jaebomies@gmail.

com 03 Aug 2020

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jaebomies@gmail.com 03 Aug 2020

we don’t know what’s

going to happen here.

When Rome Falls 3

Hunters’ Moon 4

Orléans 111s/w 5

Kaiein 6

Iphigenia at Aulis 7

The Miracle Mile 9

but we can promise that

none of us will like it.

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jaebomies@gmail.com 03 Aug 2020

When Rome Falls

I say, ​I promise I won't do anything awful,

and he says, ​you are something awful,

but I’m keeping you anyway.

does that make me your bad thing? your wild

thing? something worth hunting across the county?

you want to kill me more than anyone else.

That’s what love is, baby.

I want you to fuck me like a colosseum. Love

me like a killing. Want me like a wild thing,

like Rome hunting every lion on the coast

of a continent. ​Call me Carthage, baby.

Leave a voicemail​. All that

matters is that you want to hurt me.

All that matters is that you want me.

Say the word & I’ll burn for ten days.

It’s bloodsport. It’s a witching moon. It’s a

hunt through the woods with nothing to show

for it. You look like you’ve eaten the sun, like
you drank so much sunlight you’re drowning in it.

You can have my heart if you have the stomach to

take it. Kiss me hard enough to invert me.

Draw a pail from the well & drink. Take a

part of a thing & claim the

whole of it, like a year of throwing spears into the

ocean & thinking Poseidon felt it.

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jaebomies@gmail.com 03 Aug 2020

Hunters’ Moon

we’re still out in the

night, hunting.

out, pretending that

like an animal,
death is something we can
reach inside &
pull someone from it.

we’re still pulling.

it is no longer enough
to be gentle things;
blood has too long a memory.

untethered by absolution
we are fugitives from
our temples / exiles from
our bodies.
there is nothing left
to surrender,
but to surrender
what is holy in us.

but you can get down on

your knees if you think
it still means
something.

and you can swallow

the moon if you
still want it.

you can look God in the eyes

from your hollow in
the earth,
& hunt something
you have a hope of killing.

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jaebomies@gmail.com 03 Aug 2020

Orléans 111s/w

I took the sting of a scorpion whole

into my mouth / & waited to be gifted

a body capable of living / or to be made

in the image of a Saint who had the fire

consume her body and forsake her heart.

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jaebomies@gmail.com 03 Aug 2020

Kaiein
(to burn)

Tuesday​, you were nothing

but a thunder of hooves,

& I was an excision of bodies:

an open longing
a hollow hearth.
you spoke of
violence
& it heard you /

/ how you inscribed

on your body the
geometry of grief.

we needed only one fire

to burn you from
your body
& immolated a thousand
suns trying.

it was enough until

it wasn’t enough. I was
enough, until I wasn’t.

I am still a thing
afraid of itself— a steel trap
with no teeth.

pottery, cracking
in the heat of the
kiln.
I am tired of my
suffering,

pain has conquered

every nation
of my body.

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jaebomies@gmail.com 03 Aug 2020

Iphigenia at Aulis

1.

& you know now,

that anything alone is
a haunting

& any two things

together is a terror.

a deer climbs the altar

and slits her own
throat. we have words
for this but don’t
speak them.

2.

a deer climbs the altar

and the altar slits
her throat & our eyes became
mirrors from windows.

we were murderers if
nothing else. we
held her ribcage open
& picked the blood from our fingernails.

we had more martyrs than

we knew what to do with,
so we made more of them.

3.

the altar swallows

mouthfuls of blood then
cracks herself open
spitting it onto the street.

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jaebomies@gmail.com 03 Aug 2020

blood clots in the throat

like knives that stick
between ribs.

we can’t decide: pull it

out, or leave it in? bleed to
death, or live with it?

4.

our mouths are wounds

that speak in tongues of
healing.

we say,​ sacrifice.
we mean,​ murder​.
our lips are
red for a reason.

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jaebomies@gmail.com 03 Aug 2020

The Miracle Mile

& it shouldn’t have happened,

but it did. that’s what we call a

miracle, isn’t it? that’s what you

call thaumaturgy.

we are not a miracle but a

cataclysm.

together, all we do is violence.

& it feels good but that’s not enough

anymore, if it ever was.

what are we going to do, baby?

are you / going to / save me?

or just hold me down?

am I / just another thing to kill?

am I / anything at all?

it shouldn’t have happened, but

it did. we’re here now. we’ve been

here for so long that we’ve carved

a ghost out of our waiting. we’ve

woven ourselves a haunting. something

is dead because we killed it. & now

there’s blood under our nails &

Mercury in retrograde.

we can
kiss over the corpse until sunrise,

but we still have to dispose

of the body.