under equitable plaza, five floors under

there is a flower store. looks more like a

plant store, you observe

but very nice plants, aren’t they

clamoring, artificial

the last time anyone here saw

the actual sun

i was still having sex

i’m trying to pay for parking

can’t recall how a credit card works

all nerves, little pathways

i don’t understand

this is a marvel, like every marvel, devoted

to scientology

and banking; who’s buying

subterranean orchids anyway

and naturally, it’s all over

my face:

earthquake you

structure me

questions

of aesthetics

collapse in

with the whimper

of a new-minted

twink

willing to flee

dear vesuvius

do we

outlive our selves

((for Grace))

Oakland, Lunar New Year

for S

On the other side of the wall

You cum again

Papering the floor

With pink leavings

Of firecrackers, bodies bloomed

Into pure sound

Spattering the night

Oil across a hot pan

Obliterating into

Morning’s faint

Saltpeter and coal scent

To spangle my nausea

To embroider

The thorny wound

The orange tree makes

A cinema of the

Sky-blue wall beside

My sick bed

By the shadow

Of some far-off lamp

It matters that you are here

Notching the bedpost

With your lipstick

A loud shade and

Unsubtle, this chaos

Where the hummingbirds

Go to rest. Your tonic joy

Skims

for AZP

Poem as semisheer bodysuit. Flower as

Reference to myth dilating regular old

Fuckups into catastrophic magic

How you manage

To hate every one you once loved

We, kin, accustomed to being

Stitched to life by the soles of our feet, by the hairline

Some place in between

Shitting with the door open

And romancing you from another state

That little crack where love is

They put the hole in the crotch so you can

Gaze at the pretty surface or go down

The elevator of mirrors

To the apartment

Below, pubic carpet and waves of glass

Where you never actually arrive

Torn canvas of your skin in hand

Say let me die, then staunch the wound

With little pink globs of paint; snuff out his figment

Erase genitalia, with semi-

Opaque pearlescent rearrangements of

The he-man grammar

The boys think

Reading a book is reading the title

They run their fingers up your spine, I feel it

They put on jackets all at once

All at once step out to feed the livestock,

And you, naked under hay; prone thing

to be hidden away, baby lamb, afterbirth

Across the unswept slat. And the dog digs up

The field bones: mostly cow,

Then goat, pig, mystery. Summers a

Heifer’d die in the woods, giving the valley

The gift of her slow decay, decay the hills

Held in like a terrible secret.

Stranger delirious and sleeping

Under the banana tree, worried

He was a corpse, dog who wouldn’t go away

Even when we hosed him down

The farmers and the strays

Were different, broken different. Who was it

Hollered for mommy, scaring off the ghost

Leaving the green slime of tea in the unwashed

Sink. Who was it threw stones. Around

The bonfire who’d duke it out for alpha

Circling, heaving rotted planks of fence & cut limbs

Who learned to hold your own, not by doing, but

By watching, silent girl in the flickering

Shadow, thinking, I might choose

A creek or a river over my own body.

Mack Gregg currently gardens on Cahuilla land. Their work can be found in Stone of Madness Press, Bureau of Complaint, Moist Poetry Journal, and b l u s h lit