Category: poetry

you’re distracting,
I’ve heard before.
used to get moved all the
time in elementary school,
away from my friends only
to make more friends
and get the class chattering.
me, I’m just a little
hummingbird.

little innocuous
sending
you some mailed cryptograms
asking you if you like
peaches or nectarines
better. I’m becoming juice.
how will I know
which citrus bed to
 plunder, slather
myself in pulp you
can just lick right off?

 

me? I’ll go you
know, I’m wind,
so just take it.
just tell me what to
line my neck in.
you know it takes
you three years and I
show up head to toe
doused in rosemary
anyway,
choker dotted with
every piece of
tourmaline I own.
a tiny cross in my hand
from my nana’s broken
rosary. me?
I’m wind, I’ll
go.

kiss your cheek and
gesture to my attire,
wrapped in silver to fight
the dogs of moon,
 whisper got to keep
those ghosts away,
yeah?
me? I don’t mean
a thing,
breeze in hall
just scenting the
tops of your books
like I’m right to own
them. you?

you will know me
by my officious
typeface and choker
tight around the throat
lined in polished,
black stone.

“the letters”

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when we met, I was
inching my way back
to my robust self  having
established myself as a
case manager. having
scraped my savings to
buy an oil leaking car
that almost caught on fire
in the first week of work
back in August.
I then borrowed money
to buy a car that didn’t.
I had paid rent for three months
without much to do.
I was high on repayments,
seeing I could repay,
in fact,  and

adding cookies back into my diet,
unworried about my teeth
for seconds at a time.
the party had vegan brownies and
I made sure to get plenty.
still I  could touch my ribs
and almost wrap my hands
completely around my waist.
a measure of security.
I often squeeze my ribs to
see if I’m still thin.


when we met,
I had freshly chopped
pixie hair and clear skin,
green eyeshadow to make my
brown eyes pop.
limited eyeliner and a shy
way about scooting next to
you, feeling contagious.

when we met, I had a wardrobe
that consisted of colorful
and flowy items,
hand me downs,
and a reticent entrance.
I was seeking incorporeal
thrills via touch and
you were freshly
out of love. 

 

“the rebound”

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it helps me to fall
into haze in these
moments of adaptation
 or just  length,
time that has
to pass and my
adjustment to fluctuations
in my general
circumstance or
mood is dependent
on the haze.
i like fighting, I smile.
I have a few blocks to go
and every man is facing me
and forming a crooked
cock so I just step
 into the haze.

 

I remember this
one day where I met you
to get a Slurpee to
cool off for a while.

your face was most open
 outside
drenched,
you tried to hug
me but I am

closed,

drenched in day old
bourbon sweat,
show up unshowered and
in a deep swallow;

a persisting contrition
coated in plum wine,
whatever else I just said,
Bourbon,
I wave my hands over the glass.
that was last night.

that was last night and it
was pretty bad.


but we sit side by side
like it’s something
non-contagious about me.
well except when you smile,
he said.
but I blush and I couldn’t
stand that so I

focus on my knees
 remembering
 what it felt like
under sheets
and I fell open.
then there’s my brother.

then there’s the new
hard edged smile
on the top of a frosted mug: 

ubiquitous half smirk.

 

“I used to be in love,”
I say out loud
and I’m about one
block from the El
in front of another group
of men with their cocks
crooked and leering.
I close my mouth,
probably drooling,
adjust my strap,
walk forward.
I wake up like that
often and here 

in the middle of Kensington.


“August pt 2.”

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I show up early to
make coffee,
drink coffee,
steal a couple pens
and a few donuts before the
meeting.
I’m here to look
good and watch people.

 

I am covered in
sweat by the time I sit down:
tan and thin from
the obsessive calorie cutting
that formed as a result of
penurious heritage,
bad timing,
mercurial interests.
I’m skinny and all
about it, wearing shirts that show
my sternum leaning hard
against the skin. that means
when I stand in front
of you, you can see the outline
of my bones.

 

I’m skinny cuz I’m hungry.
cuz I have been portioning
crackers. cuz I allow
myself only one piece of
bread a day.  once took a spoonful
of sprinkles in my mouth as a
treat and didn’t eat anything
else for hours.
I’m letting my clavicle
show, my shoulders bony
and in front of everyone,
glistening like olive marble.
hard.
I have two tokens in my pocket;
one to get home and
one to roam.
I cross my legs in front
of a blond haired boy,
take a sip of my seventh
cup of coffee,
someone begins

 

you are only
sick as your secrets.

I am 120 pounds and waning,
olive marble.

 

“confession #”

 

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I am surrounded by men
who are wolfish in detonation
but repenting for a lifetime
of substance abuse
so we nod when they say
things that are aptly
reflected instances in which
they felt a guilt greater
than themselves.
they usually begin with things
 like
I took advantage of her
and I cross my legs.

