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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“hard times have a remarkable way of opening your eyes.”
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only two days ago
your hands circled my throat
to toss me on the bed.
still dutiful,
merely dotted with color,
I am on my way
to pick up a bag of cutlery and dishes
for our house from the front porch
of a stranger’s
when I stop to admire the cracks
in the side of the building.
the wall is coral, faded but
garish, still stands out.
it’s brick and
this building has no doors and
one broken window.
each time I run an errand,
these defects catch my eye
and I pay my respects in
photographs.
I’m trying to get my memory back:
stopping at each one,
trying to remember how the boulders
haunted too how the ocean felt
on my wasted ankles at dusk when I guzzled
vodka Big Gulps and watched the
white crabs roam the bay.
watched myself dissolve into
the bits of me and can I remember
how the sunset looked draped over both
tide and flatirons,
hold two things at once
without favor?
how it feels to lose several
small countries you claimed.
the way men have held me:
(invaded)
all claws of resplendent mortar
and cracking at the edges
even with the scrape of thumb.
I snap a picture of the broken
glass pane and the beginning of
the first layer peeling into
white; the fissure.
trace my finger
over a chip and watch
it flake onto the sidewalk.
snap a picture of
that with my boot
in the corner of the frame.
things to remember us
by: namely,the way
things have
left me after once
holding me inside;
cracked, split,
unable to safely hold someone
inside
but repainted a bright shade
for the pleasant gazes of
unknowing passersby.“doors (#3)”
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you are only as sick as your
secrets the old man says
and I nod emphatically
like I was willing to part with
any of them, like I
am going to unabashedly
review my inventory
right here but
wellI have just
applied a fire engine red
gloss to my lips before
walking in and
I didn’t know this was just
for men, readjusted myself
in the middle of five.
I’m all black
monochrome
and partially velvet,
hostile,
internal,
set out for departure
since arrival.
my friends say I have a
clever way of falling up
and the ones I fucked
said anything but easy
but taste like strawberry
which gets me in the door.
I start by confessing
that I shoplifted the kombucha
that I am drinking
cuz I honestly
just have to start.“doors #2” or “confessions”
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ah, a whole day of cravings
curbed. feeling lighter,
drinking coffee out of
gifted blue and white porcelain cups,
enjoying as it sustains and suppresses
an appetite.
I am cataloging
food as it relates to money.
the less I eat.
the more I save for
other things.
I do not tell my partner
this; merely produce
cash for electricity,
merely thin myself
like I’ve always earned
to be a paper waif.
just kind of
feather away.realize that my bank account has
nothing in it for the third time in
my life.
the way I cradle the welcome
gifts from his mother,
these dishes, these pots:
all bright tangerine or
carnation yellow, and
red bowls.
red plates.
orange sequined quilt
across the bed.
care for them like they are
children.
she decorated the place while we were out
“making meetings.”
hung a portrait of a pineapple
in the kitchen.
he reminds me
none of this is yours.
I hated the stairs that cut through the center
and the backyard, too small
now lined with green safety fence,
chicken wire, he held up to show
me. ways to keep the cat
safe inside.
months later, I will
take it down,
pluck out all of
the crabgrass in the tiny
backyard by hand, no gloves,
appreciating how quickly
my skin calluses,
the encasement for my
straws but utilitarian today,
productive today,
making things happen today.
the way I threw away the
windchime and its broken shells
littering the ground like it
meant nothing to me:
a childhood emblem I’d
had since I was eight,
tossed in a large black
carpenter bag.none of this is mine.
all the ways I’ve entered
contracts on a whim,
the things I’ve collected
and the interminable slam
of a door or my body
as I show my thorns.
