heap into the empty drum.

He closes the lid,
Jabbing at the oversized button
On the top of the machine,
Letting water, powder,
and the last few drops of Clorox
Tug at the stains
From his armpits, neck, and feet,
Muddying the water,
And yellowing his whites.

We talked the same language,
With native fluency,
Bathed in greys and blues,
Trading drags on a cheap menthol,
Coughing in rhyme, alternating
Sips, gulps of the same skunked
Beer sloshing over the sides
Of a cracked, clear plastic cup.

We spat casually on the rocks below
As the smoke wrapped around us,
Ran its fingers through strands of your hair,
And tainted your perfume.

The room retched its pie-eyed occupants,
Expelling sets of two and four.

We were dizzy,
But your teeth tasted of stomach acid,
And you had smoked all of my cigarettes.