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  • “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”

  • we are here,
    that little lie about choice.
    the way you can’t seem to keep
    the gloves  on and your knees hurt
    from walking to the center of south
    philly and back and
    (I didn’t touch anything but I didn’t wear a mask)
    and the way your tongue forked,
    when you began to share the
    story of your violence.
    what’s been done to me
    now done to them,
    you begin the ritual
    of candle setting.
    it’s half pure ire
    and directed intent.
    say their names aloud:
    Oya, Sekhmet, Lilith, Hecate.

    I am Artemis. 

    they say be careful what you say.
    you say I am very good
    with a word,
    a sword, and
    un boligrafo
    to show you’re trying.
    I heed each warning and name
    them again

    1. when the first thing comes true, the second follows swiftly.

    that little lie about
    choice.
    we are here at four candles,
    name them again,
     love,
    namely,
    what’s missing:
    (let’s review)
    anything palpable.

    1. be careful what you say.

    love–a thirst.
    will–a birthright.
    take justice–not vengeance,
    but perception and the gentle
     folding of my hands in my lap
    as things begin to be done to
    them..
    time–something I can’t wrap
    my head around.

    1. love is a choice.

    and choice. that little lie about
    “choice.” write it again without blinking
    and what then do you see?

    1. love.
      will.
      take.
      time.

     

    “the choice”

  • it’s saturday, and we are
    processing some hard truths
    like not everything is
    meant for you to
    win and hold.
    it is meant for you
    to (open palm now)
    grow:

     

    “I did not come here to teach you.
    I came here to love you.
    Love will teach you.”

  • *pauses to explode into sobs*

  •  

    be careful what you say.

    I believe in overflowing
    chalice.  you believe in
    holding space for snarl
    with distance and
    your lover at night
    or your girlfriend,
    whomever.
    it’s up to you to name them.


    you watch me lay the
    dill in bowl, line the bed
    with tourmaline.
    run the bath with
    chamomile and yarrow oil.
    it’s all for nothing.
    you found me but
    I am full of tincture now.
    the best defense is
    to cripple yourself
    like victim, spiny
    with a shaky lip
    but spiked and
    squared right towards
    them.

    what you catch about me
    is the amorphous not
    the steady heartbeat on your
    ear, at night, and here
     and to be fastidious requires
    no real feeling
    but constant poking at
    all possibilities,
    pausing with the probable
    but still lusting.
    almost thirsty for your
    deluded thoughts,
    your diluted candor
    that you say is grace
    but you have bitten even more
     of your tongue today,
    and you are now piked
    and squared in another princess’
    face.  what you meant
    to say was
    be careful what you say.

     
    there are some voids
    that
    are so insatiable you
    collapse with the
     craving instead.
    I walk for miles:
    slow and black and
    hungry like that,
    a hole and
    reaching.
    waiting for the echo.

    I am game.

    “Datura Moon”

  • deep breath.

     

    I carry tempest in my
    lungs,  a cold black murmur
    that hooks it hums
    in earthworms and writhes
    to surface after rains
     winding street lamps to
    devour them like dirt cake.
    I hit the corner as
    you are walking up.


    the light goes out
    and somewhere near
    a tire screeches drowned
    by the sharp inhale
    you take when
    a cyclist scrapes his tire
    on a criss-crossed track
    and spins into a tumble
    that splits his helmet
    on a bumper and someone
    screams: are you ok?
    (this city is full of
    accident lately).
    I stand still on
    the flashing yellow,
    not afraid but respectful.
    your hands are clenched
    in pockets waiting for
    the red, face turned away.


    I’d been walking slowly,
    wearing cotton sundress and
    consenting saunter.
    a practice.
    my hips are wide,
    lips are pursed and
    I am quiet, light and
    diffusive but lucky for this
    place mostly mired in
    my own insides.
    there are twelve dogs
    with meat in their eye
    nearby choking on their
    collars.

    I am wearing a blue alyssum
    in my hair but
    you will know me either
    by my touch
    if in enough of a rush and
    close proximity to brush
    an elbow with a thumb,
    or the sudden sun I permit:
    open laughter near your
    chin, grabbing you
    with force,
     inordinate apology
    for the accidental brush
    and really everything,
    moist I’m sorry spills over
    my freshly-done, pink
    velvet lips as we collide.
    wait for green or
    similar direction.
    there are sirens in the distance.
    I open my mouth
    to say this city is full
    of accident lately,
    isn’t it?

    you?
    you will know me by
    my fang-toothed smile.

