the kind that takes whole
neighborhoods
hostage and
leaves the dismayed
picking through the remains
to find their charred family albums
while their babies are off
staring at ash clouds
that block the sun
holding an empty leash
and at such a
young age
finally understanding
accidents, permanence,
their environment’s
severity and no exits.
you always remind them
there are no exits.
“grief”
last words
hang in the air
like a drunk ellipsis
that doesn’t know how to
let go.
you’re famished: learn to
feed yourself first
eat the savage sadness
you drive with;
your third overdrawn
valediction between you and someone
you never really knew.
swallow your pride,
swallow your words,
eat his fucking heart out.
watch it all nest,
watch it nuzzle in your silk,
flutter in your lining,
incubate and bake
into a thousand tiny worms
squeezing from the casing,
a thousand black balloon
butterflies
are bursting from your lips
and gliding through ice
gusts of wind.
watch them hover,
watch them expand, watch them
land on the cheeks
of all the boys you kissed
hello.
watch them
*pop*
into a thousand
uninvited phrases.
no
run down and cake their
faces like mud tears,
turn to stone,
stay pressed there.
watch them carefully
from your handmade stage.
you can feel the prickle,
their hair stand on end
from here.
watch your men,
girl.
they are starting to talk,
shiver,
watch you with
a closing distance .
“a thousand salutations”
you’ve been coming home
mint chapstick and
tobacco pieces stuck to your lips from
those poorly rolled cigarettes.
extra bus fare.
bottom shelf whiskey and
natural laughter
spilling from your breath.
I keep finding
little post-it notes
shoved into your pockets
pasted with someone else’s playlists;
some other guy’s suggestions
on how to lift your spirits
when the depression gnaws your
spindles
like a cancer and
you’re too tired to
undress yourself.
I’m still here
following you under the covers,
taking keys from your hand,
leaving fresh water on the
nightstand.
gnawing your earlobes
with some panic and
whispering at your hair
you’re manic, dear
pinning you down with some
well timed stanzas.
“the boyfriend”
you seem like you have a developed a
patient practice
memorizing our delicate contours;
first your fingers,
then your eyes,
trace gummy worm spines taste it
women’s arched backs
soft wet flesh,
mouthful of yes
near the bed frame
as they fall into you,
as they open knees
as they open attachment,
as they open
gash and you
stiffen you watch
with now closed lesions
using us like drinking fountains
and we bleed irresponsibly
but remember
some mouth full of
indifference,
an old word or two
you threw like a heavy blanket ,
a band-aid
no
at their scapula and
they straighten back.
they stay in bed as you
are (finished) a leashed laceration,
tied to some place we can’t guess
with sleeves and scripts and
ambivalent attachment, chin tilted
towards street, and
a swallow that was almost a word but
you’re on one bad laconic streak
so you just sniff the air and
don’t offer them water.
they are holding space
on the floor,
Indian style,
in case you need warmth.
you have a coat so you
politely decline,
hand them their hat,
put on your shirt,
call them a ride.
bare feet, gather their socks,
tilted backs to check for rogue earrings,
grab the scarf from the doorknob
near the door frame,
remembering the gentle no
moving backs,
wrapped in sweaters, pea coat shields
as they walk
quickly, quietly
(forgive the boot heel)
a clacking no
away from you
that isn’t felt
yet.
years have gone by and
what lovely new spines:
unbending,
unending bone,
untended memories of
cool depredation,
once spread like legs
now inflexible.
once swaying effortlessly
like reeds in your lake,
now planted firmly in the dry
not yet.
spines that are walking,
sauntering,
coming back for an earring they forgot.
machete sacrums.
nerves like fighters
marinating in indignity,
blood lust,
no.
so many years have gone
by and these spines are
razor sharp from your
diamond stone tongue,
growing and
ready to write
you.
