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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“I just want to be seen,”
I am looking earnestly up at him
confused about why I fell down
in my house and couldn’t get up easily.
I’m, at this time, 34 and
my blood levels are fine but
I have taken
and I begin to list
them…ma’am, are you suicidal?
“the hospital series”
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sitting in front of the fish tank
again,
after now having what i believe to be
my 9th panic attack,
there is a man with his ear
bleeding.
I am familiar with this place.
“I’m fine.”you can take your knives in here.
they didn’t even notice my taser this time.
I am concerned that I am going to
suddenly stop breathing one day.
and you will,
the little girls tell me,
if you keep mixing drugs this way.but remind the audience that no one ever believes you
as a precursor to understanding how
badlyyou
just
want
to be seeeeen.
“the hopsital series”
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but i’m a martyr for this,
I crave
repercussion;even self-abnegation
needs an audience
or else it’s just plain masochism
lonely and caustic
without the gentle recompense,
the moist poultice,
the final amends:
the touch of her
sadist’s fingertips
after she laid her.all cathedrals use pain as payment
and my crucifixion,
while self inflicted;
is just as spilling brook,
and baneful.
my bloodletters will wash
the splashes from my feet,
take their time
with each laceration;stitch
my gashes
into temples.“Lilith”
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I saw this quote. I had written it long before I understood what it meant. shifting from one section of the Earth to the other without leaving my house, I read it again tonight. “I am a boundary to something else, but I don’t know what.” I was a thread.
Soon after, we took a bath
in chamomile
and I told him
every scary dream I ever had. -
********
but I feel the root rot and darken
without altar, water
or speech.
you walk in and
I’m here now
growing into a black stem.
you walk in and look
right at me
and I don’t know
where to begin.
but I found the
aperture.
you walk in and
look right at me and
my shiny white teeth
forge a new smile.
I begin to grow,
unfurl, hum
softly.
“datura moon”
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you just have to begin.
you hold my hand
when I speak.
I am nervous inexplicably.just existence is a trial.
count the candles.
set the rocks.
sip the Angelica root and
begin to drool an acid fire
into the bubbles.
I feel your chest behind me,
moist, throbbing.
in my waking hours,
I practice walking across a lake
with black boots.
it’s an icy sidewalk on
a ledge but I pretend
that it’s a long pond.when he first comes around,
I notice my wrist,
then my jaw,
surrender.
I have an urge to burn the
house down first
but in a long quaver,
forget the nonsense:
the counting of the pulse,
the spotty mason jars,
my blood dripping on a red
throw blanket, laundry,
my childhood–effete,
mold speckled shingles,
my sullen dead father
and his one last breath
alone–we think–
sometime after midnight,
right before Christmas.“the bath series”
-
I begin to teach him.
put the cayenne in the bowl.
I have blessed everything in this house.
sprinkle black salt.
put the kyanite here to
infiltrate their thoughts.
we are asking for nightmares.
it’s easier in pairs.remind him how no one believes you.
my biggest strength is no one believes
me so they never see me coming.
here,put the wormwood in the bowl.
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i’ll remember you a distant
coward, back turned save
the way you had to face
me momentarily
(when I was pleading),
your fingers laced
with blade to turn.you’ll remember me bleeding; a
frenetic champion of unfurling
without witness,
your rival Phoenix,
more quiet than you think
and less likely to withhold
my secret passion,
years practiced.
got the agrimony and
ague root to prove it.
got the mirror laid.
got a stone of yours.
got a really belly laugh going.“black magic”
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this next section is called: grief, or
the very quiet scream
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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 lipI 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 pull
me back.
paint my lashes black
and they’re wet
and
shaped like little
bolts.1.