One for You & One For Me
When the blackness whispers
Dying time to us—Come Lady-

Bug, come cockroaches, the night-
Crawlers come ready to coil 
 
In our throats. So we tiptoe,
carve clouds’ every last word

In the lightning baffled air.
Beneath the floorboards the men

Who never came back crack
Their knuckles. Every house

Is either smoldering & about
To burst into flames or ash

That must be shoveled through
To find the teeth of people 

Too slow. I would love
To believe in the eventual

Perfection of the after-
Daybreak light, that even

The most shattered beasts
Inside me can burrow

Themselves back whole & blossom
My flesh with a constellation

Of tiny, weeping hearts. But today
The sky is a meatpond aglitter  

With gristle. The house is hot
& rashy & I am the moon

Ant staggering along the windowsill,
Determined to chew through anything

That gets in the way. Even myself.
The slick flesh of anyone hanging

Around in the slag heap of noon—

Ladybug, Sweet Ladybug
Will riot & pudding & low.
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