My third frat party

I shake my ass into a wall. The Chainsmokers kiss me behind the stereo. Someone is chain-smoking, I smell it in my hair. Someone pecks my neck, it feels like a popped straw. Two bodies grind in front of me. I would like to spit a star on their clothes. A man spills a red solo cup down my shirt like hands. Hands bury in my skin. The speakers bury in my skin. I have never felt farther from the sky, or from my own spit. I sip from a cup taken from a hand without a face, it tastes like spit. I am thinking about staying, or leaving, or screaming with my hands in my mouth. I am thinking about the softness of bones, how everyone in this room has bones. How hands may be raised to hold the air.

of realizing

that i will never be a road.
that when i stretch my arms,
i will paint wheat fields
& Twinkies from the wheat.
that these Twinkies will be uneaten.
that there are uneaten books, too.
that my body is not a country
because i treat it holy.

Crash

We’re worried about the cat.
She spasms. The doctor, my

mother, says that is how
you get old — you shake, time

squeezes. I don’t like this.
To let the old get old on

their own is something
weak. Small. Cutting

the fruit off the tree before it
grows. The cat’s fur

crumbles, now, but her
blood is still copper. Her

skin still breathes. Her
skin is swimming, actually,

like a wave, blue and thicker
than paint, or dust. Or her

eyes. My mother says blue is
not natural. I say a memory

does not need to be real to
be living.