DEDICATION

"see you had a lot of moments that didn't last forever"

-Lil Wayne

"Everyone wants a performance from the people they consider brilliant." 

-H. Abdurraqib

i tell her my heart has a hole bottomed, a rot larger than the mouth

a lipping i tongued so you try to outline, i reuse words so much i am

nothing outside repetition: tell me is that love

someone will love you then love nothing, i lay down 

to sleep, pray to take, down on my knees
pray to take, when i wake you are are gone 

my childhood bottled, my city smashed the globe of falling 

gently what is the debris of drowned bodies floating, what of bodies

in my city held suspended, your body lay me down on the porch

of abandoned houses, tell me is that love

can you hear me sobbing through sound, slipped

the anchor called "other people" onto your tongue 

is that love, i thought i could hold, hold the lens up 

what is the trespass, do you gamble with breaking

how netted to surfacing, draw me monstered
enough to terror part human, part dream

whisper, new orleans, do you know the cost 
of dancing in the streets while the dead unrest 
memory of bodies anonymous collect at my feet

you can wade into death so deep the smell
leaves, hard rock in the palm, so we tread miracle
i have seen what cannot be cloaked in this time

blocks of prayers fallen debris, a do not touch
me kind of song that starts: is there love

enough in the world to call me back home

its stain: she says, you have so much trauma 

you lifetime, hold the barrel of the gun up to your mouth

i microphone the harbor of desire where no one can reach 

tell me love, we are not the same. write my name on the bullet

pull it like a kiss, throw it against my body, throw it 

against the soft spaces i made syllabic as punch 

syllabic as what is beautiful will stay in a way you could 

not, tell me is that love: still frames amuse

i was never part of the view, this theater i constructed 

set design of artifacts writing out from under you

& then saw finally that none of it was true