Let’s lay under the summer camp blanket The black one that fell Onto a barrage of pine needles And got constellated into a million pieces Speckling our sleep with myths of yore Let’s breathe our stifled air Through the million tiny pricks Bringing tiny gasps of outside sky Into our lungs Try not to get pierced like the blanket Or burned by that otherworldly rough If you do, The nurse has aloe vera To soothe away the wound And there’s always the river For washing away your past Sunburns from “real world” sins Let’s skinny dip into summer camp oblivion, Leaving our black socks on the shore Not yet, not yet, not yet Instead, we’ll unravel their yarn Into miles of crooked black line Winding through the hiking trails and creeks And knot friendship bracelet goodbyes From their mess, To then toss back up Into the waiting expanse of Our blanketed summer camp night. Which scraps of that sky Would you trace together To pass down your story into the depths of time? A camper once told me The three specks of Orion’s belt Found singularly But bringing the rest together. She was twelve. I, twenty-one, don’t yet know Which myth to leave my Memory to decay with So, please, constellate my arm With the outline of a Cactus instead. At least I know where I’m from And where my past has root. Please, don’t use the blanket’s pine needles, But instead that needle you keep nestled In a pencil eraser, Stealing its power With the permanence of India Ink. Yes, bury my skin in the young adult novel act Of getting a stick and poke at summer camp. Let’s run away from the kids into Our summer camp blanket And nestle into our after-dark names (Cact-ass) Fall into puzzle pieces whose edges Become worn to strangers By the time kids awaken And the camp director’s eyes Graze across our actions. Summer will fall to autumn And school will eat away these times Into the cooling, dying soil But I will take home my summer camp blanket To warm myself with summer memory through The long, summerless winter, Imprinting my “real world” moments into its starry patterns To decorate next year. I will tuck you in with the night, whispering that This is goodnight and not goodbye.

man made me just as I made man, exploding into the dark of early human ignorance and pulling them into their age of humanity. my lilting fingers are ticklish with power. man packaged me with gasoline center, metal head, held in a tiny plastic tube, pink, for playing pretend with control with child hands ignorant that my flame is a beginning. you bought me to play with fire, to torch cigarette ends, for those who aren’t afraid to ink their lungs with cancer, like you are, guarding your lung’s pink tissue as gold. you light me with minute click and spark, and remember the idea of gas, sampling ancestral discovery. you graze the possibility of danger, with clean lungs and jittery, distant fingers. you leave me burning in isolation, rotting, useless in the dark confines of the bottom of your purse. i am accustomed to fighting the dark, but here i am untouched, unlit, undone.

The MAX is terrible when there is Timber games…I’m pissed cause timber fans make MAXs go slow. So I’m going to be late to the movie. -Andy Terhune Troy, whose beard caresses his plaid shirt, is a writer sans writing, proud owner of a computer, the computer on which he’ll write his great screenplay sometime later today, perhaps after coffee and lunch. Troy, whose beard caresses his plaid shirt, wants to write his great love story about Penelope, the ex whose sign is taped above his glorious computer, saying “Don’t call me when you’re drunk anymore, Troy.” Her handwriting is impeccable, and Troy finds it hard to concentrate when looking at her “o”s. Because of the “o”s, Troy falls ill with writer’s block and drags his beard and plaid to a theatre downtown for a movie that will inspire him past the note, after which, with some coffee, he will craft his masterpiece. Troy boards a blue line MAX train toward downtown Portland and jostles elbows with sardined Timber fans off to today’s game. Troy, exacerbated, huffs mightily at their spirit, so mightily that his moustache flies up to tickle his nose. While his beard below continues to tickle his plaid, he manages to sit down: the soccer fans excited on their feet. The MAX lumbers through the city, heavy and slow with the labor of choking on millions of Timber fans, who board and board and board, past the point where space is the idea of an option. Troy dozes, dreaming of checkered black and white, rolling through fields of green and gold at Penelope’s feet, when suddenly he is awakened by some heavenly harmony wafting through the stuffy scent of pit sweat to his gaged ears. Troy, whose beard caresses his plaid shirt, pushes slowly through the crowd towards the music, and wonders competitively, if anybody’s heard of them before. It is a three-part rendering of the Timber’s fight song. As the singing gets louder, he can see the women from whence it comes, and they are beautiful in their Timber’s jerseys. He interrupts them to complement their voices, and the three fans giggle as they ask him if he is going to the game. And Troy, whose fucking beard caresses his fucking plaid, Tells them yes. They bathe him in green and gold paint, which they have on infinite hand, and take off his plaid to cover his bare chest—save for tattoos— in a giant, golden axe, grazing the bottom of his beard. They harmonize the fight song around him, and Troy soaks in it. He even starts singing himself, boisterously, taken with gusto. Suddenly, the MAX doesn’t seem so slow anymore, as he is whisked away with the Timber fandom, to the holy cathedral, seating for 22,000, called Providence Park, of which Troy has only ever heard lore. Today, though, Troy enters the holy cathedral, chest blazoned with golden axe, and lungs filled with fight. He sits with the MAX women and rises and falls at their queue in the ritual communion of the wave. Troy, whose axe caresses his beard, feels in the arena. Excitement, adrenaline, anger. Troy feels true love, even when his lover loses. He loves, maddeningly, the violence which loss gives him. He leaves as a bull, realizing his strength wasted on his computer, and runs, blindly, into an eye-patched Red Bull’s fan, Remembering his strength and anger at the red bull painted on the man’s chest, Troy punches him in the face, begging for a fight, only to have security take him out into the brisk night, telling him he is a nobody. He is a writer sans writing. Troy, whose golden axe rests against his beard, Sits on the gum-stained concrete for a moment, looking at the stars. He pulls out his iPhone to call Penelope, but his fingers only dirty the screen with green paint.

How many more years Have your hands lived than you? You live encased in Mountains and hills of smooth sandstone Forested with hair’s pines Down which your salty sweat Takes ski vacations Until falling into the canyons and valleys Of your shrivled, wrinkling Hands How many centuries did it take for Your sweat to carve those grooves? As many as it took the Colorado to Love the Grand Canyon miles into The ground? Which love ground you miles into the ground? And shrivelled your hands into Five fingered, gnarled stumps Contracting around pieces of the world To bring into yourself How many experiences slipped through time So quickly that your hands Wore themselves into age Trying to plant them to root And clutched so hard at the bark That they were left ravaged by splinters, Plowed to rows ready for seed, But just missing the growing season. How many words have breathed past The flaps in your throat Extracting your inside into the world --Just as your hands bring the outside to you— Do those chords ever tire Of being shaken, rattled, scraped Into building the triad of cohesive thought Inspired by that etheral tonic in your mind? Is what lies behind your mouth As old as the ends of your arms? Wrinkled beyond the other organs More creviced than even the heart, For your heart, experience is Priceless art in a museum Ripe with emotion But no touching How many years does the subjective ad To those body parts Pining for the love of Dance partners Constelated into the other Side of the universe? Probably as much as The river knows a canyon The mountain knows the sky A lover knows another When breath passes back and forth Between lungs, past vocal chords Over a pair Of clasp and wrinkled Hands.