Category: poetry

how to lean into the sharp points.

you’re shrouded
in caricature of self
under pressure:
embosked in

 crouching vines,
 twigs and berries, my clothing
 and your permanent frost that
molds you into something
statuesque–a snowman frozen
in my front
yard but I’m suddenly feeling
myself so sun,
so warm,
arms wide open,

cherry lipstick,
leper with no island and a
strong want for community.
need to touch your fingers with
my tongue,
audacity,
some ire,
some unresolved bleak black,
and I’m mad at God for every season
that brings the buried back.
I’m not over it,
I’m batshit and
I’m terribly bereft.
I’m hot
they say.

you’re melting a
little and I keep talking about
myself to fill the space.
I used to be
 a vacant room
 but now I’m full of
places,
suspect,
other people’s things,
vindictive trust and other people’s prayers;
the hurt of how they wear me once,
or at night or in their head
and then hang me like
an amulet above their door
to gawk at, clap at,
ask for favor like I’m God’s
only walking angel and really
i’m full of enmity and
you and I are both full of
me.      pinch your carrot nose
and wait for the high noon
rays to hit your coal smile
so you become the puddle
at my feet the thirsty
dog I leashed laps
quietly and you asked me.
what do I long for?

the cloying puffs of air
near my ear saying
come here and
the weather changing.
i’m adding a hat to your costume when
a man taps me on the shoulder.
he wants to ask what’s become of the
others that came before you
and I want to get to the
bottom of it.

“the sun”

0

I’m the fairest thing that ever happened to you. I know because I once saw the whole thing.  You could say I asked for it.

 “God,” I began.

 I was centered in sigil. My spine was straight, although I usually slouch. I usually admonish myself for taking up too much space on my couch; even alone, even in privacy, I shrink. This evening was different. I felt propped by something and sitting up, breathing softly, not nervous and with intention. The gasping I am used to transmuted into long, deep inhales; long, thrumming exhales. That night even the callous on my palm where I lay the plastic straw I can’t let go of, can’t stop twiddling as I walk around the city, felt soft.  It felt healed and my hands smelled like cherry blossom from the lotion I rubbed on my knees as I took care of myself, my needs, for once. Once a day, I drink water and rest. Once a day, I pause to smell a honeysuckle. Once in a while, I cease compulsion to drop the straw, pet a dog, move on.

I was melting; suffused with the moonstone resting on my lap, becoming waxing crescent. I was becoming spring. Dust around me tickled my shoulders to remind me: We are here to help you breathe. I immediately became breath. The room rocked like a cradle and I was swathed in her gentle nightlight. I was enveloped. Call the dust what you want, the noise what you want: dirt, fantasy, demons, guides, saints, Lilith and her coven (I light candles to all kinds), they were there that night using my forearms, using my hands, using my throat to sing. My diaphragm rose and fell with ease. God. I asked for breath. Breathe. I became breath. I became nestled in large silk strands.

 “God,” I waited and then started again.

 I let the fire in my chest build with each name I said until I could feel the slow burning rise to full flame. I waited until I could feel the full pounding of the floor dropping out, until I was hovering in air, until I was on the cloud. It’s the pyre I’ve been waiting for: the charred ribs, the suckled breasts, the ghosts that waft out of the ropes. I waited until I knew who to ask for; until I heard someone say it.

 “God,” I started again, and let it be known I was not in fear, I was not shaking, I was not anxious. “Whose answered prayer am I?”

 There is no trepidation. You only enter with one affirmation. You only enter with perfect love and perfect trust or you do not enter us. I waited.

