Live in Moscow, 1989

Photo by Savanna Chada

Fiction licks at the edges of your actions.

With each touch we dissipate 

Further and further

Until we are only the dirt in our stomachs

Back and forth,

Hoovering the life out of 

Vacuum bag lungs,

Faces between faces on soft cotton sheets and

Second serving, craved until tasted

Proverbial whispers 

And glares

And rings that glide across ignorance 

Through braids of infatuation 

Or maybe the loneliness that you twist again and again

Amidst raucous cheers

And hands harsh against your back

A mirrored misery we share

Across separate islands 

Tracing disjointed minds 

Around tablets of engraved stone

Or chalky powders

We were raised in each other's arms 

Like Romulus and Remus engulfed 

In the same cast-iron phobias

And wolflike hunger

Biting familiarity quickly turned rancid

Now I come near you

And it's not clear why you fade away

In dark alleys I have tasted your

Bitter tears 

While you held me 

And cradled an emaciated heart

Until it learned to walk again

Through the gingham tide of summer

Hundreds of miles north you 

Charted glowing bruises up against 

The sky and bleached yourself from my memory,

Dark curls of smoke from the bridges you burned to warn me of your arrival

Flashing across stoic irises

You anticipated disaster as we 

Swayed above the water,

Parting oceans

And leading me towards silent cataclysm

We cut hearts into soft arms like trees,

Making them markers of where we’ve been

The bigger the wound 

The bigger the love

Is what you used to tell me

And now I know why you carried a knife.