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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”

  • the medium between
    complacency in vengeance
    or complacency
    with photosynthesis
    Is God.

    “transition”

  • when I moved to Philly,
    I developed a good working
    relationship with every Whole Foods
    in the area.
    I wore noise cancelling
    headphones and an olive green
    bookbag.


    I want to be remembered for the
    ways I never starved,
    you are only as
    sick as your secrets.


    no, I am only as sick
    as my father,
    but say it out
    loud in self checkout.
    with imprudence.
    with temper.

    and never tell them anything.

    “the secrets”

  • I think at some point

    you have earned the right to say

    I know already because you lived it

    without acquiescing to

    authority so I asked

    to see it first:

    the river’s mouth,

    even though they said

    I’d never make it.

    I never said I didn’t

    deserve it–

    just that I could outrun it

    if they gave it.

    “the alligator” or “uranus in sagittarius”

  • this next section is called:

    The Woman who saw her lover’s death

  • this was years ago.
    the first time I told them about it.
    sitting on the edge of the bay
    on a borrowed blanket,

    I was vomiting up
    an Everclear Slurpee
    and peeling back the bottom
    of his parent’s quilt realizing
    I had covered the entrance of the
    ghost crab’s home.
    embroiled in my own
    deafening philosophy
    about the closing of the day;\
    the way it moved–
    death,
    like an itinerant wave
    that followed me
    and only me,
    everywhere.

    I coughed that up second
    to tell him
    the rituals (pinch the
    straw, doll) were there to
    keep me safe.

    the tide crept back
    and I heard him light a cigarette,
    felt myself starting to drown again
    and then his hand on my thigh,
    then nothing at all.
    pain subsides in very
    miniscule amounts
    of time
    if  you don’t
    repeat the
    story.
    (do not repeat the story)

    my head is eighteen visions a second:
    someone getting their face smashed
    with a brick, someone getting into
    a plane, slicing the skin of my fingers,
    blood. blood. blood. blood.
    and matching the numbers to the proper
    order.    reorganizing mantles.
    bleaching my teeth and
    every inch of my house.
    first, you have to feel safe.
    I begin to build the glass
    around me.

    and turning to you again, I
    implore you to pick a title and
    stick with it.   for me, I say
    cupping your baby soft chin,
    (Alaska is safer than Australia):
    do you like warnings or do you
    like to drown?

    “warnings”

  • Saturdays and the 1 pm
    alarm clockon snooze,
    the bare-faced evenings
    in throw blankets;
    languid, but there is still
    a rabid tongue
    between fits of sudden inspiration.
    moved
    from sheets to
    cushions to sheets
    to type it down,
    to shower
    once a week
    if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth.

    graze your chin, scalp,
    untouched thighs.
    open your chapped lips to the sky.
    feel the water rush your neck and
    trickle down your navel
    to soak your unseen toenails.
    do not question anything
    for those three whole seconds;
    it is the closest thing to orgasm
    you can manage.
    it has been a tough change in seasons:
    costuming yourself with
    sincerity, (you’re vulnerable)
    tights and boots
    and an expansive blankness
    that still drives your body around
    to pick up soy milk.

    finish something you started.

    there you are.
    some cooing cobra.
    the chills that almost ate
    me: winter.   several
    in a row.
    the darkness and
    introspection of how
    I’ve chosen to succeed,
    lone and the two of swords.
    thanking my institutions
    for showing me how to carve
    pure copper into
    green or sharp to hold,
    the likelihood that two things
    look identical enough
    to both be chosen,
    that I will learn the
    ways of mask
    and holster. 

    there you are.

    “rage” or “the fifth wave”

  • what wave is this?

  • there you are,
    some cooing cobra,
    the chills that almost ate
    me: winter.   both
    the darkness and
    introspection of how
    I’ve chosen to succeed.
    thanking my institutions
    for showing me how to carve
    pure copper into
    green to hold,
    the likelihood that two things
    look identical enough
    to both be chosen,
    that I will learn the
    ways of mask
    and holster. 

    there you are.

    “rage” or “the fifth wave”


  • shake my head no.

    “I don’t intend to hurt myself.”
    my thighs are cut with finger shaped
    bruise and the smell of
    someone else’s
    laundry detergent
    I am windswept,
    gutted and frank,
    even in malaise, I
    fork my tongue to cut:

    “I can only cry at hospitals
    and then I usually leave.”
    lean in, and they said
    be gallant. he has
    blue eyes.
    “most of my family is dead.
    I just want to be seen.”

    my throat sore from
    conversation. persisting
    mucus. the taste of him.
    takes my hand.
    takes my neck.
    takes my waist.
    stop talking.

    but I just can’t.

    “catharsis” or “nine of wands”

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