I am rinsing mango juice off my / thighs when I notice its slim // body shimmying before me, / slicing through the crisp, // chlorinated water with ease.

An idea so fleeting it’s mere outline, dim constellation. / I think of abducting you— // a consideration as gentle and banal as what fruit to buy / for the week. It’s really only the word that compels, // abduct, abducere, to lead away as if by the hand, lovingly.

1. My body was colonized / in a language of silence. / Strands of my hair entrapped the ghosts
in the wind, / they were not held prisoner / but the abrasions kept them warm—or stuck.

You’re Chaos-born in a post-practice ice-bath;
you need heat. I fold paper into cranes and find you
hidden in each crease. I cut a hole in my skull.

Two brooches for the price of lint.
Dolls boxed beneath hung tees.
Blonde & black-haired amputees.

I’m so American I close my ports
          of nourishment with a bit of bread
                  a bourbon, a burrito bowl, a nipple
a penis. I take in and in like oceans

I live in a quiet garage beside a line of eucalyptus trees.

At night, Tiger pads into the room while I’m asleep.
Tiger in the corner of my dreams
Tiger I can’t get past I have to keep practicing.