Posts

  • “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”

  • give it to me, God
    can be a risky request.

  • and

    did you know,
    the bones given a soft lick
    will sparkle white
     like fresh-caught ivory
    and once it feels the brush of
    mouth
    will file any joint to tip
    with tooth
    and gore the things that touches

    it, that holds it
    near to chest or
    safely in its palm?

  • currently turning from ice
    to flood to
    to steady stream of
    cold, red blood.

  • stop for an appreciation post. I have almost 500 followers! I am not sure most of you will see this but I appreciate the ones that always like and comment. thanks for the encouragement!

  • there is something to be found in total isolation.

  • I learned to say this phrase most often
    to God in prayer:
                 give them all the light and love
                  and whatever they may need. if what they
                 want and need are the same thing,
                 please, don’t hold back:
              give them everything.”

     

    the phrase
    abracadabra literally translates to mean
    “I create as I speak”
    and with patience,
    even an active fault line will
    root new trees.

    I drape myself in effulgence:
    white bulb,
    blue black shade covering my eyes.
    a walking half moon.
    plucked my eyes out
    to avoid seeing what spell can
    do to the meek,
    what weak blood
    hex can squeeze
    from a stone.
    I am no saint,
    I tell you.
    I’ve collected
    beryl droplets of text
    from the back of
    your throat.
    abracadabra.
    I am santa claus
    shimmying down the chimney
    each night.
    I am a knife in a dark room
    following another knife
    to his prize.
    I am delivering it.
    you know who I am
    inside but I’m changing
    shape, becoming spectral,
    coalescing
    into coffins.

    the litter isn’t enough to change
    so I’m buying house plants
    to welcome fresh life into this house.
    cacti look like your middle fingers
    in the morning.
    the cat eats the tulips but
    she leaves the sunflowers be.
    I host orchids when I am feeling
    extra ambitious,
    watch them die
    with a soft, sad
    browning.
    mostly I have surrounded myself
    with roses. in my garden
    of goddesses,
    I make offering.
    there’s too much oxygen in here,
    I think.
    it’s mostly coalescing
    into coffins.

    I’m choking on particles of
    corn soaked cat piss,
    the expensive kind of litter that can be
    thrown right into the toilet,
    and clusters of thorns in
    my bare feet,
    a little sprinkle
    of pollen on my nose.
    my floor is covered in stem
    decay and this bed
    is just a graveyard
    doused in dead
    blossoms.

    I say it’s over
    loudly and I hear the
    drag of a
    chain.
    it’s Monday and I
    am asking you to leave,
    and you are learning what
    truth can do.
    what spell means.
    abracadabra.
    you’ve been watching me bow to
    altar, you’ve been watching me
    pray.
    you’ve been asking for
    something too.
    It’s Monday, I wake up
    and all the songs are about you.

    I never write about blossoming but
    i’m seeing inflorescence in
    dejection,
    in the form of wormwood
    creeping up my throat,
    taking hold of nearest hopes
    and igniting.
    “Monday, and all the songs
    are still about you.”  

  • (Stop and bow to silence.)

    You hold me the way the soil
    holds the bones
    of those we’ve learned to mourn
    in private:
    eternally & quiet
    with an airy tightness:
    the way the heavens hold the pious,
    the mob holds the riot,
    the way the ocean holds all that falls below
    that deep blue surge of
    sea.

    I drag you under to show
    you what I’m made of.

     

    “squall”

  • shredded letters I tried using
    as fertilizer,
    grow something from our
    sudden valediction:
    calendula,

    jasmine to lighten the darker parts
    of my libations;
    the ones that tease my hair and  
    take me    pull me under the bath
    water gently
    as I kick and try not to
    scream.
    violets, honeywort, scent of honeysuckle wafting
    from the roach holes,
    mugwort to get my blood moving again.
    Easter lilies the cats shouldn’t touch so I
    hang them from the rafters
    and let the leaves fall brown
    one by one;
    let the paws scatter the ashes of that,
    mice, my previous
    laurels.

    cheery dandelions burst from
    the cracks in the linoleum and
    I keep a bromeliad at the doorway
    to protect me with her spikes;
    self-effacing, straight and strong unlike the
    hard, twisted ways I grow to be.
    orchids to wilt in too much sunlight when I’m
    doting myself to death,
    a bouquet of roses to give my daughter
    when she becomes moss
    in someone else’s garden,
    feral evocation           an arboretum
    started at the ankle. or
    a whole cherry tree,

    rooted and I can chop
    it down to gorge.
    something sweet to chomp
    while I’m choking down
    the acidic no,
    extra pillow space.
    my place: curtains drawn,
    devoid of moons.
    my place:
    curtains open,
    enveloped in
    the new full sun.
    my place,
    giant cobweb stuck with
    stem and black succor.

