Posts
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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”
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all that glitters is usually filtered
unless God is involved.this day, two weeks
ago, or so,
i’m lost driving into the
sun-soaked skyline;
her late afternoon sunset like an
ochreous fog drifting from underneath
God’s skirt as she lifts
I’m trying not to stare)
and shows me
what I could have had:
a heart exploding from arterial
confinement, daily hues of red cascading
into orange clouds,
or if it’s rain that day,
gray with yellow halos.
the setting is always obscured by
the passing climate.
I was hearing you say
“fuck”
softly and playfully near my ear
again. I know where you
stay now, and I know
I just want everything
too fast.
the sky is telling a story
of a very
slow and deliberate
inflorescence
fuck
and I am trying
to be more present.but I just missed my exit
trying not to feel
the one am fingers
unzipping the jeans I fell
asleep in
and I probably
missed the point
long ago, but I am dreaming of
a reunion,
of delayed gratification,
a ball dropping,
a heart exploding in
your bed like a sunset;
perennial, without
finality or resistance
to its daily revolution
around the giant.the way I am longing to
be in your ear whispering,
revolving around the giant in the
room between us;
yes,
keep going.4.
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I’m haunted in several kinds of
cadence and burdened
with unmanageable lust.
I’m replaying the way
you never said my
name, the way I keep my nails
short in case I turn on myself
when I’m turning myself
on.
Someone has to touch me
at this point.
The way I begged
for you to send me a magpie
some mornings,
the way I long for it still,
it hurts.
The way in which I elongated
the word u s
so it looked bigger on paper.
I let it last
a whole year;
grow leaves, grow fingers
dotted emerald green with pink flowers
and then sorrel and bare,
baring its brown
bones to the birds
who perch in earnest search
of shelter so they can call on
one another in fight,
famine, or flood.
I watched us
drift to the floor
in detritus,
becoming
a new organism that grew roots,
that craved sun,
that lapped water and pollen and
seasons.
Letting it fall
in frost.
Letting it crown
despite the real
us.Kiss me in the light of
these new found
bedevilments,
I lick the mirror
with feeling.
It is December and I am
already freezing.
I am relying on roots
for nourishment.
I am hibernating
and emptying.
All year, I am sturdy and foreboding
like a honey locust
dripping thorns down her spine,
dropping leaves all down your walk
so you will always be reminded of the
pine that encircled you when you first heard
my forest chorus:
the long form I wrote of
u s.
Look at me again and
again and
again: now
I am leaving.I am chopped into several pieces.
I am becoming paper.
I am becoming waste.
I am becoming the spines of books,
archaic adjectives
that you chase to replace your
chilled silence with a word
that offers anything but
a returned question mark.
You thought that all devils
wore black and sauntered
and spoke coolly with promise,
but I am the devil
who wears anything
the world will offer,
including white,
and offers some
warm reprieve
like a velvet-lined casket
floating over the open
sea.
I am listening.
I am wide open
and encasing.
It was never us
I came here
chasing, I finally admit to
what I am
drawn to.It is waiting.
“death”
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im a stifled violence
unleashing the knife of my spine
inch by bloody inch
and im walking towards you.my name is Circe.
I am God-drawn
and celibate
and obsessively
testing myself.
I look good
all smothered in your blood,
you look better
hanging from my bookshelf.I am
scratching at your chest
and other places to let
the mice know
what I own
in case they forget
what I did,
who I am to you,
and come back
hungry for a hole
in that
home.
they cut across the black cat
lying surreptitiously
under porch rail
licking the flecks of skin
from her paw,
mistaking her for shadow.
they don’t cut
far.
they are mice
lying down
that are ripped
like the line of your
spine,
neck to base
in shreds.you too are mine.
