A poem from last summer:

Every day I count the states
of mind, fragile and endless
the states, built up like burnt plaque
the forest fire echoes through the tundra
and the quiet trembling harlequin winces
Every day I count the states
7 of them to be exact
slammed together by borders
where glue trickles down in the form of rivers
and the heart drips like an archipelago
my tongue a peninsula for your aqueous,
open mouth
Every day I count the states
Texas bulges like a fat cowboy
a stomach the size of El Paso
and an appetite that grinds the heartland
and churns out the savory sediment of rebellion
rolling down the rio grande
Every day I count the states
fraught with urgent letters
spelling out names of cities
like corpus christi
the body a pale entity
breathing in topography
like oxygen, fingers tasting
the papered method,
the lay of the land
Every day I count the states
Arizona sparks the orange based
silhouette sometimes wearing a purple cloak
so hard to look past the transparent
superhighway of Phoenix,
flying toward Albuquerque,
the marsh land waiting with wet
anticipation, your moist palms
the dearest things
Every day I count the states
Maddening outbursts of spitfire
Louisiana and Mississippi
Tank topped and alive
nose in mouth and the cantankerous
rickshaw twiddlin' my message
with lackluster echoes
bouncing from inside the spittoon
Every day I count the states
of shattered love, the ghost of you
somewhere in my voice, crawling out my mouth
in the crudest form, the veins of your skull
shining through shoe polished countryside
shining through trailer land, and Alabama
glistening with the sweat of your mind
the rind of your cerebrum tasting how
hunger must feel
Every day I count the states
7 of them to be exact
the states of mind, caught in between
rubbing up like a prickled backscratch
fighting the flaring sirens of
interspersed distance.
Somewhere down below
the pacific floods inside the atlantic
down there in panama
but for my blood
i must count the states
perched in mental holograms
the finest memory
just a bleached out
corollary of your
alabaster artifact.