    “morphic resonance”

  • I have a fear of swallowing pills
    sometimes, and sometime I am fine
    but sometimes I stick my zinc
    inside my water
    and wait for it to dissolve.
    dress the glass with
    lemon slices,
    don’t cough at the medicine taste.
    daily I take:
    *I put my thumb up to count*

    b12, nasal spray, rose hips (for the vitamin c),
    vitamin c packets (for the vitamin C),
    liquid chlorophyll for the lungs, elderberry for
    the immunity, and aloe vera for the reflux.
    (that’s one way I almost choked).
    plus I dab in mugwort for the dreams
    and movement of any sluggish blood,
    coltsfoot for the throat, mullein for the
    allergies, cohosh when I’m cramping
    up or need a baby out.
    nettles for some iron.
    marshmallow root to coat my
    irreparably dehydrated throat.
     chamomile at night to rest
    my wanton soul from leaping
    out her skin.

    honestly, I’m just trying not to go outside
     or touch my face.
    wash my hands.
    bathe the day in isopropyl alcohol
    and bergamot.
    I ended up increasing my walks
    to twice a day.
    I don’t touch a single thing.
    honestly. also
    I almost choked to death five
    times so this kind of means not a
    thing to me.
    plus I’m a nihilist.
    my jaw clenched shut twice while eating
    and a mouthful lodged itself.
    a cherry pit got stuck in bolus,
    two pills got caught in esophagus
    and once I swallowed a safety pin
    after placing it in a shot glass I then
    used for vodka.
    I somehow managed to cough and pull
    it out.
    oh and once I am pretty sure I got
    alcohol poisoning.
    oh and once I ran headfirst into
    a cement mixer with my car
    and broke my sternum and now
    have a traumatic brain injury,
    once I fell down some stairs,
    once I got sucked in by a wave
    and almost drowned,
    once I leapt off my balcony after being
    locked out and my landlord even
    walked by me.
    I waved.
    could have told her but
    I had a cat I was hiding.
    we weren’t allowed to have cats.
    I waited til she went inside the other building,
    she was showing a couple around.
    I took a breath, jumped  and
     barely missed the pole
    that was poking out of the ground
    right below my apartment.
     it was about five feet high.

    honestly, I’m just trying not to go outside
    or touch my face,
    i’m not thinking about anything.
    just sort of
    twitching uncontrollably
    which is why you maybe think
    I’m more frenetic or stressed than
    I am.
    oh and I’m not allowed to eat
    turmeric,
    *I smile to show him my white teeth*
    so I had to buy a capsule.

    sometimes I’m scared to take that one too.
    but no, I’m not any  more anxious
    than before. what did you ask
    me? Im sorry. 

    “OCD” or “the iteration series”

  • (insert image of woman screaming outside surrounded by nothing here)

  • I’ve 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 pull
    me.
    paint my lashes black
    and they’re wet  and
    shaped like little
    bolts.

     

    we watched fireflies and I
    licked your earlobes,
    tried your fingers on
    while I played with truths,
    denied them.
    felt your chest pressed hard
    against mine.  we clanked
    with ease
    and I took in the scene
    of two people unclothed and
    unseen
    underneath some crescent
    in your backyard
    without friendship between them;
    without people between them and I dared
    to stare in a way that endures more than
    deciduous planting.
    I broke at the
    not now
    you spoke back
    with a masculine fragility
    I had never known     envied,
    tried on later with pants,
    unplucked eyebrows
    and alone.

    you became red.
      I became an unwatched bull
    headed to your porch,
    snorting and you were
    bare faced and guarded
     in all the ways
    I have yet to learn.
    I’m so obvious:

    a scarlet blaze that starts with a joke,
    two bodies parting,
    an unreturned question that ends
    with a sharp exclamation,
    annihilation of something.
    ends with a reminder from someone higher
    to stop destroying something
    to eliminate one part.
    I am a wave of coercion
    pulling you in and under
    when I should have been
    patient;
    when I should have been laid in the grass
    gently, next to the ant hills,
    where you can learn my lifelines:
    breasts,
    spine,
    toes curled without injury.
    when I should have been pausing to notice
    there are no people between us.
    when I should have been gracious,
    with you and bare-faced,
    or wet cheeked or

    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
    with my tongue pressed
    against your chin,
    my lips trace
    your jaw       I say
    more softly
    than  ever before,
    having been tempered
    and forced close:
    you know,
    darling,
    let my teeth hit your lip

    I have never
    become divine without first
    becoming storm.

     “ascension”

  • I like looking at pictures
    of old flames with
    new lovers because I like
    the way the shards of
    heart cut internally
    as they break,
    float away.
    almost like I’m a
    masochist

  • I’ve 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 pull
    me.

    sweetie, we think you are
    a masochist.

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