I gather up all the gods inside me
bloom them into blood-flowers
stomach them
They ripple my belly like a pregnancy—
I'm not I'm not I'm not
trying to birth them
Once in my childhood the sky opened
and rained down gods
and I drank them up
I never told my mother
I never told anyone
Unbind the white feet
white legs, hair
black branches scattered
on new snow
My father swathed in black
cotton, locked in a block of ice
To the outside he is all color
paint-swirled canvas
But to me, ice-stuck,
he has marked himself out
and with his marker
drawn absurd figures
Men with bicycle feet
women with dick-tits
me, floating,
an egg baby, coiled
to my mother's torso
To him, I am embryonic
or have too many ears
he grotesques me
Locked under an ice chest
what breaks is brain matter
the hot light of the mind
cutting through
Our sameness shakes me awake at night
my hands flashing, his hands flashing
The west was breathing—
I put my hand to it, felt its lungs rise
I lay my atoms down in the sand
and let them fuse to glass
I stood on the earth outside
knowing that one day
not a single light would come on
Too many things were alive
until they weren't anymore
You were a house made of plastic
tipping over the short horizon
I was sharp for you
I could hear your rattle
There was day long enough to hold you
Your body shining in the last light
you were covered in black ash
you were the city caught on fire
You were Los Angeles
and all your plastic was melting
Soon, I hoped, we would wake up
be able to stretch enough
to contain the budding sky
the sky that someone made
It wasn't me
I didn't make the palms
I didn't make the matches
Let's go to the open mouth of the basin
the overflowing bowl of cars and single family homes
Toward it, toward the mountain and beyond
our limbs outstretched
bodies in full force
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