you want to ask about inspiration
without asking what’s become of
the ones before you
and I want to get to the bottom
of it.
imagine me
walking
in perfect rhythm
with the moon:
industrial moods unsteady like
my block; a concrete cell lined with
glock teeth,
warehouses lined with
broken windows thirsting like plants
for a peek of the sun
and I’m bouncing with the
tremors of the train I barely caught
while I pause to fix my brow, bun
lips and the
other ones;
mud on my boots,
snow on my tongue,
those white whispers
like tiny quivers of attrition
eating me alive.
slurp the finality of requited love.
my voracious stomach is
prowling to the vibration of
your brawn, breaking chest
opening in some quiet place
to let me,
your hungry little ghost,
back in and then
right back out.
the lines of my veins
are blue-red and
flushed
with other people’s
last thoughts,
last heads on pillows,
shared stories, tea, beds,
and the repeated
click
of a door unabashedly
slamming shut
in my face instead
of an invitation.
my spasmodic heart
hurriedly smooths
the creases in her butcher skirt.
you want to know and I can’t
anymore:
the fastest way to get
between two points
is a straight lie but
forgive me and try to
imagine me alive,
walking in perfect rhythm
to the cracks I made
in us searching for
some light.
9.
(Boulder, Colorado, Fall 2013)
where I am laying currently as this
is happening
my chest is a bright, blue door
standing slightly ajar.
I felt like I was floating:
not on a lake or an ocean,
or a stream or my beloved mountain creek but
just lying on top of a big puddle of water in the air
that existed for no explicable reason, much like
all the grief that took me by the tendrils
and dipped me
in the center of the canyon-deep flood that took place
in the core of a six year old girl
who grew up to be giant and made of tinted glass
and a grand total of
no one.
I looked up to see a white flower billowing
above and for once in my life,
I appreciated it’s grace and splendor choosing
to pass by it without disturbance.
I wanted to leave it right where it was;
an illusion of life and growth and flying flora in the sky.
when she touched my heart, I felt a green electrical charge
shoot through my spine
and then,
I became a swaddled baby rocking
on a river of God.
it was the vision that mattered and
some parts I had forgotten, I don’t
write everything down:
I was standing under the moon near a lake and some trees
and miles and miles of stars–he and I both.
suddenly a large white bird fell from the sky, swooped fast to stand and
then lay like it’s prey, floundering on solid sand
just praying to die.
I looked at life through those bird’s eyes
and saw a family before me:
a husband, a woman and child: all me and mine.
I felt myself age; withering skin that turned into tiny wells
of wisdom cut deep in my cheeks,
brows and crown of gray storms, and lips that
kissed only dusty picture frames and hard candy,
and saw myself mourn my own passing.
I was clothed in all white with lilies in my hair
before I sank to the bottom of a lake.
everything was blue.
everything was silent.
everything was moving away from me.
I used to be a sound;
a loud wailing of a door
slamming shut with every one of
my yelps
until I fell back into myself,
until I remembered this vision
and it’s bright, blue current of
wild and divine help:
the bird suddenly came
back to life and flew away
and out came dozens of
blue birds.
“reiki” or “death reversed”
and
“The Woman Who Saw Her Own Death”
Part 1:
there you are.
Saturdays and the 1 pm alarm clock
on 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:
tights and boots and an expansive
blankness that still drives your body around
after work to get soy milk,
make polenta for lunch,
take out the compost,
take out the trash,
finish something you once started
when it was
skirts and cherry blossoms,
some organic laughter and a patient optimism
that seems unvisited but should be
worked out by now.
sometimes it is actually raining.
it is harder than that too:
cold and cramps and no tissues
or pads and an anniversary coming
that stings
and does not let go.
and you do hear from them
but with expectations.
you have wrapped yourself tightly
in some binding perseverations
so you constrict yourself,
restrict your errands, and bleed openly
on the carpet.
and sure, there is hunger,
but it’s quick and
you succeed in a relatively
docile surrender.
so what is there outside?
sometimes it is a blizzard.
then it’s flowers and unexpected showers
but it is day longer, sun higher,
you are not mired in the date of departure
anymore, and you forgive the monsoons.
your sensualizing emotions present themselves:
the gloss and black tips,
hips in sheer nylon,
a gentle sway.
sometimes it is unseasonably warm
and you have to hold your cardigan in your hand
but you have managed a smile
and some sense of buoyancy
and dragged someone along
with the sleeves of
your unworn sweater.
you get lucky:
they want to take the
long way and you have a tendency to
suddenly rush things.
you are both broken
doe and the trap laid
for their arrival.
“ambush” or “8th house”
8.
i’m draped in wide fluorescent lighting,
slightly mollifying.
I come to myself
and collapse
on top of the thing playing
footstool
before he stretches out his back like a
bored house cat
and licks the cream from an inner thigh.
my unpolished toes curl
in revulsion.
chairs squeak;
someone coughs and adjusts the lights,
I blot my mouth and cheeks with an
embroidered handkerchief that’s initials
aren’t mine.
find my heels.
pull my blouse over my tender chest,
try not to look in any mirrors
on the way out
and notice the exit sign
shimmering,
more red
than usual.
“how we meet”
I should walk out
big as Venus,
arms uncrossed,
if I was ever honest.
my arms are wrapped
in a purple peacoat and
my hair is curled with an iron to
add ebullience to errands.
suddenly gather every strand with
self importance in
tiny felt bundles.
that week I had even painted my nails a
bright color; a conversation starter,
but I’m
truly as vapid as possible.
remain as sunny as possible.
insipid and careful,
rip it all out later
privately
as if beauty even matters
when I’m on the floor in tangles
trying to untangle
words I can’t commit to;
making the motions of crying stopping
to cough politely
to no one in the room.
