We fill the void behind our teeth
with silence, the grinding
of wedding rings
against knife handles
a language of compatible hollowness.
*
The neighborhood mutts carcass
another roasted chicken,
our wordless bonepile
jangling in their mouths,
as if nothing can choke them blue.
*
I haven’t forgotten when I knelt—
there was so much husk
at the back of your throat,
you wept instead of saying
I do.
*
Like the word erosion on an endless loop,
the sound of your breath
is a kind of satiation,
a crater you dig
to hold me when you won’t.
*
Remember my lament
when your backhand
pattered blood across the window?
What birds could you hear
singing in the eaves?
*
The gap in my teeth
was my vow—to hold
each morpheme in my mouth
and bleed it, limp-tongued
like a partridge in a hound dog’s fangs.
*
The plate is a votive
for the moon’s guttering;
this is how our table speaks:
from void, a whisper at the bottom
of a hole, I mean a home.
