Some of us are just made wrong

I’m grinding the teeth of my heart tonight
behind a Walmart
someone is counting out
how many cigarettes
equal how many stars
on the tips of creosote fingers
you say it’s wonderful to bleed
and not know how the wound happened

somewhere down the street
someone is searching for a sacred stretch of vein
to shoot up into

the older we get
the less afraid we are
of fucking it all up

i think i’ve always loved you in my own weird way

but down here
we wait for words
that never come

we wait
for nothing
we would know what to do with
anyway

Terri’s Side of Town

The thing I didn’t know deer could do
remove their girl-hearts and pounce on stone
blood from a flower, how wide is my love for you
how wide is a river
and the wild wanting
thousand yard starlight in your eyes
I got burning letters between my thighs
fingers linger at the trestle bridge
trace frost, dew drop, Larry loves Tina
circled in a key scratched heart
when we all know that Tina must have died
and Larry, he is all hoof print in the fall
behind the Idaho mall, he’s got a small fire
behind the ice machine
tended to softly
on his crate
he is king in another world
that kind of love
the kind you don’t ever get more than two rounds of
mystery skinned Polaroid heart
girl-deer, remove your eye of god from the wound
just let love survive winter
just let us cross for once without drowning out the sound…