I listen to AM radio today.
grasp the magnitude of crooners’ legacies,
of death reverberating against each window,
understand how most lives are wasted shirking
the embarrassment of a simple
I love you
when we could have said nothing,
just hugged more or looked at
each other. .
but I put distance between myself
and those I run to.
i’ve been dying drying to drown
myself again
in three consecutive hours of
smuggled moonshine and
a quick spin around the block,
no seatbelt,
knees up and the airbag on
climbing that ladder to the sun,
project my inner warmth all over pedestrians
in middling dust
and they’ll say
oo I feel like I was gently touched.
or locked in a necklace that bruises my clavicle when
I’m not careful
and I suddenly have to
run from it all.
I want to be fetal in silver and sapphire
grabbing his charred pinky to hold on,
hugging his hard heart and I still can’t call home
with any urgency and there are
people always seeking me.
storm clouds form on the side-view,
settle and condense.
the glass is dotted with a thousand tiny reflections
of survivor’s guilt
anthropomorphized.
this decade feels like elastic chaos,
one overwrought vignette that stretches
continentally and I can’t
get a break and the light rain
from a gray cloud
can’t flood this whole thing.
did God intend to rip this from my insides
this way? I hurdle myself
headfirst into a mirror
in an effort to memorialize
fresh heart all over the closest floor
without a towel or a
polite giggle
or a posed frown.
no monologue or saccharine coat
or any real motive
except it was true:
i wanted teeth too.
lit a cigarette and choked.
take another drag,
i’m composed.
watch the smoke cut designs into the ceiling.
you liked this don’t forget the feeling
of the first inhale;
the first time you rolled the stick
between your fingers
your thumb smelled like
the kitchen window.
the first time you saw your brother
smoke behind the garage
and he sneered;
you had spray painted your name into it first.
before you learned to paint the worms,
he taught you how to shake the can.
he taught you how to tag the shed.
he taught you how to lie to dad
about the missing colors.
he taught you how to
curl up into a ball and drift
back into your insides
whenever you hear the rattle
like baby’s teeth
being tossed left to right
inside the
bottle.
“anniversary”
keys,
a shuffle,
my half smile directed at a
windowsill and a forced
dulcet pause to
wrap a throw around bare shoulders,
strapless bra i’m mussed enough
to form new creases,
stretch my tousled jaw
into a long yawn.
I can see your long trail of spit
glisten lightly like snow,
still,
from elbow to the scar
above my wrist when I was
really hitting the wine.
I wipe it on the pillowcase.
my lips are sand dry,
knuckles crack a bit when they reach and
my toes are curled for a different reason
this time, I am emptied.
your shadow’s growing larger:
an elongated feeling that stretched and stretched
and stopped right before
it got to mine,
bit back,
ran.
toss a look over brawn shoulder.
i’m no feast, you know,
but you wait like March hunger
for ful lspring, so close
yet still light blizzard,
still heavy rain.
you want that
hot spot to hit the ground
but snow lingers you want
that drizzle then moist
and green, some sunflowers,
a tomato plant and bees
offer their honey from the bottoms of their
black bellies and you take all you can get.
sniff a tulip,
feast on cool breezes of
me
when I’ll have it.
I cough or sneeze
and no make no motion to ever
be haunted;
to ever be eaten,
to ever grow something from the arm
you licked that used to hold little butter knives
threateningly
towards him, towards me,
us hold scissors and
think about it,
hold shot glasses to not;
where I used to force myself to hug my brother
at Christmas
and nights, nowadays
any holiday,
I etch his name everywhere it fits;
where you watched the sun
shadowplay with branches on my olive skin
and you mistook them for
fingers to grab,
hold,
swallow;
where I stretched myself,
a bored tiger and lifted my once
impaled bones, my once river bones,
(wet for it every time)
up, held my hand up,
nails long and dry,
held your gaze,
waved without change in
expression and
your back is to the door.
i’m sitting up in a fetal position.
my profile is reflected in the
dusty whites of your eyes.
I have developed a new shade:
smudged green eyeliner and
the rest some kind of
lovely barren.
“beds”
the day I arrived in the hotel
in the financial district
to meet a Russian photographer
who promised me a night in an expensive
suite and a binding contract
that has been violated over time
without my awareness,
my nails were painted
blue to match my
bruised knees.
I thought that was
cute.
“how I made rent”
slugs salted on the patio,
cicada shells clinging to the moldering
legs of my childhood picnic bench,
hundreds of unclaimed Easter eggs
rotting under rusty swing sets,
a mouse writhing on a glue trap
that was just SHOVED
in a garbage bag
and me
just staring–
just
freshly out of love.
6.
my wings tip towards
the sun and I’m triumphant
in my emptiness,
my patient nihilism I
chew when the void becomes
the only measurable thing
in my life I don’t
notice the oncoming car.
grasshopper never notices
the magnifying glass
or pesticide gun.
dog with the mange and glaucoma
blithely to cage.
drunk blindly to rage
then car
then grave.
snail to salt,
cricket to web,
temple to gun
and you say
what I never notice is
us.
“love”
I wore black every day
just in case.
the train was fifteen minutes
late and I was
one month
and counting.
“the accident”
daturamoon.com 