for Danny Solis
But you have poetry, you say.
And if you can tell me what poetry is,
where the line is drawn
between the beauty and the breathing
of breath into something to make it beautiful,
I will claim poetry as my own.
Poets, when last breath sought to seduce,
your mojo flashed skinned nerve to the open air.
You bitched and cajoled until I was pissed enough
to assign you the task of my wounds.
You said Patricia,
come to us if the world bleeds through.
You drove in from the city and backhanded me
with your clunky rhymes, your limp couplets,
your falterings, your leaps for the sky,
your lean and joyless works in progress.
You jumped up and down on my heart,
yelling beat beat,
when I was June’s only sin, you screeched
beat beat,
when there was nothing I could do but be a liar
flat under everyone, you angled storm boot heels
at my chest until the irritation warmed dead muscle
and pulled it onto the dance floor. Ignore the mic static.
What unflinching poems spring from the mouths
of the almost dead. I could never love me like this.