Neptune

What they say of the outer planet—

blue, small, far

I say of this night. An ancient explosion

still animates beasts, who

pretend to have forgotten I pretend to have forgotten.

Beast, I chew on the emptiness in this room. 

I claw the distance between bodies. 

The outer planets know time, I

just remember a tongue.

Oaks, Men

Cranial even scrotal the oak’s lonesome 

body is old as whenever 

is that cat the last one so fully voiced?

you hear her too out past the gates

you feel his fingers crafting air 

breaking blue down to brown lace 

that’s what you see in the sky now

his bark is grooves leafing through 

god he can be so resolute 

despite even me curving here 

in the dark, next to him— catkin pithed.

I’m sacs of silk unlike a tree.

My port side lists to satin now

how it is to humanly lay in the woods

in the grass as if we lived here. It is the oak, 

you understand, not your limbs around me.