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By the kitchen sink, my aunt held a fish as if holding the Holy Body.

Lure, yes, you would know how to catch and clean such a thing.

The social-media world was ablaze with his daughter’s bagunça.

Fishing with Dad guaranteed two days of just us and made me special.

It is here I learn the speech of men. The speechless guilt of every swig.

i was a wild thing down by the river, quiet like wild things are.

Exhausted, androgynous, delirious, I delight in my many parts.

If every present
is possible, how can we have eyes to see?

I dug a hole in you; I jumped (here is the church, here is the steeple).

The stars begin to turn clockwise, freeing us of all consequences.

I'll pick a black card of luck for you: star, pinkmoon, mirror, ostrich eye.

I lie down and see you one bed over; therefore God exists.

I drag my sheets as Earth drags her tangled mess of tides.

The pupils are toothpicks. The lake is a sky with a circle beneath.

Maybe he was preparing for a disaster that would never happen.

Some night soon you’ll haul yourself out from far beneath this life.

Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

I saw the glowing body, silver with time, emerge from behind a lone pine.

A plus B; a child in peril, plus love, dissolution of, equals a story.

Suddenly two would dart and clasp one another belly to belly.

They plant whispers where shouts incinerate into hisses.

Who are we? Without one another, who will we be?

What excuse did I use to pick a fight with that arrogant poet?

Years ago I wanted parallel lives, to see how it turns out for all of me.

I want you enough to gnash you into a silence made from pieces of silver.

I’ve taken the pledge and made donations of blood to the world.

Michael McGriff

The walls pull apart like a troubled couple, finally deciding to hold.

Let’s rummage through each other’s bodies like a blowout sale.

I am veins and breath, the entrance the world passes through.