I am wearing brown tights, brown
heeled boots and a cream turtleneck
sweater dress.  my hair is
short, uncombed and strange
and I am mostly plain.
I wear light blush, mascara and
chapstick but I don’t spend all
day about it.
it is important as a woman
to catalogue what you were wearing
and how you generally look.
also I had gained some weight
first, before I  discovered that
counting beans will gain you
phone bill money.
 when you tell the audience the story
they can gauge reaction better.
were you homely, girl?

I was neither homely nor
exceptional,
merely watching the blue chips
of nail polish flake onto
the floor as I found
my hands to be urgent
suddenly.

“confessions #2”

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the day I arrived in the hotel
in the financial district of New York
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.

spread more, all the
way.

I thought that was
cute. he gave me a fishnet
black onesie I ripped a hole
in but wear on dates
to remember us by.
 and even though
he took advantage of me
and you felt betrayed
by some unshaved labial
part of me,
I made my half of rent
for once.
in the car from the bus
stop on my smile
spread and the bickering
couldn’t dissaude against
the new confidence.
the way money feels
in an envelope.

ok, chill.
fuck, I got rent.

“doors (#4)”

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my paranoia is up
which helps me to
instruct myself better,
instructing them but
what I tell you is inconsequential.
merely I am pressure of depth
and that I believe it so,
having told you first
with conviction, I begin
to frame it.

legs crossed on the carpet,
hands out in imposition.
the wood mantle lit
and rearranged, objects
of sentimentality removed
so any backhand can’t
sweep it.
it’s important that my personal items
are kept away from the circle,
and maybe once I didn’t believe
but falling victim to your
own enchantment, you begin
to care about which stones
are set and things like that.
hands out:

first, you will be looking
up to notice
the sky dark but glittering
with stars
so the whole place
around you is lit up
and there are friends nearby. 

I say this directly to the
picture jasper draped in the
thread of my necklace,
the glyph of Lilith.
and hopefully,
as in with a little
upward inflection.

1.

0

“what do you do when something loves
you? do you love it back?

I’m volatile.”

I’ve got nothing,
 I show him,
but notes like this;
each one parched out
later, gutted
by time travel,
tornado worship,
something called “the
myth becomes” and
I get nothing done.

 

they don’t believe me
but I amounted to nothing
and I show them
sweeping my hand over
an obscured history
but no real success
I laugh, undaunted
usually and also
breezy. I like smiling.
composition open
pointing to one sentence
I like watching time.

I’m obsessed with unproducing,
or burning a process as you
 watch it unfurl. it’s like
setting the bottom of each trunk
on slow fire and then you
climb to the top of
the pine watching it
engulf you then eviscerate
whatever you were.
I am up by dawn, or close
to it,  thinking this is what
 true love is doing
and I’ve done this before;
proving habit,
and the deep deep
null of feeling
that I really possess
daily, filled with
plotting and idle time,
a rumination of these
invidious encounters.
something always in my hand.
something always tinctured,
distilling and then
wanting you to see it:
my nullness and
overreaction and courting
 that must be
facade or instinct or
vexing but
mold it into something
better than the ice cold
well I am.
palms open in please.
that’s where people fall.
in the snow bank
in the bottom of the frozen
hole trying to help
the little
girl.

I think a lot,
I say softly.
and I like learning
 words.
point to one:

duplicity


“the act of naming things”

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to seek me, meant
pleasure in ineffability,
already a loss for words
and to remain hidden
from some parts of the depth
of me and from the world with
me; I prefer the furtive
curl against another.
the unutterable and silent
worship
drives this chasm
I keep deeper between us
and the others and
you and me
like rifts adrift
like that, the moment
I turn my head.
I like to live,
eat, sleep alone
and move the country
this way; home
 a solitary war
between impulse and
deep, deep reflection
upon impulse
 control.

I’m so sensitive
that if I settle into
think and spread
the cards like a fan,
I’d feel it out
in five seconds
eyes closed.
show me,
she said.
show me one year
show me two years
show me three years.

“King of Cups”

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don’t you ever take away my joys,
my labor organizing or autonomy.
i’m speaking liberally,
predictive and
coded with demands.
I haven’t shaved in days,
developed musk and am
running fingers down my legs
to watch them in the mirror
creep like Daddy Longlegs.
calling ghosts, I say
but like a broken record
and starting with
don’t you take away
my joys, make me
deferential.
I’ll cut my hair clean off,
you’ll see

but there’s only three feet
between us and I’m leaning.
 wait for me
to throw my locks all over
your kitchen table.
rest my skinned skull
on your knee, Venus is
obsessed but well,
I begin to get up fast
 just as happily.
it always starts with a well.

walk by the little girl
in the well.
don’t fall down the well.
watch out for the well.

“the well” (for Pluto in my third house)

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