​Falling from the Tower
​

​You let me fall from the tower into the jaws of dogs. The dogs ate me, and I loved them. Only the soles of my hands and feet remained. This is the story of my infamy and your devotion. You have always struggled against me, like oil against water. The ocean, the oil rigs. Wailing, this is my invention that you brought forth. Don’t blame yourself. I am the one who invited you to plow the terrain of my body because in love in moments like these I mention in passing that you can have me in any way. I say it like this, “Listen, I like it when you lick me,” and you are so loyal that you lap like a dog, predictable as the ocean, lapping with vigor, and the unexpected outcome is good or perhaps you planned it that way. In the end,  there is always sand, everything breaks down. Later, it will be announced that you rendered feral the most passive of mammals, turning them mercurial. It too is a guppy’s mistake, and it will be forgiven. You will say, “If I’d met you twenty years ago, you would have parted your legs for me a thousand times over,” and then stammer that you are a captive and because this is an owl job you will draw a heart trapped within an iron cage and feign innocence. I will gauge your complaints as a tool. Remember, that a tool held in such a way. You wield your cage like a sword. Recognize the metallurgy of the cage, that familiar darkness, the knobs of our four poster bed, the one on which I wait, open, the ending place. The place of incarnation, the place where we break and the air and the light get in despite our differences. 
​

Getting the Bird Out
​

There was a pinked thread that connected us. Little bird, I would coo, and suck gently, for fear of dismantling that delicate flesh, vernal, eternal. My mouth      was the only thing that it suffered. Poor thing, and I was glad it was named thing because it gave us a chance—his thing and my thing—two who were    both wretched.
 
Sometimes, I remember a boy who brought me all matter of breathing things. Once upon a time it was a frog, its sacrificial life on display, the corners of flesh pinned & pulled opposite directions.  

​

Letters From an Animal
​

Dear          ,
I am a hooded beast, uniquely hog-tied. Feed me & clothe me.
 
Dear          ,
I am thinking of reaping & sowing & cage madness.
 
Dear          ,
I am asunder, your pet & companion. Kick me
in the deep neurosis if I begin to chase my tail.
 
Dear          ,
Let’s hang out. I’ll be the one who is shackled & hoisted.
 
Dear          ,
Why do you leave my blood steaming?
 
Dear          ,
Just look at me.
 
Dear          ,
I liked it better when you were afraid of me. 

​

Not So Ancient Mariner

The launch of a ship involves a certain sullying. A taking her by the helm and cracking a bottle over the breasts of her prow and the spume bubbling in a public spectacle to mark her owned. All the mermaid, kraken, stingray and mollusk watch for the wave of dead albatross and swan songs. Young men are always encouraged to travel, taught they are destined to be gentlemen and explorers. They set off to conquer the crustacea of your ocean floor, the mangled root of your mangrove, the vortex of your eddy, the lichen of your tide pools, and the stars of your regenerating. They are told it is their duty to return to land and tell tales but the rite of passage is hers. Ships are female, the ocean is their captain, the most turbulent of all. She alone holds order, spits you out like a cork or swallows you whole, never to be seen again.
 
​

The Melancholy of U.S. Architecture
 

 
If you open the box   

            you may find walls

                          that end in sky

                                        Everything built

                                                   now stands

                                                                 dilapidated

                                                                             in the rusted landscapes

                                                                                                                  of deserts

                                                                                                                               Open sand

                                                                                                       & it may lead

                                                                                           to Ghana

                                                               where water

                                         once broke stone

                              Open water & 

                you may find

a flood of ships

                         cotton,

                                     indigo

                                                  & quills

                                                               declarations

                                                                            emancipations

                                                                                                       & the lost

                                                                                                                     forty acres

                                                                                                                                   & a mule

                                                                                                                                                taking

                                                                                                                                                               their

                                                                                                                                                               place

                                                                                                                                                    next to

                                                                                                                                       the history
​
                                                                                                                        of us.  

​

​MK Chavez is a writer and a champion of public health. She writes about the world as it presents itself to her, broken and achingly luminous.
 
She is the author of Virgin Eyes (Zeitgeist Press). Mothermorphosis will be released in March 2016 followed by her full-length collection Dear Animal, which will be available in the fall.
 
Chavez is co-founder/co-curator of the Berkeley-based monthly reading series Lyrics & Dirges, and the co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival. She believes in literary confrontation and its capacity to an obliterate all forms of oppression.
 
Recent and upcoming work can be found in East Bay Review, Rivet and Eleven Eleven.