“the welcome mat”
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the edges of your skin
snap at your acerbic joints
as your bones break the flesh
and you take a few steps back
to collect yourself;
picture days with your family
in green and laughter and now,
the interminable quiet
that spans highways,
urns like
ashtrays,
everyone’s in.you see my lips in the
rearview:
red as fresh hell,
soft like fresh pain,
your new lover is plain
and you are scared of
the ice in my veins,
the way I change shape
from arctic to comet
and rock splits your
face and the bone breaks
the flesh and you
are taking a few steps back
andI am scared that
you once said
my name.“Circe”
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Will you ever speak again?
Did a mouse steal your tongue?
Am I the cat dragging it back with an allusion to love
for the one who keeps her?
You never entertain me with your stories.
I never leave your crystal balls alone:
knock them about and keep them
hidden from you.But I slaughtered that mouse.
Didn’t I kill for you?
Isn’t trial love?
A more violent truth serum
I offer than most; I rip answers
with my sudden eruption of flames
directed your way
but I leave some blue vervain
on the dresser to soothe you,
mention it’s good for clarity and
joint pain.
No burn salve, something
slightly bitter.
A final act of cruelty
and I bow in my miniskirt.
You chose solution in someone else,
and the lie.
I chose to withhold an antidote to your
meek eternity.
Had I said “I love you despite what you’ve done to me “
I know you would have stayed.But vengeance tastes sweeter
than pride as you’ll soon
see. The way I devour,
the way I spit you back up.
The way I make you
taste yourself.
It’s titled
“Lilian”
and
“the way I make you
face yourself”
or“How I write you in the story”
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I am on my floor
in a sweeping bow,
in an off-white gown
I am wet with my insides,
out
there is red everywhere,
little notes to myself,
some written in charcoal
black on my left hand,
my old eyeliner pen:rehydrate often:
we are at war here,
darling.
and
don’t grin,
it makes you look
desperate
and
I am doing all of this for book.
and one more
(you always repeat the same story)do not repeat the story.
“eyeliner” or “(notes to self)”
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fables of how we met and
false expressions.
i keep replaying “no” over
and over in my head.
my heart is a jungle:
vitriolic and slaughtering herself.
I’m a cage and my grief
always turns to rage
like acid turns to rain and
rushes through my spinal fluid
so I stand up straight.
I walk proud and tall and
wear your veneers like a mask.
I sneer at the creeks of
red beneath me.
all my men in pieces at my feet,
bowing.“Hecate”
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you are both raging moon
and blazing sun,
and the child:
the wounded outcome.3.
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Because we all go back and forth between the things we want,
the things we need,
the things we are right to own,
things we renege or
can’t ever have;
the now,
our future,
the garbled past
re-written to include more details;
each other’s intemperate tics,
each other’s suns and angry Saturns,
each other’s wasted fortunes and
last dead pets.
Each other’s turn ons,
buried talent.
Each other’s conversation starters.
Each other’s boredom and
perpetual hard ons
for longing.Conversations with yourself
where your self aggrandizement is honored
in your head;
where your victories take lovers,
where you are the empire fist with the
tight grip on slipping sand
and I’m still an apparition
stroking your cheek,
reading the lines on your hands.I chose a fruit tree over you because
I was starving.
I had an intention.
I believe in nourishment,
self preservation,
monastic devotion.
I sit with my bellyache.
You believe in pulp cages
taking the shape of
flesh and you can just
eat yourself out.
You sit with my face
in your lap.
The sun is shining.I keep thinking we can meet somewhere
else.“the orchard”
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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,
moping opacity.
my veins are bursting with crisis,
with clarity.
you walk across my pubic bone
uncarefully.you recognize me months later by the wallow,
by the
chewed straw in my hand,
the callus in my palm,
the bad polish job.
I tell you what love feels like
based on the time I first noticed
an open space between two
wants.
it was five seconds long
since then and now,
I’ve grown so much
I can fill your whole pocket.
what a fertile experience you are having
I see the grin of a horizon
upon us.
Look,
I’m reassuring,
I kept God,
as you rise above the cloudsthis time, I made you
the sun.“the light” or “the men who look like mirrors”
daturamoon.com 