I don’t like to talk about my
house so I don’t
but the garage
is gone and so is everything
that was in it.
the christmas decorations
from my childhood,
oil painting of my mother
(asbestos),
all our halloween decorations.

my
childhood bedroom is gone
and so is everything that was
in it except for one soccer
cleat my mom found when
my dad died.
one day the sink
will collapse. it’s leaning.
the walls are so soft
with water and mold
we can’t fix anything.
we
have snakes
in there.
giant water bugs and
crickets and
slugs and  I have no
yearbooks. I have a couple
notes from my friends
and a swath from a cologne sample
my high school lover
used to wear between
fucking his wife and me
accompanied by a note
he wrote me once:
there is wine in the fridge.
but I am thinking of
myself younger 

than that,
a shoebox of tokens

and the old lip gloss bottle,
a roller, vanilla scented
but pink
that I had saved because it
reminded me of an entire
freezing december
on my crush’s bench
where sometimes he let me
wear his sweatshirt
when I left my jacket home.
I am holding my hands to the ground,

feeling vines wind up
my calves.
repeating,
muttering.
what rolls off my tongue in
these heavy fits of consternation.
the way they describe me to the
ambulance: someone who
looked like she saw the horizon
close in on her and
collapsed.
the way they describe me
to the first responder
is that I looked to be seized
by terror like she saw the
horizon closing in and
just fell
to the ground. 

“Persephone”

“I don’t think the world would be this big or weird if we were meant to do just one thing. I think when people start doing that they become obsessed with functionality instead of whether it is beautiful. I’m not ready to be functional.”

today we are at is not self seeking
but i still need a
way out.

“but I’m an open book!”
I twirl.

open to page five,
point to a word:
(did you recite them out loud?)

vituperative
is the word.

im laughing,
thirteen inches taller,
knife on my lap,
towel drying it–
they think I can control
my ire.

and somewhere a light flickers.

I’d say with a curt assertion,
she’s probably mad.

“ARACHNE”

freedom,
as with any other illusion,
is a cage; square
of smudged windows

 or
slowly cracking doors,
screened porches and you’re
watching the kids chase the wind
into the gulls at the shore.
brick walls with a hole in the
mortar and you’re peeking
through the cracks of your
latest lover’s absence,
trying to catch sight of
the tips of their nails
for the synesthetic trail
down your  breast or
the scourge and
when settled
and mended and feeling
very tall,
broken glass on the sidewalk
as you leap from your
place:

burning, indelible
in char.

doors #12

revenge is a dish best
served lest it twist and
fester into thorns
that shimmy up your spine
like vines and take over
your mind, your
tongue, you have the most
petulant mouth, dear.

“stay here.”

—responses from God during meditation, April 13, 2014 3:01 pm

you cough loudly
without covering your
mouth as if you
don’t already have my attention.
but I am also outside
listening to the sparrows.
we both rustle on top of
the afghan briefly
and separately.
I am heavy-eyed and
smothered grief.
you are wide awake
pretending to
sleep as I trace
the pattern of moles
on your back
into a mountain.
crumple underneath that
and reposition
so all of my useless body
is touching yours.
crumble underneath that.

remember when I made you all those CDs?

breathe
between your shoulder blades
so the question slides up your
neck.
I know every way to turn you
on
and back to me
but you just
shuffle,
uncross your ankles
and a dog yelps,
someone screams, a car backfires
and so does every other
fucking thing.
every day my block is
in uproar over something
and I’m just cowered
near the door.
you tell me not to sob
for show, and I’m just
slumping by the door
waiting for a year to pass.

my old record heart sits away
from you buried underneath
my dry nipple,
soon to be mounted and wet with
saliva and soon to be cold
and grasping soon after that  
remembered as
cradled by a hand that once
was open palm,
an unsteady hum,
unsated.
you look at the ceiling.
you look through something.
you look heedless,
like you did a year ago
slithering out of my place
leaving a trail of choler
and cry like 
slime and someone outside yells
at their child.
you say:

the only one that still works is How to Talk to God.

 “how to talk to God”