I’m remembering
every step I’ve ever
taken; steep,
knees fractured,
ribs protruding,
crippled by both indecision
and unabating pacing.and don’t forget
the time he slammed you
on the bed.“doors #1”
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(being obsessed with inequity
creates lines on
your face.
your teeth clenched
with scowl and stress
but 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
take away the change
of facial shape.
and money assuages.) -
where are your friends?
that’s a real good question,
sir. I’m crouched in the back of the ambulance,
deluded and almost paralyzed,
swaying like i’m on a ship
knowing the possibility of fainting is near
if they don’t keep talking.
I’m asking in earnest if they are gonna
kill me and he isn’t laughing but i do notice
the way he eyes me like I’m a
honey-dipped sweet on the long night shift–
palatable, soft,
without defense.
I’m then left in a wheelchair in the middle of
an electronic door, closing.first I walked five blocks to get there
and he asked me four times what
skullcap was.
remember this part as it comes up again.
Im alone in the hospital
realizing you’re the snake they
warned me about and I’ve been
the well-worn carpet they walked on
to get somewhere then left
in an electronic door, closing.
male nurse pulls my shirt up
without saying a word to me
so my breasts are exposed to everyone
on the floor
as I’m answering for the seventh time
what skullcap is like
I had never said it to her
crying, six times before.
pleading.
just listen to me.
please.
it is hard to speak.“ (and) Degradation”
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you? you will know me by
the devil etched squarely on
my thigh and my ascetic
right arm twitching
for something to hold
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“They don’t mean to cause offense, but it doesn’t occur to them that clarity of facts can ever be offensive.”
this next section is called: the snake.
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“I feel trapped on a lonely star.”
–Audre Lorde
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the score was 7-5 when we saw the salamander and I gave them and extra point because I had never seen a salamander on the ground before. had watched them in the pond turning circles in the autumn morning light but here it wriggled over the leaves like a living gummy worm. a translucence to its skin that made me want to poke through it with a stick. both of us admitted later we were tempted to pop it into our mouth to chew its tiny legs like gum. this one was bright orange like a fox or fire. it means fire and water. salamander does. that’s what I told them. not then but
“(redacted)”
I was entranced by its movement when they said my name quietly. no one was there. you could yell if you wanted. first, I saw their face, foreboding. clear in its focus and delivery. I looked to the right and saw the lumbering outline. people say in crisis you cease thinking but you don’t. you have a million cogent thoughts a second that coalesce to
“don’t run.”
we had prepared for this because I made us prepare for this–going over a thousand times what would happen if it happened. turned and walk up the hill, brisk, no running. don’t run. a few steps up and my deep breathing began. they said they heard me when I started. I have a metronomic heart. we could time the seconds by the steady pulse if we ever wanted to. I remembered the years of hearing the run and the go right when you want to go left and rarely employing it. never making sense but always wafting around my encumbered head. there’s a lot of thoughts in times of stress. there’s a lot of thoughts in me at all times. its the opposite of what everyone says. crisis is instinct deployed and brain on overdrive but body–body is moved by a deep well of force. head is scrambled but legs almost swim.
for a split second I veer. I saw the divet to the left and felt confused even though I had confidently turned when it popped in again: go right when you want to go left. heart bored against the bones looking for escape. my breath kept my feet on soil.my breath kept us straight. gmy breath kept me. nothing felt so airy as the top of the hill. nothing felt so good. that path was particularly dark and overcast and suddenly; sunny moments before we entered. I remembered before I said it, right before I spoke to them again, I remembered the three webs I walked into at the beginning of the trail, exclaiming this is Arachne’s forest.
“they said it’s 8-8,” I began before turning around. “we both get the bear.”
they said I said we’re ok now but I don’t remember that. I remember a shiver leaving my fingertips and
they said I said we’re ok now but I don’t remember that. I remember a shiver leaving my fingertips and asking to leave and like a snapshot– the large, lumbering black body walking towards us from thirty feet away, repeating.
and I remember the cloak of gray sky pregnant with storm encasing me.
“#12 or Arachne’s Trail”
daturamoon.com 