    I prepare the dried lemon balm
    in the mason jar,
    two cups of hot water,
    watch the window blanket itself in white flakes
    of anesthesia,
    embrace the change in seasons
    openly without any phone calls,
    any text, any hexed
    postcard,or really,
    much incident at all
    considering our history

    “perennial”

  • lightly doused
    in cramped atmosphere,
    I am cradled by my
    gnawing contrition.
    I am a well of sadness
    contained by anger.
    your hand is in mine.
    you are stroking a painted thumb,
    this nail polish is called kerosene
    smiling openly.
    I return the gesture:
    show my unkempt life in off white teeth,
    sore tongue,
    gums as red as love.
    someone gently rubbed glitter on my
    forearm to make me
    *pop* a little more and I
    meant to respond.
    my heart is a brass bell,
    frozen, staid,
    caught between two
    hungers
    my hair is up and partially mussed,
    dark auburn when there’s sun.
    I don’t wear my brother’s ashes
    around my throat
    anymore.
    I think that’s more telling
    than I let on.

    today is partly drizzle and partly
    made up in my head.
    you stand  taller than God and I
    shrink; gothic in a mixed
    drink and someone else’s
    dress wrapped around my hips,  
    daydream of someone else’s
    rough lips picking at my thin skin,
    someone else’s orgasm
    propping up my knees,
    someone’s meek kiss carving diamonds
    on a weak spine
    that is atrophying
    rapidly.
    on a bleak night,
    I almost turn thirty
    like this.
    someone taps me,
    asks me for a light.

    my hair is half down and
    covering my eyes.
    my feet are bare,
    rooted in mud somewhere near
    a soggy paper plate
    that has a dot of frosting on the rim
    scraped from a cake
    that probably read
    congrats on breaking indigent!
    but we devoured it without skimming
    as if ten plus years of
    bohemian arrogance is anything to celebrate.
    I should be dead.
    I should be erupting by now.
    I feel disproportionately large
    for my soul but growing smaller
    by the sip.
    you are muffled laughter and
    showing another woman the view from the balcony,
    holding space for her pain in a way
    that romanticizes internalized rage.
    I am watching.
    I am  the dark breaking sky
    who forgot how to storm
    so she just lightly pours
    another flask full.
    my chest is broken and brass and
    coughing politely.
    “Ahem.”

    I point to the moon
    and start running.

  • i’m turning another year and
    I’m looking  for checks,
    counting my reasons for staying
    or for running the other way.
    I have overdue things.

    recycling and wrinkles
    and Kombucha bottles
    pile up
    and the hairballs on the floor
    I avoid without cleaning sometimes.
    make a zig zag to the door
    where I cast spell:
    the fits of importunity,
    little raps at my neighbors door
          sugar, that’s all
    that make me wish I had chosen the life of a mendicant
    but my knees always hurt.
    I have unchecked messages everywhere:
    voicemail reminders and
    grandma’s leukemia is pretty bad and
    I’m rotten and everywhere like her snaking
    liver spots.
    Mom bought me a new chain to carry him on.
    i’m allergic to anything that looks like silver
    but doesn’t hold its weight,
    including nickel-painted gold
    so I’ve gotten good at tearing things apart
    to see what they are
    made of.

    and the red spots line my throat,
    white dabs of cream and my
    strapless dress     taking out my earrings to dance
    with the new one who laughs with
    stormy intention,
    and I’m obsessed with the way men
    strangle anything dear to them,
    the way I run right into their butcher shop
    and ask if they can
     I want to hear the way I plead from inside of you
    finish me.

    I got a new mural and icing lips
    and white teeth.
    no mercury caps unless you include
    my orbiting lips.
    dream of Christmas, cinnamon buns and
    him choking out an
    “I love you”
    with my color by numbers.
    I’m remembering hugging an unnamed kitten and
    trying to hold onto
    this feeling.
    I didn’t get impermanence,
    just a new bike every year
    to run away from home.
    and suddenly my phone chokes out a reminder
    that the living are
    hunting me.
    i’m hunting something else.

    my heels in the dirt, his hand in mine,
    smile
    I say for no one.
    nail polish named kerosene and
    gums as red as love.
    my hair is auburn in the sun
    and today is partly drizzle and partly
    made up in my head
         congratulations, baby, you made it.

    wet cheeks and leftover streamers
    and trick candles
    and weak knees when I’m
    bobbing to the rhythm.
    polaroids on the table and
    girls that try to
    tell me secrets.
    I tell the sky all the things.
      I’ll show you all the films I like

    we barely talk.
    we watch films.
    he finishes
    on top of his fingers
    and my wrapping paper.
    i’m half asleep
    butull of sugar
    and thoughts like a
    wadded piece of past
    shaped like rope
    tightening
    and

    I wake up in his forearm
    biting through his moles
    to get to you.

     

    “happy birthday”

     

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