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”

  • it was a frigid drive across country.
    the first time I saw buffalo,
    I was leaving Colorado.
    it was the coldest front we’d had in years
    and the car had no heat.
    my cat was squeezed in a carrier
    in a sedan full of my dresses
    I couldn’t bear to leave
    but I don’t have a single
    emblem of home.

    “space #2

  • it is the sun streaming through my
    bay-sized sliding door windows
    and the white-apped mountains
    framed within them
    that I will miss most
    in winter.
    clearly, I can’t hold
    two things at once without
    favor, and
    today I have
    a piece of paper,
    a dozen dead things
    wilted in their vase
    to remind me.

    there is a touch of red
    sprinkled around the glass
    that browns and sets as dry
    on the sill in
    my small uncurtained bedroom that
    I pace when I have
    too much on my  mind
    and today they remind me

    life is a patient rot
    to tomb, a gauntlet and
    fluid so I  better keep
    moving.

    life is a patient
    gut to get to
    wound     it was April
    on Earth Day when I wrote
    My Brother Is Dead
    in the back of a notebook I would never
    look at again.

    thrown away to make room
    as I packed the car
    two years later.

    “grief (part two)”

  • don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

    don’t tell anyone what i did to you.

  • humiliation of
    all the little violations
    that add up to today
    without one strong word
    or accurate verb
    to describe the way a knife
    sticks for a second and you moan
    the wrong way.

    what sounds better to you?
    I say over coffee, trying to
    finish some titles,
    possibly in love but also
    possibly 

    .“besieged” or “PTSD”
    or simply
    “raped?”

    “the act of naming things”

  • the boy in the bed asking
    me to try on something that
    slips off and
    now I’m in tight pants
    and loose sweaters and
    just another verse
    picking at its stitches,
    grunting from the dark and
    taking educated guesses at the Rorschach blot
    that spreads across its skirt
    when she is strut.
    but writing with a vocal fry;
    a sort of deflection, uptalk and
    cadence, downplaying
    it with rhythm as you
    try to capture the moment
    you were knees first on
    a pink and white daybed
    as he showed you all the ways
    to take it;
    passive pistil,
    this is what men want;

    2.

  • I wish I had more words for
    “terrorized”
    tossing jumpers from my dollhouse,
    that may have been where I learned
    to cut my hair like my brother
    but first I
    learned how to get undressed

    1.

  • grow up big
    like
    great, big
    potted
    bonsais:

    warped,
    admired for aesthetic,
    pruned to look pained,
    trimmed excessively
    with some self-seeking worship;
    most every limb
    lacking expansion
    or utility,

    most every limb
    kept smaller than it
    should be.

    “girls”

  • “we are obsessed with exposure, and prefer to take initiative, to expose ourselves.”

    –Louise Gluck

    “mercury in eighth house vs. mercury in first house”

    or

    “Of two sisters
    one is always the watcher,
    one the dancer.”

    –Louise Gluck

  • I just have to make rent.

    I read a note out loud to myself,
    something I had written in an urgency,
    a mania and with its own
    staggering precocity these little
    messages keep me crawling
    on the ledge:
        everything that is really hard
               is going to save your life

    and a blackbird landed on the branch
    outside my living room
    window.
    still, their eyes small and
    sharp, waiting to dive,
    waiting for the buzz of cicadas
    to start again.
                that reminds me,

    I say in my head
                i’m emaciating.
    I take a sip of water.
    starved, looking
    without touching and
          I want too much
    has many meanings.
    I read the words aloud again
    and pour myself a thimble
    of almonds.

    it is first that I craft the story,
    not out of revenge but
    of general idleness and
    devilment, the two things
    slated to go hand in hand.
    I begin to charm him.
                    do you believe everything I say?

    and then you become the
    braced masochist
    and I become
    the looming hit.

    “maelstrom”

  • I return to the original plan,
    answer yes or no to whatever you
    ask, truth.
    I begin not timid,
    but cautious.

    my birthday is the day of
    the fearless crusader and I know
    you won’t believe this, but I really
    can’t tell a lie unless it is
    to save my life.

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