“They should be careful not to get manipulated by others and to avoid getting hypnotized. It’s the easiest to have them under mind control because they immediately fall into trance when some specific techniques are being used on them.”
but i did it to myself.
moon in 12th
your house was yellow.
my house was blue and
a ten by ten box;
me trapped,
torn between watching them
pack up their stuff
from their own pact to self
and their own inculpability,
fragile glass faces
slighlyt cracked and me,
stunned and dripping a
flattening virulence,
telling them about themselves,
breaking and then
pushing them out.
I really miss your hands on me.
the way you held me in
sullen incubation.
I remember the oldest incantation:
the thrust I was given,
some gleaned anticipatory luck:
God gave you a chance and
an unfinished smile.
we needed a spark.
I grin full tooth to show you
my new porcelain canines,
casually.
now the frame is melting
and so am I
in the cradle of tar black trees,
I fight the urge to bow
and suddenly tiptoe
all around you;
two inches taller than you remember
and my tongue hits your neck
like a quill.
hold your breath,
I say and
baby,
I’m a smokeshow, they say.
wait
for some other current to take me.
bite your skin.
let the tips of my
fingers dig in and
there are no exits.
“chrysalis”
I read a note out loud to myself,
something I had written in an urgency,
a mania and with its own
staggering precocity these little
messages keep me crawling
on the ledge:
everything that is really hard
is going to save your life
and a blackbird landed on the branch
outside my living room
window.
still, their eyes small and
sharp
waiting to dive,
waiting for the buzz of cicadas
to start again.
that reminds me,
I say in my head
i’m emaciating.
I take a sip of water.
starved, looking
without touching and
I want too much
has many meanings.
I read the words aloud again
and pour myself a thimble
of almonds.
it is first that I craft the lie,
not out of revenge but
of general idleness and
devilment, the two things
slated to go hand in hand.
I begin to charm him.
do you believe everything I say?
and then you become the
braced masochist
and I become
the looming hit.
“maelstrom”
the best defense is
to cripple yourself
like victim.
What do I want?
a soft nothing
like my jaw opening on
a pillow, feeling the satin
on my thighs and just
gawking at the glitter on my ceiling,
another thing I will miss.
my leisure:
the growth between getting
and having.
people never change.
I am stuck
somewhere on a trail
walking and wanting not endless
provision, but the
allegory made more
palatable.
my hand is smudged
with ink;
marker actually, I lick my finger tip
and check again,
try to rub it, realize I had
written it in Sharpie
before I stick the tab under my tongue.
this is
a bad habit of mine:
writing to do lists on my wrist
with whatever pen I was holding
so I wouldn’t forget.
I had about seven or eight phone calls to
make, the weaving of
committees plus incidents to report,
plus how much I stepped or made
or consumed and the beep of friends
in need
like the outer rim of a leech,
stuck to hip and
wasting me.
when I saw the melting
phrase, a faded scrawled “pw”
near my thumb
which meant paperwork.
it was already Saturday.
there are three hearts on my left hand
to count the hours between when I took the
dose to now.
everything is obscured by the fractions
of stories, I am looking for my
long lost sister.
I am chanting this
ghost’s name,
Catarina.
the first hour is the hardest.
my stomach sort of lurches
realizing the first wave has already hit.
I need to get out of a place that is wall to
wall carpet and packed with scribble,
pillows, cat hair, journals,
the air of segregation as
I chain myself to my five mirrors
not to be heard from for a whole year.
I grab eight stones and empty
everything else out of my bookbag.
I bring one water bottle.
I begin to walk with no
sound, letting minutes
weave themselves around my body as
I patiently walk down the
three flights trying not
to be appalled by how crooked
the building was
or my sore knees or
the temperature of my men;
a reaching tepid.
I ignored the chipping bathtub
just to make it out the door.
I am remembering when I had bed bugs.
there are things I will miss
I think as my skin leaps.
other things I’m naming:
ways to feel unsettled in transition.
states, or
how to move between things and
home also; the way the birds landed
on the trees outside my stained-
glass window,
the way the pink light cut through
the room and all the green on my block
in summer which meant
blackbirds, blue jays, cardinals,
plus skateboarders.
my short dresses catching
on the points of fences.
I am opening the door to warmth
and it shreds me.
I am wearing sunglasses so no one
can see the way I
let the fog trickle from my eyes.
I spend forty five minutes
sauntering in presence,
pinching the skin of my purlicue.
tedium, ennui
or indifference.
how much space
reverie takes in my brain vs.
results.
What do I want?
a soft nothing
like my jaw opening on
a pillow, feeling the satin
on my thighs and just
gawking at the glitter on my ceiling,
another thing I will miss.
my leisure:
the growth between getting
and having.
people never change.
I am stuck
somewhere on a trail
walking and wanting not endless
provision, but the
allegory made more
palatable.
I am trying to remember
what my dead brother’s laugh
sounds like as I walk out of
the Woodlands.
not before I held my hands out to
the daughter I forever crave,
but I become stolid
dead center in the middle of
that ritual during the fourth
wave; the preparation
to leap into the comedown
with what you have noted.
child,
there is no Catarina.
“the first wave (grief)”
this next section is called;
starting completely over even though it seems so crazy.
my cyclic editing
to no end
but process but actually
you’ll see me leap across stage now.
almost like i was holding it in.
or fleshing it out.
or dreaming about
“Pain is but the sign you misunderstood yourself.”
trying to finish this book of poems. love editing and writing. write new poems daily. trying to finish this book. writing eight to nine stories at once. pausing to understand confluence and genius but also so humble, almost cut down to size by others.
but I’m a daughter
so I’m
stronger than
the dread
they bring me.
daturamoon.com 