so says the straw hat

These people are all strangers still. all lovers. It is this sound of broken that makes me tired. This need for fixing. your hair, it tangles in knots, but looks just like a river running mountain sides, running all down your spine. It sings small winter songs. Your backbone is a desert. I looked when you didn’t know I was looking. I have seen small creatures thirst there. I have found unexpected flowers. I stretch out skin like canvases. This bleeding is to read your secrets. You speak a language I do not recognize. Your skin leaves imprints under my tongue, you have a soldering iron in the veins of your left wrist, you lifted that wrist up above me while I slept in the passenger side, while South Carolina passed by, quiet hills and green trees being born. Unsheathed iron burns into my dreams. Keeps me restless. I got lost in the desert. The path smelled like bobcat piss or human piss or dry dust making mud in my lungs. I crawled up the caverns of your ribcage, I have th

black stork woman. she has ten foot long toothpicks for legs. she ate a pindrop, ate a raindrop, watched the circles expand inside her belly till it grew taut and turgid, she is making lovers out of rainfalls, making children out of rivulets. wears the left over as bracelets and shakes feathers out of her hair. She carries twigs in that jet black hair. She carries photographs in her beak. black stork woman has ruby glints in her eyes. has eagle feathers for wings, nobody believes in angels anymore, and they never did wear white. She stands tall and spreads out her feather-dressed limbs, lets air breathe through. A sacrament. I watched her catching fish. Watched her eat the shadows of the fish, straight into her mouth. Fed her the shadow of my soul, sent her searching for you.

On the 14th floorboard is a list of things I should know like how radiators sound of chemistry labs, creaking doors, tiny miners, and the long high-pitched eeeeeeeeeeee of a forgotten phone call. One. Or how Portland is not a city at all but a vacuum. For trendy souls. A vacuum with a labyrinth inside from which nobody escapes, how Portland is designed specifically to let people in and never let them back out. How it must be filled with rats. Also, there is a faint diagram for discreet nose-picking so as to encourage honesty. Three. Four through Seven are tips on traveling. Like never. ever. ever forget your toothbrush on a thirty-six hour train ride. and always talk to Joe. He is lonely and full of America. six. eat the alligator meat. it tastes just like chicken. seven. don’t be afraid of cockroaches, they scatter at light the way flop-house tenants do at the word Eviction. Also there is the anatomy of a lightbulb. Also a reminder of how the Northwest rain smells like summer

She always gives him two days 'fore she sends the bucket down to fetch him. Claws up grateful, having forgotten in the dark and the cold, forgotten all about the bucket. Spent two days pelted by her wishes, lost track of the edges of the pennies in the blackness and forgot all the outlines of the faces. She always gives him two days 'fore she reteaches him the branches of breathing. Warmth against his blue lips, gives her air as his, borrowing leaves. Sings melancholy songs brushing out his hair. Sighs clouds out from the deep wells of his eyes. He fell in only two days ago, but those places without time or light can steal away all kinds of things. He sits in the kitchen chair. Drops from the ghosts of past lovers cling dangerous on his clothes. Hands clenched around fists of friends. Shakes dirt from his ears. This earth has owned him too long. Dirt from his ears till he hears a far away song. Wraps him like wool, still blind he sits, waits for the cold to thaw. W