of course i would never kill
a child, I continued with her,
but the question was
how do we make something like
the death penalty less of
a moral argument?
and the only way to take morality
out of law is to write clauses that
outline exactly what will happen
and under what circumstances and
then without reneging, go and
enforce it every single time.
these are authoritarian things.
but I didn’t agree with any of it
so I felt like battling me
was moot but I enjoyed the spectacle
and had, for no reason, invited
a male friend to join me in
class that day.
I too was interested in
motive but we cannot prove
intent truly, without
absolute confession
and even then, we may
doubt what we hear.
my interest was
social experimentation.
it’s why I went to college.
I wanted to be educated on the ways
to manipulate small crowds
and because of my naivete,
I did not realize at first
that my interest in slightly
sociopathic
behavior was a reflection
and that I find,
truthfully, serial killers
to be undeniably weak
in their compulsion.
they are artless megalomaniacs.
you could just as easily garden
with the same amount of torrid wonder.
learn to grow nightshade and then
plant it all over town
in places where people smell
flowers and pick weeds for each
other.
but these are men and
they have to be known.
I’ve always had to cross my
legs.
Mrs. Shepherd said you
cannot bet on things that talk,
Sarah, when I interjected to
share my observation that
the same formulas can be applied to people
when presenting with the same patterns over time.
they would be seen as a fixed event
because they have not wavered in
reliability yet.
another time I stated calmly to
my ethics class that the best way to enforce
a law to ensure it gets a message across
is to just begin enforcing it.
if you believe in the death penalty
the best way to slice it
is to make a black and a white clause;
no matter what the circumstances,
calculated homicide will put you
in the electric chair and then they
wouldn’t quibble so much with semantics.
the first girl to shoot her hand up
was the most riled by my
callous eyebrow lift and when
she presented to me a law and order episode
where the murderer was a child,
I said kill the child.
“events #1”
then I see your friend three times.
this is where formulas come in
handy and I am grateful:
formula for probability of
A and B.
I am thankful for my AP statistics course in
the 12th grade.
to begin to find the probability
of two events (events being actions or interactions,
not literally events but )
co-occuring you begin to
first choose the right formula,
then map it.
I loved this class. I aced this
class having been removed from all other
advanced math classes. there was nothing
confusing about finding probable
cause.
and when she brought out the dice
to teach us statistics, it kind
of coalesced: luck is when
things occur against all
odds.
this year i decide i am a descendant of harry houdini
realizing my audience
is mostly male,
a little scared to play
myself; the villain
but also literally can’t go
one more step forward pretending
I did not orchestrate an
entire clandestine destiny.
I don’t know, sarah,
you’ve been wrong before.
but once i start writing names,
they feel the difference in truth
and a lie; I feel them
sort of pulsate, getting ready
to confront this absurd idea
that you are using actual events
from their life as a barometer
for some sort of seething,
sidewinding violence
in which former victim
grows into a constant
predation and all
senses.
also me being unable to lie.
one by one,
precious line,
them being hung
like witches and
all labeled the same
way.
“xxx”
or
“the black book”
in Colorado,
his name was Alex.
he was very young and
wide eyed and used to doodle
through meetings. one time,
he kept his eyes closed as everyone
went around in a circle and shared.
but when it was my turn, he popped
his eyes open and stared at me.
I spent one whole year fantasizing
about him, not lured by his youth
but the way he was clearly taken
by me and how he didn’t just
act strange, but possessed it.
they all think I am writing about
them. I am writing about a cloud
I passed once.
cry cry cry and then
just start fucking laughing.
when you came home
with the giant brass
industrial art piece that had no
smooth edges to hang on the wall
at the top of the stairs,
that I in fact was afraid would cut me,
I knew you were a libertarian
but I had the grace to not even
ask how much it cost.
I had bought us an entire chocolate
cake using food stamps
so I cannot judge and I
have learned
life is meaningless.
the third is ennui.
you become overcome
with a sudden fatigue.
almost as if you are floating
but not as happy or light
as that. like you’re being
controlled by a beam.
it’s more terrifying the
grip this new surrender has.
your arched back,
your upward gaze,
some kind of nothing
and the laughter is so
deep and directed
at you.
“ennui”
I got stalked by a woman once for writing about a man so ive been hesitant to write these things but it’s the thing ive been holding back. you cannot write and lie at the same time. and you cannot hide your past.
I learned to drift
young and
listened to my Papa’s
stories, my aunt’s stories,
the whole family telling stories
and I learned to joke
too. it’s about knowing
what people respond to
but also a dauntlessness.
everyone in my family
laughed big and loud,
smoking cigarettes sitting around
the picnic table,
a pretty red wood covered
with some tawdry pear covered
yellow and cream plastic table cloth
and beer cans everywhere.
the empty ones there for butts.
and bottles of Coke in giant
two liters their tan slender fingers
and the confidence of lighting up.
I perfected the flick of an ash
off the end of a burning cigarette
long before I held one.
it’s ninety percent the way
your neck looks when you’re listening
and ten percent what you say
when you finally move to
enter the game.
I learned to grift too.
there were many ways.
more about fun then
just how to sneak out
at night to grab cigarettes
from the bowling alley cigarette
machine; a proposterous
thing but came in and handy.
I would sometimes crawl out of
my bedroom window,
my bed right beneath it and
able to slide the screen right open,
it was easier then the back door.
I had to tiptoe.
we had thin walls.
I slept with my door shut,
pitch black and covered with
pillows scared of my closet.
sometimes we took beer from my friend’s
parents cooler,
or candy pocketed from 7-11
or lip gloss from Eckerd’s
or something from a man’s house,
anything really.
I liked to take photographs of them
and items of clothing to smell
before they leave me.
sometimes I would stare at the pictures
he left out on his dresser
suddenly. not sure if they were planted
or just forgotten as he
offered me a shot of tequila on
his barracks colored carpet;
that cream every sailor had.
a picture of him and his wife
on the rocks on the coast
of San Diego,
a card she left him,
something in spanish.
I would listen to the CDs he played
on repeat to get over her leaving
more holding the sting and the breaking
way it felt forced to be fucked
to music like that
where are you running to now?
I’m at Lehigh and 2nd
giving a man directions
to the 15 stop and he is asking
me where I am going.
I have no job or friends,.
but tons of antique wood
furniture and I kind of nod
to myself without answering him,
just keeping that buoyancy of
acquiring objects is half the battle.
the other half is unearthing.
“walls #1”
quickly I learned
what you could not publicly
talk about as a woman.
you were not allowed to talk
about your men
but I did throw them in the
quiet ocean,
and dragged them.
“squall”
daturamoon.com 