Sleep Stallion

My name is Jessalin. I write poems, I think.

[sleepstallion]

Daffodils

For Emily

How hard it is to live and how much harder not to die. 

It was gray and damp today and the daffodils shot up painful; 

you weren’t there to see them. But you might have liked them. 

You might have liked the mud against the yellow. You might have liked

the throngs of students and their ambitious loudness,

the clouds stretched thin like an eyelid over the sun, 

the grass on its way to green, the squirrels growing fat again. 

So much death this month. 

I don’t know what to say other than 

those daffodils will rise and wilt like anything else 

and some flowers are planted in fall. We must trust them to come again in spring.

[sleepstallion]

Communion

The cassocks are congregating. Ungainly and amorphous, fierce as if starving. No bodies to transubstantiate. No 

throats for their pale halos. No rosaries because no thumbs to rub. Nuns still have their bodies, but barely. 

Their habits have been hung for wooly jumpers. But the cassocks, the cassocks hover, aching for bodies. 

[sleepstallion]

Passing

If we whisper, will you listen? If we stop moving, we camouflage—texture, skin— But I know you see me. 

Your eyes dip down. The family can’t know. Our thrown stone bruise. Soft slant 

unsaid—A phase. Subtle and anonymous. Perhaps there is no place for us. Octopus 

flexing into the dim. Our slick cauldron head folds over too many limbs. But now I understand—

You think you phobe us as we phobe you. As if we’re enormous, a kraken askew. 

So slice us off. We’ll float up, up as the foam. Or we’ll erupt finally visible.

[sleepstallion]

We Are Alive

That March there was a wedding amongst all that death. 

On our drive to the ceremony, the Lyon roads were rushed with flood rubble: 

branches, trash, the remains of homes. And spray-painted on a boarded church, 

WE R ALIVE. 

Construction shoved off the rocks so we could march on. 

And when we returned it would be to a scooped out house, hollow and cold. 

A red dead dog. Two young gone.

But amongst all that death a wedding: alive and new. 

So much white and breathing, people smiling at each other and making new life. 

Life will go on this time. It must.

[sleepstallion]

In Which I Go Fishing and Get Caught

I’ve never killed trout before. Laid the line, but never laid your body on the rock.

Soft spoken sack of skin and gills shut close, then open as bloated wounds. Pink, like I am pink. 

Don’t know to slip the knife, don’t know if there will be blood, or pus, or bones.

So stone your flat head flatter. Thrill in your flap and writhe, unable to die.

Feel like God until Mother slits your liver still. Cinch her teeth,

“Respect what you kill.”

[sleepstallion]

Come Into It

All the hipsters scamper out to smoke. Scavengers for nicotine. Trade flowers for ash and polyester fur.

Our vogue lungs turn out to burn like hide spread to leather. Postpostmodern cancer.

We are all skin. We are all surface. No organs to grind, no meat or meter. 

We fancy ourselves foxes. We gnaw the filters the ists and isms drop. Slink and swallow air.

Plastic foam swells. We are bloated and starving, we die. Deluded full.

[sleepstallion]

Laika

thin and slinking red ribbed slouch famish and concrete 

before the lure into warmth by meat and sudden love 

vague world concrete lost human hands shove

curled unsure in flurry rush hurl into 

space tucked in cut off 

first animal to first dog who what

laika like a what 

only heat and dark oxygen burn 

weather was god food was god now

between man and god is dog

[sleepstallion]

Deformed

We first suspected the cresting horns. We coded you as the other so you buried them under overgrown hair turned fur. We never spoke of them

            until your teeth and lips grew to a snout, your words shrunk to snorts. We feared your animal. 

We built you turns and corridors. We binged on your labyrinth to purge you into myth.

She, she was different. She dove into the maze, unwound her sinews and found you debased and starved. Your horns had outgrown your neck, so she held them for you.

Unlosing was the hardest part, harder than keeping you in. So she unburdened, unraveled herself to unlose you.

When you emerged, deciphered, we turned away. Unable to bear you.

[sleepstallion]

Actaeon

Skin set you going— shoulders, elbow, her velvet between. Bleating, Sweet heart. 

Boyish voyeur, her water wasn’t for you, but seeing her stilled you. So you stilled her too.

Salacious chute, rapacious brute. Naked eye, cry and cry.

She’ll strip you now. Erect your antlers. Crack open and echo, stagger back, shot.

And how will you stir still waters now? Your horns catch, her bitches prowl. 

All your nerves. All your sinew. All your flesh to chew. Bleating, sweet heart.

[sleepstallion]

sofa on the front porch

a loveseat with only one person on it

a dead thing pulseless line

slab of limp fish mouth hung slack

a sentence with no verbs no capitals

summer never ends and the world shrivels

[sleepstallion]

Pulse

I wrote your name in ink between the creases of my wrist.

I hoped it would seep through skin, and mingle with my blood

so you could be my pulse.

[sleepstallion]

Manic Pixie Dream Boy

I met him during the be- tween. When he was a hypen and I was

an ellipsis. I liked his shivery wrists and where his eyes went when I was naked.

He couldn't clean or sing and he never figured out where my nerves ended.

Some day he'll be just dimples and blinking that shatters his smile.

He told me, It's selfish to be so sad.

I told him, It's selfish not to be.

[sleepstallion]

Days Can Be Nights

Sunrise sweeps,  blue and pale, not at all as promised.

I am eating a peach, swollen and soft. Juice slips down my wrist, drips on my pillow.

Blue against my eyelids, peach against my palm, I am anxious over birdsong.

[sleepstallion]

it all and none (none at all)

i used to touch the moon, i lied on my back in the dewy grass and pressed my thumb against the black hollow where the moon closed its eyes.

now i sleep under a map and reach to hold the world. everything i know fits there. from california to hokaido, all laid flat and safe.

i imagine i can hold it close press it to my chest and know it. lie on my back and touch it all, have it all without having to risk anything.

[sleepstallion]

Pablo Neruda Doesn't Return My Calls

So I'm staring at your naked back as you sleep because you just turned over because your skin is flushed pink from the sheets and I'm wondering how many words it will take to get to you.

How many words does it take to make you real.

How could I ever write to  the bunch of your shoulders, the hot whimper moan gasp you breathe when your tongue leaves mine.

How could I ever write my way to your mouth.

How could I ever wriggle words into your skin.

And then, how many ways could I ruin you with words.

How can I dismantle the mystery of your ankles, destroy and burn the secret under your tongue.

How can I undo you by revealing you, by painting the prophet, by unsealing the cipher.

Perhaps silence is the only way to you. Perhaps there is no way at all.

[sleepstallion]

lipstick

the girls wear lipstick and the boys deem them vapid

but they want a kiss

to smudge that red everywhere to grope that frivolity

[sleepstallion]

imprint

we slicked our bodies in ink to feel it squelch and slide.

we rolled over sheets and sheets of paper just to see what we looked like in ink.

we pressed our bodies into shadows. until we faded away. until we disappeared.