HOW GOD BREAKS

Show me there is no line
between praying and begging
and maybe I will understand
your fear. Our backyard is a mass grave.
She picks up the dead and examines
the damage, so when reloading her garden
I think something should die here.
What we can kill. What we can save. Both
can be ruined. My biggest fear
is that I do not know what I am
capable of. Since the last time I looked
up to speak, something collapsed.
My voice crushed into silence.
Perhaps to live means to disappear.
I know it is over.
I know I failed.
There are circles inside me and everyone else, yet
there is still time to be forgiven.
My god, even if I leave
you behind, you are still a father.
Even if it is closed, show me the door.

SELF PORTRAIT AS EXIT SIGNS

my eyes adjust inward to find the source of the screeching
something always needs to be removed even the word love

can get stuck in the hinges the mouth/the drain/the exit
kept ajar by the tongue stretching and pouring out words

outrun by the begging that forms them know
that I only opened so that you could pass through,

but there are some things you cannot escape even your name
pierced two decades to find me it clung to my heels

as a shadow and became my eyes in the night I have seen
my heroes change colors through the fence I have heard

the crowd determine the definition of my skin and still
I was afraid fashioning yourself from the screens

of suburban living rooms is an act of ironing in the gel
to hide the way your hair grows there is nothing

I cannot pretend to be dressing to be devoured and
reshaped in the teeth of a stranger feeding their hunger

in the most mundane of ways after my mother and I dug
up her garden I promised myself I would live there were

bricks blocking the roots of her bushes so we joked about
building another house a large living room with windows

and doors and more doors escape routes at every angle
I keep surviving whatever is inside me by avoiding mirrors

by saying, I love you, just in case my clothes become the
only thing you recognize of me when you wake

EXIT SIGNS

God was in the freezer. Each night
an undeserved answer.
Like how Tupac asked for a place in heaven
when you know what happened next.
The frozen peas just cold enough
to rid your arms from the embers
of a beating. Where you laid still
like a shadow, daring the light to eat
you. That same light that—as a
child—you whispered to. Asked it to
take you back and remake you,
so that you could survive.

Double Yolk extends gratitude to Asheville Poetry Review, which first featured “How God Breaks”, PANK, which featured “Self Portrait as Exit Signs”, and Raleigh Review, which featured “Exit Signs”.