“Name your torture,”
one of them said
with a wink.

I wanted an orchard
but I swallowed the vodka
he handed me
willingly.

“The Gorge”

set the bowl of pepper
& tourmaline.
you don’t
have another chance.

being obsessed with inequity
creates lines on
your face.
your teeth clenched
with scowl and stress,
mired panic, just something
so familiar about lack
and urgency.
empty stomach. subway,
one headphone working
so the sound is all the way up
to drown out the right’s tinnitus
and you’re eyeing her up and down,
pining for her jacket.
it provides a catalyst to
all movement.

 people are scared
to admit a big motivator
to success is
their unremitting desire
for vengeance.
and money helps.
takes away the change
of facial shape.
fills halls, fills
spaces with things.
little decorative things.
fills lips and
money assuages.

and money goes but
comes eventually.
or at least that’s
what you tell the
little tree you water
on the window every day.
what you tell
yourself on mornings
the aches snake your legs
so you can’t make it
to the tea shop.
what you tell
the little girl shoved
deep inside the well:

hands out,
slack jawed
and frozen.
and waiting.

“The Money Tree”

I remove the rest of my top
and close my eyes deliberately
to show you the length
of each thorn.
wear my eyes like a hooked rose.
tongue pressed against your chin,
my lips trace your jaw   
      I am softer.
having been tempered
and forced close:
you know,
darling,
let my teeth hit your lip

I have never
become divine without first
becoming storm.

 been learning
performative emotion
to keep the ones I’m fettered
to warm, and to feel their
slippery manacles tease
the tops of my feet
like feathers as they drag
me back.
paint my lashes black.

and they’re wet
and
shaped like little
bolts.

1.

I used to leave class
in high school,
go to the bathroom stall
and masturbate whenever
I let dirty thoughts
build too long.
usually it wasn’t
the subject of the class
but the way a boy
brushed my sleeve
on the way to pick up
the beakers.
or the way my own forearm
grazed my nipple.

I used to ask men
to reach under blankets
at house parties
and touch me.
my shorts not so
tight they couldn’t
be pushed to one side.
I used to pay their
way in when there
was a cover,
crawl up their stomachs,
my mouth smelling
of Bud Light and
cigarettes and smiling
bright asking them
if they were still seeing
Mariel and if they wanted
to sit on the recliner.

I always had a spare
five dollars on hand,
at least three cigarettes
and a way to materialize
fire, a way to morph
into lap cat
for whomever I
craved.  my name
was a whispered name:
a baleful purr
of syllable in halls
swirling some girl’s man.

“the rooms”

you can find me in complete silence
in the corner.
medicinal fingers curved into myself,
into claws so no one gets the love.
I’m triggered by the music and pacing
in 9.9 cubic square feet
of psychosis.
I’m feeling my nails dig into 
my palm.
you say hello. 

you can find me frozen 
one week later,
woven in an opalite tapestry
spread across your floor.
I understand confession.
I’m Catholic.
I ask for judgment,
not counsel.
some retribution.
let’s make this clear.
let’s make this public.
I’m stuck in a projection
so you barely have a face
that isn’t my reflection.

at least I give you transparency.

“the warm salve”

you are both raging moon
and blazing sun,
and the child:
the wounded outcome. 

3.

no justice

all we have is each other.

Censorship and catcalling.

aging and sexism and catcalling

All that walking was me running away from myself but now I stand and face the terror of my feelings.

Who am I without want?

“sometimes I think they enjoy it.”

he placed the glass on a coaster as if it mattered.

“who is they?”

“predators. sometimes I think predators enjoy it.”

“do you enjoy it, sarah?”

I knew what he meant.

 “do you enjoy the kill?”

smiles don’t prove malefaction, they exhibit it.

“not the kill but the hunt.”

we sweat in silence for an instant. the water not cold enough. the apartment ablaze. my shelves sturdy and everything else in motion.

–responses from Hecate during meditation

We both laughed and I sort of jumped and twirled in the air with the giant stick and it was the lightness of it that kept me. The way that girls laugh. The way games start. The way we showed off to each other in the woods, and never a guy around until suddenly they were around all the time. We had spitting contests, cursing contests, stealing contests, cartwheel contests and the world was ours. We had frilly skirts but mostly mud-marked shorts and skinned knees and tangles in our hair that sometimes we combed for each other. We had secrets and secret language and secret games and a lightness, a buoyancy that carried us. If you asked me then, that day, if I really wanted to marry a king, I would have said only if I can live with all my friends in my castle.