0

your house was yellow.

my house was blue and
a ten by ten box;
a cage and me trapped,
torn between watching them
pack up their stuff
from their own pact to self
and me, dripping virile,
pushing them out.
we needed a spark,
I pounced and

shortly after,
 the railing tumbled on my
sprinting ankles,
the basement rattled and the
floorboards dropped
filling the place with the kind of emptiness
that is so dense
 it smothers.
smoke smells a lot like
 ticking minutes
if we scented time the way we
spray each other.
I hear a bark.
hope the turtle remembers how to
duck and cover.
the cat’s sure got it.

remember me as a black-winged fury
hovering over your bed at night because
there will be nothing left by dawn
except some burning blue
cedar wood and a cheap comb
that found its way buried in the dirt.
the photo albums gone,
dusty cookbooks charred,
vanished remote controls stay hidden
and the asbestos and fiberglass ceilings
imploded despite our fear that was the
thing that would kill us.
I am left with a cancer
that gnaws through the joints
like packs of rats chewing through cables
to take the attic back.
and I need this.

I really miss your hands on me
and the convivial cluster of caterpillars
that swallowed the bark
the day in the orchard
when you held me in sullen incubation
before the devastation of the forest,
before I made way for us,
the start,
the parting and somewhere
an empty crib stays unfurnished.
someone starts an engine.
the varnish is melting and so am I.
      God gave you a chance and
        an unfinished smile.
a smoke alarm malfunctions
mocking your reluctance
to just grin and bare it,
to just open up your arms
and catch me when I jump;
             but first here comes the fish tank
catch me with all the fit I threw.
we all look like burnt books
blowing in the breeze
and now, I too,
am wafting with the exhumed memories.
before my legs even hit the dew,
you watch me dwindle to a million floating pieces
in the cradle of tar black trees.

you see the contract ascertained a certain
ephemeral appeal
and I’m too thirsty to complain
about anything but the heat in here.
hold your breath and wait
for some other current to take me.
        baby

there are no exits.

“chrysalis”

0

nice figure.

sharp glances,
obsessed with her wrinkles in
passing window.
thirty three years old and can’t seem to
thwart her own self persecution,

said she liked ass play
and pegging and
doing things in pieces.

“how guys save me in their phone”

0

one day I had a dream
you bit the head off of a blue jay
 and spit it back into her nest.
when I asked why you said:
To prove you will never leave me.

here I  am,
on command about to run
across the canyon and I
laugh real loud in my
skin tight
dress:
the one cut real low in the back
in the shape
of an obtuse
triangle;
jarring contrast to my
scared-straight spine
but I still
slouch.
I twist the straw into crooked pieces
and tell myself things:
make sure they know
you are having
a real good time,
show your teeth,
hearty laugh
with belly and mouth and your
lips are stretched to the limits like your
social apathy.
show your full moon eyes
and hide.
hold your tonic like a wand;
fall asleep
inside of yourself
in the middle of
everything and wait for
the night to break.

later, he will show
you photographs
to prove you were
there.
if you are lucky,
he notices the story
dripping from your
eyes, the door
opening, the splash
of scarlet on your tights
as you replace each page,
as you become the
walking lake flooding
the wake that held
you, and he becomes
the witness that love
is a quivering knife.

“tributaries”

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I am decked head to
toe in rosary and sapphire
ashes, free of any
previous attachment;
hidden by feathers,

shielded by sigils,
the bark and the strand;
the one line of web
 that catches the moonlight so you
know what trap you are walking
into as you land.

I am striped like a tiger
with the arteries of
the other in
another insurrection and
I am bathed in night
so you only see me
when I drape myself
in stars, become
a roving constellation.
together we
are better like
 a pack:

taut-backed:
 hold our curves
like jello axes,
my mouth is sometimes
sandstorm
then suddenly
wet.
little storm and waves, a
flood     we are bright eyes and
hearts like meandering cannons,
step soft and low like lions
or snakes in the grass.
our chipped nails hold prayer, tongues,
the clipped wings of our grandmothers.
we are here.
we are clawing at your porch
and oiling the glass in silence
to wind up your banister
without notice   teeth out,

sliding under sheets,

look

 
        i’ve got an apple for you to bite.
breath like gentle reminders from God
               now, now, learn to be amenable
feel the uneven pulse that vengeance wore;
the way I lay and devour your
sword; the way I become naked
and big and magnetic like Jupiter:
suck it in and
throw it back out at you;
mangled, a new form you can’t
manage anymore.
pausing so you understand the difference in
revival and survived
as you lean into every
sharp point I can provide.

