Tend to it. To Nothing. Tend.

"You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow."
--Jonah 4:10


What does my mouth taste like forming “worth”?

I want to be moved by you.

Between so many things. God.

Maybe, love, maybe, I’m unkind to things, too rough, light barbs, stuck, stuck, stuck.

I ignore. The light across my back. The bathroom fills fireflies. It does.

No, something's undone.

He laughed, surely, when I said the sky was my cousin. When the pine trees tickle my mind.

The mountains curve into me.

My fingernails broke against the stone.

Breathe, you said. Breathe.

Drink this. (hands me fireflies)

Make a mud-fist, you said. Break open weeds.

Pull on the fences until the horses call on you.

Until someone’s kinder words spit grains or pebbles into your ear.

See, in me a movement.

This is why I do not go to bars anymore.

A man once asked me if I believed in Purgatory.

You’re from Texas, he said. You must know this. Or kiss me.

My fingernails broke against the stone.

I said, When you sleep, your eyes roll back, don’t they?

This is why I don’t go to bars.

He said, One day, I’ll see you standing in a tree, looking lost.

Yes, I said, yes. This is how the sun comes down, how my days ends.

Speak, or I will not sleep. Or I will, but I’ll wish I died.

He sends you a vine, to cradle your head. When all else fails, tend to it.

Tend to it. Tend to it. Tend to it.

Or break your fingernails against a stone. Go to bars. Men will question about Purgatory.

Don’t you know? This was my old skin. Full, a wine-case.

Don’t you want to be a flame? He asked.

No. A raging fire.

Fireflies in the bathroom. That kind of softness. The kind God leans toward.

The kind that inspires. Worth something.

In me a movement!

No, no. Make a mud-fist.

Between so many things, breathe.

Does this mean it’s ten to one? Are you leaning toward me?

Is Purgatory this glass of wine?

Fireflies. Skin. The silence of wind. A row of pine.

Among the smaller things, agony.

Agony was a beautiful woman, I said.

Agony had shadows, like you. Like a list. Like stone. Her fingernails broke.

Eyes rolled back when she slept. When love was a kind of mud-fist.

So break it. Break and tend. Lean down.

Between worth and the bar. You’re inspiring the masses.

What’s wrong with breathing me a pine, a long silence, something across my back?

Break open weeds. Listen. Fires eat acres. Flies burn their bellies.

Tend to nothing. Skin.

Tend to it. To nothing. Tend.

Do you want to be a flame? He asked.

No. A raging fire. But first, ask me about Purgatory. Or barbs. Or worth. God, love, isn’t broken.

Well, first of all, Agony was a beautiful woman. She made mud-fists and broke things across her back.

worth, Agony said, was nothing in the end.

I Woke, Late, Remembering That Dream You Had About Me

Late, I Woke, Remembering that Dream You Had About Me

"May my tongue cling to the roof of my
mouth
if I do not remember you,
…my highest joy"

My window blurs with rain this morning. I woke up too late.

Mirror, brushing hair.

Wondering, what to write?

Caught in the tangle of rush-morning-minutes.

I stretch my sides, rivers of blood, spots in the air. I am curling, brushing.

Have I thought of what I wanted to write?

This is my kneeling. By the bed, in the morning, the rain outside, the calm somewhere other than my mind.

Have I breathed?

Someone wrote “Shannon, I dreamt you were reading God” I brush eye shadow, lips. God. “Shannon, I dreamt.”

When was the last dream God was standing in a row of cows? In a field?

You placed your hand on me. I wondered. Have I breathed?

Rain, 80% chance. By the bed. This is my kneeling.

In the rush-morning-minutes.

You wanted to know, what I compose to. Is it Bach? Brahms. The sideways cab-drivers.

Somewhere, a man is drinking gin.

But inside a room, somewhere. Shannon, I dreamt you.

My window blurs with rain this morning. It’s late. But what will I write today? Your movement.

You push me through the door, into the rain.

I've loved your belly before. I felt rolling into me, your dream.

Is it raining? Have I breathed?

Somewhere, You're dreaming I'm reading God.

Is it in a field? Am I laughing?

Letter to You Because I'd Say this to Myself

But,

Everything is transient. Nothing stays. It all circles each and each.

Do not be deadened. Rejoice because of it. Take up something like a stone and hurl it
into the sky. It comes back, but not for you. It never was something to be had.

Sure, Beethoven or Bach. Even Tchaikovsky broke through chambers
just to seal them up again. He beat the thin bones each night,
and when he wasn't, he was
coursing the lines in his head,
the scales of his pain, out into an ocean.

He'd rise,
drink, throw himself into a wall, record madness
and think nothing of it, muttering all the while
about circle eights. About the Black Forrest.

After his mother's death, he began composing.

So,
it circles. Get down on your knee. Grab the clay.
Use something more substantial than guilt to grind into.

Run into a wall. Hook something out of lime.
Your own hand. Not hope, darkness. Where hope recovers.
Grate it against your teeth. Tell the ground stories.
Lie. Learn something
about the stars: not beauty, but that they'd rip your bones
apart if they could. Just to be near you. This is intimacy.
And it comes back. Waves of sound. Or on a keyboard,
or in a postcard. Something is calling you forward.
I had a hand in that.
I said to the pine "hold him down."

Round again. Uncurl a fist,
learn a fugue by heart. It plays again
in your oval window and through it, to the midbrain.
It locks itself away. Until you push through.

Escape into lines, that's fine.
Escape into the codes, linear transfers.
But the earth will push you out again.
Grass will sing about God.
You'll feel something lighter than a woman's body, you'll feel air.
And all around you, eights and nines.
With gods writing about movements and the opera.
About auditory space.
And you'll think you've been here before, on this plane.
You'll think we've been the same person.

Tchaikovsky saw stars in his mind. But he composed anyway.

Your letter arrived today. Maple leaves stuck to my shoe.

I said, my ghosts, my ghosts. Again in the bath, sang about fields, opened things up just to shut them out again.

What did you do when everyone went silent, when your ear wouldn't stop ringing?

My ghosts, my ghosts. I wait. Nothing passes by the window.

If I held my stomach, if I dug my nails into sides, would I lift somewhere toward you? Would the corner hold your shape? I ran out of wine.

My arm, half in bubbles, extended to you.

It’s been months. Sometimes, when I touch myself, I stare at the bare light bulb.

Maybe the walls will melt together. Maybe I’ll eat less, feel lighter, get a buzz.

Today, I walked until my feet hurt. I held the rock in my purse, curled my hand into a fist. Knew you wouldn’t speak. Knew the sky wouldn’t reveal you.

When I wrote “God, speak to me” I meant that my body was a mess. That the order of things was changing. That I couldn’t stop repeating the number seven. That eight swirled around like jellyfish above my head.

The pages spill into the bath with me. Your words blur into my midsection.

I make up the letters. I seal you at night, whisper imaginings, small tulips, under my sheets.

No wonder you’re silent.