richard siken bot

chemical names, bird names, names of fire and flight and snow, baby names, paint names, delicate names like bones in the body, rumplestiltskin names that are always changing, names that no one’s ever able to figure out.

let me tell you a story about war. a man says to another man, can i tell you something? the other man says, no. a man says to another man, there is something i have to tell you. no, says the other man. no, you don't.

i’ll call you darling, hold you tight. we are not traitors but the lights go out. it’s dark. sweetheart, is that you?

his voice on tape, his name on the envelope, the soft sound of a body falling off a bridge behind you, the body hardly even makes a sound.

we were spies and the confidants of spies, pockets and telephones, gathering evidence without leaving any. spies feel like they know something important. it is a feeling. opulent. grand.

let's say you're still completely in the dark but we love you anyway. we love you. we really do.

we have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero's shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.

he cannot get the bullet out, he thinks, he can't, and then he does. a little piece of grit to build a pearl around.

okay, so i’m the dragon. big deal. you still get to be the hero. you get magic gloves! a fish that talks! you get eyes like flashlights! what more do you want? i make you pancakes, i take you hunting, i talk to you as if you’re really there. are you there, sweetheart?

here you are in the straw house, feeding ice to the dog, and you wanted an adventure, so i said have an adventure. the straw about to burn, the straw on fire. here you are on the tv, saying watch me, just watch me.

all this was prepared for me. all this was set in motion a long time ago. i live in someone else's future. i stayed as long as i could, he said. now look at the moon.

together we trace out the trail away from doom. there isn't hope, there is a trail. i follow you.

i cut off my head and threw it in the sky. it turned into birds. i called it thinking.

to hide somewhere is not surrender, it is trickery. all day the snow falls down, all night the snow. i try to guess your trajectory and end up telling my own story. we left footprints in the slush of ourselves, getting out of there.

it’s another wrong-man-dies scenario and we keep doing it, henry, keep saying until we get it right... but we always win and we never quit.

he was pointing at the moon but i was looking at his hand. he was dead anyway, a ghost. i'm surprised i saw his hand at all.

but angels are pouring out of the farmland, angels are swarming over the grassland, angels rising from their little dens, arms swinging, wings aflutter, dropping their white-hot bombs of love.

the directors agreed. the crates arrived. they added the pieces to the collection and the whole museum shifted. you have to understand it as it is. shining blue, shining green. this is also part of the story: how the story changes. this is something i forgot to tell you.

his hands keep turning into birds, and his hands keep flying away from him. eventually the birds must land.

you said tell me about your books, your visions made of flesh and light and i said this is the moon. this is the sun. let me name the stars for you. let me take you there. the splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube...