Dear hangover, dear darling monsters eating eggs whole, kinkier than a skink: black-backed, turn over the hot belly for the addictive aspects of moral impropriety. We took the dogleg through town, the sideling up the mountain. Tenting the night from its hammock. We were afraid we wouldn't find you. We were afraid we'd never get back out. In the throes of apostasy like starving a rock, like a swan gone to seed. We are both both. Or at least, we've been told. The tall whites knock your head back: follow the harvest more fleeting than a train song by a fire. How will you find us? How will we know you? Dendrites flapping on the clothesline in the game lands. In our vestigial bones, in the swift's chimney. Red-naped, yellow-gutted and eaten by the dead.

 
 


Peony the colors
partake in cicada 
drown steel
wool wings
perforate skin in places 
they know you best

Peony only Our Lady
of the Good Death knows our 
names


Peony does the ant 
chews waxing
your bud to bloom 
how the ants came 
through the window 
to teem to crack

Peony indeed you're bent with 
how will we
tie the wrappings
how to together the days

Peony what do
you know about
the cicadas what if 
the cicadas aren't 
coming this year

Peony the flapper hats 
the dainty
before dawn

Peony the blasts 
were twins down 
the hatch the soft 
noises one makes 
to oneself

Peony the mail works 
in mysterious ways
Peony the secret 
pools of blood the 
subterranean blood 
in subterranean 
pools of secrets




Peony the insides
are the outsides and
the outsides are coming 
insides and the more 
we get together
the happier we'll
be

Peony perhaps 
I am not a 
singularity


Peony there is
a snake in my 
kitchen that looks 
at me sideways
I do not know 
how she got in 
she cannot find 
the door I extend 
my arm out

Peony I ended
a bloated egg 
sac swollen 
carrier of thick 
-ness in the 
tunnels below

Peonies kow tow
children posing their heads 
so heavy
their heads with weight
to blooding
the bloom

Peony I am not 
brave but I don't 
know how to say 
this Peony

are you encumbered 
by people are you 
peopled by their 
songs sung to
your idyll your 
dear heart your 
dread