All I Know of Fishing

is that you leave early, leave late—you beat traffic, beat the sunburn when

it’s feeding time.

Also, the dolphins carry trace amounts of fentanyl in their bodies.

You fish under bridges if you can.

All I know of the catch is masculinity, muscle memory. Pluck the trout

from its watery loin—

all 15 inches of flail, tail slapping splinters off the pier. Tug, tension,

the penetration hurts like any good prayer—up and out,

the carcass shimmers just the same. Father tells son: step on it, kill it,

con ganas…

Then there is my rod and line—fishless hook gripping the eye out

of a piggy perch.

I watch it curl—slap the water, twirl ripples of brine into blood. It turns

in circles,                      in circles,                     in circles

the radio thrums its velvet tongue.

This Is Why It’s So Sad

                                                    [An Oklahoma Elegy]

falls out of my morning mouth like glass—a sheer wreck—the kind

             of collapse only possible at this hour. The road heaves

with pocks, cellophane warnings—the threat of rending apart is distant

             and carries itself in ragged sheets—gashes, emerald with

guilt rattling across the plains like buckshot: I am sorry. I must destroy you.

             I hold a similar destruction in the furnace of my throat like

ceramic, fluttering and hollow, crick-cracking—I hold the hug of platitude

             in the heat of my mouth because it can never be too far

away and I hate small talk. Let us both be sad then. What if I said, reassuring

             a tornado never does touch ground, knowing that this is untrue.

It does and it will. The violence descends, swings like a freight train—heard

             before it wallops you tender. This must be melancholia

in full ugly metaphor, or at least that is what I conjure up before I twirl gasoline,

             the smell of sex into my curls. I leave his apartment, quietly

toss him from my body in pieces. I crawl through the anonymous mourning

             of a tornado siren. Every first Tuesday opens its rotten chest

with generous palm stroke for everyone, no one

                                                                                                        all at once.