glint from the knife reveals
an untamed eyelash:
unpainted and short and straight
with might.
we are partially cloaked but baring
 light smiles,
wayward breasts you can’t touch,
wild right,
a heat between our thighs that you can’t
 hunt, and it’s close enough to

smell,
to taste,
to lick our days to waste.
we are wearing the masks of
unlectured howls,
thorns plucked from our ribs,
a blood crusted march,
a cold and ancient
 vendetta.
we are arrows:
lit and pointed.

we, my sons,
 are coming to get
you.


“the matriarch” or “the other us”

 

 

0

I am protected.

I am wet and giant
and shaking from the
waves.
I am the midnight ocean
 birthed from the absent sun
taken over by the
 full moon’s rage.
I am an alarm.
A storm brims the coast
and you start writing down
anything you remember
about me.
I am undulating in great
 tidal gasps; a siren
sights set on horizon,
humming low, humming
softly and
          come in closer
splayed across the break.

Your arid soul is thirsty for the
new continent I’ve become
but your obtrusive leaps
 are doused in hex
before they ever reach me.
You are responsible for
some of this and
I am responsible for
that.
My bed is soaked
and I am angry.
Black in vengeance cloaks
in white to walk the streets
the way furtive angels might.
You send me butterflies
at night
to assuage me.
I return the offer:

I dress in wings,
suck the nectar from the
dusk’s flowers,
learn her tales,
twist into my final form:
a long nightmare,
black hairy legs and
two tagmata,
one long dry choke
at the stroke of
3:33 every
morning onward.
You spend the year immured
in poetry and pieces
of half finished themes
obsessing over everything
you turn to see.
Over everything you thought you
saw out of your
unrelenting periphery,
        how many twins do I own?
thought you
dreamed and wrote
down, unwind,
which moon did I come out of
and how many wolves
did I set free last night?
I become immune.

You become the
stranded calf in
my forest while
I spend the year
immersed in baths of
black obsidian and
forgetting what it
ever meant to
me.

 

“reversing” or “us”

0

sparkling explosion of
cellophane and champagne nails
tickle birthmarks down a
back.
fallen glitter eyeshadow:
roving crescent moons
dangling off a throat
from everywhere a lip hit
and pieces of gold dust
rolled off my nose.

bare mattress,
a girl licking a cheek and a
bare tear
sort of near.
hearts like lava
fill the blue gray cracks.
ghost stories and berries in bed,
mouth filled with laughs.
I’m in an afghan
sinking my teeth into a shoulder,
straddled with bare feet.
and what else?

I’m somewhere else.

11.

0

God gave you an
unfinished smile
to pay for
and you are
lucky God makes
pacts with
predators.

I am what?

I said your
mouth is dripping blood
again and you lied
about what you
are.


“forms”

0

Sometime late January
you spent the night with a woman
watching the moon grow.
                   come take me in my own abattoir
I unrolled my tongue
ready for a messy kiss and out spilled
someone else’s lung.

I had created a dalliant and forbearing
stockyard in my bed to occupy us.
                  I’m red-hot and full of other people
You were outside in a corduroy jacket
counting her freckles as stars
as I  was slicing the outside of someone’s arm
to crawl inside for warmth;
wait for us to duel it out
 in the morning.
I was biting the inside of my cheek
 to taste victory
 and she was on top of you,
crowning.

I had been waiting to show you
self immolation.
You had been waiting with kerosene
and some promises to hold
 my pretty ashes
hostage.

“fidelity”

0

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