“backbones”
for some of us,
freedom was a legend;
a cage of smudged windows
and insatiable longing,
a crippled twirl pace
around the apartment
with a wand in hand,
repetitive crescendo in head
or the sudden broken glass
on the porch
the
knot of fervent caterpillars
sliding through my guts and
prematurely spilling out onto the floor,
dissolving into pools of blood
like little girls ripped in pieces
in the midst of a tornado’s whirl
when they should have hid in the cellar,
waited patiently,
incubated like their wild brothers
anchoring in the moisture of a soft,
hemorrhaging sarcophagus
before they soar;
destroy their cotton packages
and hatch into thin air.
when the day is finally warm
and facing them, they
tear through the tether
unbridled in
unimpeded exodus
to transform into grand ideas
and take off without interruption
like the little girl’s
scorn; now grown,
an envoy of acrimony
and the blue-black tones of
home.
and I pause here to ask myself
before I commit to the
flight,:
what does metamorphosis
feel like? my skin
tearing at the thread of
each inside, each wound
and stretching wide
for me to see, wide
enough to case the sky
and black inside turned
outside; now
black each wing of
bone and
vine.
5.
you gave me a bouquet of
weeds once as I was drinking
my third cup of coffee.
you had picked them from
our backyard when I wasn’t
looking.
you were smiling with teeth;
big, and I loved
you.
following that the day was not as
pristine or worthy of
photographic memory,
but I don’t
always choose what stays,
what goes, what lingers
in between the building of
new thoughts, the removal
of the old, the magic it
all makes.
I had changed into a sundress
and walked down the stairs
slowly because I had bent over
in a way that tore something
inside of me:
a nerve or muscle.
I mustered up enough breath
to say it feels like I pinched a nerve
and am having trouble breathing.
what should I do?
you had to be somewhere
soon, I knew.
you looked up the staircase
on your way out
the front door and
simply said: I don’t believe you.
someone else drove me to
the doctor and that doctor
confirmed I strained my back,
prescribed me Flexeril
for the pain and wrote me
a note explaining to my internship
why I wouldn’t be in that day.
I laid in bed, waiting for the
drugs to subside.
you came home
and attempted to justify
why you always felt
deceived by me.
I lay numb,
relieved
of feeling anything as you recited
everything I’d ever done
that bothered you.
you weren’t sorry,
it’s Thursday, and I feel
nothing for you
now.
“Thursday”
I was giving her a shower.
I’m there for two hours to help with
personal care:
make sure she brushes her teeth,
settles down with a word search,
remind her it’s Tuesday.
after towel drying her so they could put on the
hemorrhoid cream,
I handed her a comb
and began rubbing lotion over her legs;
smooth like a child’s
the veins were still tucked behind flesh:
invisible with a firm,
earned elasticity.
you must have taken good care of yourself.
I enjoyed rubbing them.
years of tall glasses of water
running through those hidden blue streams
electrifying her cells,
tightening the gaps that so many of us
have she chose
crackers with avocado instead of Nutella,
early retirement on fluffy pillows,
watching the dawn cut the sky,
flossing,
deadlines and
filing nails.
she was just so full of tranquility,
days worth spending,
assets,
responsible parables,
a mother who taught her how to bake bread ,
crack eggs and iron hems.
she contemplated and said:
I like your dark eyes.
pacing the harbor with a flask
and a plan to really “do it this time,”
a hoard of sycophantic worker bees
who show me what their insides look like,
sleepy evenings that end in the bottom of
everyone, mislaid plays written in
spilled finger paint,
sprinkles of tobacco on the seat,
thirsty kidneys,
a camouflaged abuse that taught me how to
cower at words, a man’s
love and
bedroom hair that screams,
cries that freeze beneath my cheeks
before they learn to creak
turn to moans
melt on tongues
when touched in heat.
my eyelashes hurt.
my wrists feel like stone.
my spine is crooked like
the broken flute they cracked
out of temper when I wouldn’t
play the right way but
my legs are tall, ancient
and rough like
sequoias; uprooting and
walking forward.
it’s day and I’m awake
but my head is full
of horror.
I face her,
southern and
polite and
touch her shoulder
thank you.
still so full of
nights.
“eyes”
all day long
I vacillate between intention
and immediate withdrawal;
between discussion of habits,
intentions, expectations
and
smashing my fist into a
mirror to feel the way
it might when I finally
say something again.
7.
will you still lick my wounds
if I taste like someone else’s mother?
“the cradle”
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