PIPELINE

I lay pipes among your bones
necklace of crypts
oil clot heavy as firewood
my scales gleam as each hoof of god

night pools
as crow feathers
under your tongue
prairie veined in jaw sung

of stuffed iron and black gold
swollen river now gone
riot earth awake
unbury more bone and crypt

I am only sever
eyes as slits in my name
each E a cage
for the breath after

SIPHONING

his palm white shell cups around his ears
oceans and rains
return in symphony on trachea
of outcrop

his cousin tries to show him how one siphons
empty night greens
with a growing storm
here comes the water

find you a girl who can suck like this
wet rubber kisses
boys are often the wind
always a howl

come on pussy come on fucking puss
he sucks and sucks
for the water
but only tastes gasoline

AFTERPARTY

We tank down beer. Eyelids lower and lower. He lets me
feel beneath his basketball shorts,
sorrel fields along his thigh.
Burrows in our bellies heavy and heavy from rolling rock
and blue ribbon. Aluminum ghost coaxes his kiss. Candle
left lit. He mouths the neck and lip of another
bottle—rifle
cold. My tongue coils on the trigger before its click.
Corn beetles scatter out
no longer his bones.