Citizen's Arrest

His soles played the broken glass settling in her 

screamless back alley like wind-chimes, 

leg halfway over the first fence 

before my feet could part their lips. 

I’ve only ever caught three thieves. 

The first was an Italian gypsy, 

but the second wears all my same clothes;

so when I saw this one, I knew People only run like ghosts 

to finish what they shouldn’t have time to do, 

I followed stallion, galloping, forty yards, thirty yards,

leaving a wake of scattered trash cans, shadows, and bad advice.

By this time, the dogs had robed into fire alarm chorus.

I wondered if anyone had been surprised enough to call the police. 

He didn’t look like he was slowing down, and I was gasping, 

legs drunk on adrenaline, blurring into their own confession of love, until,

he turned at the trail through the park you can beat taking 15th,

And I got him.

As he pushed against my jail bars, I told him I might let go 

if he emptied his jacket’s elephant skin first.

From his pocket he pulled a vagina, 

barked “she gave it to me, OK?”

I yelled “Where’s the rest of her?” 

His eyes crumbling beach fires, sirens singing in the distance,

shards of innocence biting his tongue, he coughed

“Listen, that’s it, she promised.”

the mountain

I wonder at the busyness of man.
We crawl like fire ants beneath the god of flame,
handing our blood to the masses like it was the very mist
off our punctuated words. The deflated tunnels within drape
themselves over our bones as if for a nap,
but they stay, and I forget. 

Their slumber settles into a glaze over our eyes,
and before long, appear to be hammocks.

I am slow to wake. For years have not looked twice
at the pillow for my weary back, whose ghost is given up,
the slung up boa constrictor, these rolled fishing nets,
this comfort I take in lack.

A doctor evaluates his patient not unlike a mechanic.
If I need a new engine, will I save money going to a mechanic?
Would he order me a new caffeine pill? Perhaps a day planner?
or would he sell me for parts?

The west was won on the backs of respect.
Must we all deathbed altar to the god of progress
after an oxen’s life, siphoning our oil,
the world on our shoulders?
How to wield this extra pair of legs?

lake washington

Lately, lust is a drought in my skin.

The way the ground buckles in the dry
forms the kind of Sahara cracks that

wedding rings roll down to pawnshop shelves.

In summer, the heat is a closet monster that keeps me outside.
My neck hits adolescence, growing wiser than his scarves by the day,
living out of the bag that’s been packed and in the trunk since Winter
looked like he was moving in with mom, and I am marooned by my desire.  

If there’s one thing I learned in school, 

it’s summer is the season for forgetting.  

Swimming, I forgot desks, 

traveling, I forgot home,
and this vacation still makes me forget my history,
especially on the beach, where a sturdy handrail and plaque
would almost make a good zoo.
My neck spends all his money on gas to get here,
because here, I want to do and not remember,
and it is summer.

This time of year, in the Sahara, herds live leaving.
I imagine I might have a rhinoceros on each arm, and a pack 

of giraffes on my back. The gazelles’ migration impresses wings 

into my legs: all of them swirling,
beating out their basest angst for survival, 

for fear of the lions resting in the shade of my mouth, 

always a sentence away 

from preying on the weak.

How can my neck be so naïve,

that girls in summer have faces,
that my voice box is slave to his bedridden angst,
that I speak with the tongues of lions?

How did I forget my face, 

become so hopelessly reckless,
when beneath the ground,

I am an empty wallet.
I am backpack of dirty clothes.