Category: Uncategorized

I sit in my summer
suit even though the cold
is here: golden sequined top
and burgundy pants,
loose, wide and a
lavender shawl wrapping
my bare shoulders,
knit wool socks
and I am also surrounded by
furry purring cats
lying on their backs to
paw my finger as I
toss coins on a giant
white quartz that has been stroked
by my friends and
three candles on the floor,
an Orgonite pyramid.
I’m experiencing a mild
tinnitus and a spectrum
of truths so I’m
trying to clear some
space for a violent
upheaval.
I offer you change and
fire.

It’s February first,
I pray to all lords
but I have an affinity
for wind and
glowering airs.
if you asked what I wished for:
nothing, an endless
seeking nothing. 

“Jupiter retrograde in Aquarius” or “Oya & Brigid”

nice smile.

small.
unmonitored fidgeting.
nervous laughter.
seems to force her way through small
talk and presents as
calm but quite fanatical
about some previous existential
crisis that she says
left her marked.
she doesn’t show me her skin and
is currently being touched and
does not like to be touched without
motive.
she is currently being undressed.

she is currently turning from ice
to flood to
to steady stream of
cold, red blood
and asked me to sing this
last part out loud.

“how guys save me in their phone”

I remind you over text
that I enjoy the slam of
doors, interjections,
a hand tight around my forearm
and learning the local
culture before intercepting about
the fine print of the law,
how to skirt
a shadow, what a savior
secret arsenals
I present the trunk machete,
then the painted switch blade.
I mean no harm
simply seething as I walk about
tracing panes, cracks in
paint and you hold me anyway
and in a way that I oblige.

if I’m anything stasis
it’s anxious so
I am blindfolded,
only feeling
the way the soil holds the bones
of those we’ve learned to mourn
in private:
eternally and quiet
with an airy tightness and security
like the rosary barbs the
knuckles when it’s altar
or when it’s storm and I’m all fist.
the way the heavens hold the pious,
the mob holds the riot,
or the torch of arrival and
the way the ocean holds all that
falls below that deep blue
surge of sea.
a gentle immensity
lifts me in my
fits and that’s the way you
see me still.

squall hits and I
drag you under to show
what made me.
you’re surprised by my
physicality and stature,
my apt command
of rooms
so far
only seeing me flit
and not sticking around
to see me pull out
the skewer and demonstrating
all the ways in which a weapon
works.

“furor”

 give it to me, God
can be a risky request.
immured in soft crystal, I felt
on the verge of crossing
borders and mostly unhinged
all winter.
my hair was combed,
my lips were never chapped,
I wore blush every day and
stockings with no
runs.   my tongue  was tied
completely
so no one asked
what I may have needed.

chased an impartial sun
half of December
and spent the other half
shrouded,
soaked in flower essences.      I preferred
helenite draped in tiger’s eye so I’m more
sudden hot eruption
than slow boil
but tonight I try more
benevolent blooms and pausing
and
watch my flimsy, cherry-dipped
ylang-ylang scented fingertips
shake unsteadily
and without any observable provocation,
suddenly stop untying my velvet collar,
suddenly shy away from the mirror,
suddenly lunge and land
on my ball of green obsidian
delicately scraped from the bottom of some
dormant volcano;
still mired in sudden climax,

rinsed and smoothed for my
handling pleasure. 
it was
heart chakra activating
and protective
and my heart;

poor, twisted carnivore
always unsure
can shift her way into a
permanent snarl
with protection.
I stomp into the other room and
shatter the rosy bowl
he let me borrow.
leave it broken, shiny
pink on the kitchen’s peeling
linoleum.
strip my skin of clothes and scent in
a hot steam bath
  i’m idling
and let the pieces
rest.
watch my step.
my place is

cracked and
full of ghosts
all bled:
a carnelian web
that sits atop a post.
you see my long legs
dangling before you see
the rest of me.

“heart”

 give it to me, God
can be a risky request.
immured in soft crystal, I felt

on the verge of crossing
borders and mostly unhinged
all winter.
my hair was combed,
my lips were never chapped,
I wore blush every day and
stockings with no
runs.   my tongue  was tied
completely
so no one asked
what I may have needed.
chased an impartial sun
half of December
and spent the other half
shrouded,
soaked in flower essences.      I preferred
helenite draped in tiger’s eye so I’m more
sudden hot eruption
than slow boil
but tonight I try more
benevolent blooms and pausing
and
watch my flimsy, cherry-dipped
ylang-ylang scented fingertips
shake unsteadily
and without any observable provocation,
suddenly stop untying my velvet collar,
suddenly shy away from the mirror,
suddenly lunge and land
on my ball of green obsidian
delicately scraped from the bottom of some
dormant volcano;
still mired in sudden climax,

rinsed and smoothed for my
handling pleasure. 
it was
heart chakra activating
and protective
and my heart;

poor, twisted carnivore
always unsure
can shift her way into a
permanent snarl
with protection.
I stomp into the other room and
shatter the rosy bowl
he let me borrow.
leave it broken, shiny
pink on the kitchen’s peeling
linoleum.
strip my skin of clothes and scent in
a hot steam bath
  i’m idling
and let the pieces
rest.
watch my step.
my place is

cracked and
full of ghosts
all bled:
a carnelian web
that sits atop a post.
you see my long legs
dangling before you see
the rest of me.

“heart”

what does all of this
mean to you?
she waves her hand
to no one. 

you say it’s important,
ask me to tell it in
“linear order”
but how can I get away with
things telling stories like
that?
I have survived time
and cage and aged
in linear order.
my proof
    (I flex a ripped tricep)
is endless strength,
brimming veins
that have learned how to
vibrate, hum, cluck,
even whistle when your girl
walks by me       I’m
a snake

through her core
and now all you see is a doe
gored in your forest and
I got to eat the whole orchard
I asked for.
nearly choked,
quite frankly worth it
though. are you lost
or just quiet? 
just hiding.
you know I’m dense,

ice cold, flush with
forked tongue ready to puncture
someone,     i’m lush;
maintaining a sense of
dam and containment
even in my most berating
fits of temper or panic,
I manage to remain
frozen these days
like a cracking lake
you say I am
sharp and

bitter.
but underneath my skin,
that blue-lace casing,
a carnise river:
little tributaries to
the turning of the world
in linear delivery.
and you say
full of rage     and I say
ok, my love, just wait:

you and I are from
the same place
and I start to pace
the block once more. 

“rage”

this is fresh.
like the last word
someone said
or you losing to find
old photographs
of you unsure of
yourself in blue hoodie
set to the mountains
at sunset like you couldn’t
imagine not being there.
it was such a casual stance
to permanence you carried.
the last time you look at a place.
the space between states,
the plane ride to your
brother’s coma
this is fresh.

this is the last time you’ve ever
seen or heard from someone.
my intrepid cool affect
pushing edges further back;
my rehearsed gait.
I watched waves take things away
as a small child.
the sky was black and cut with
lightning, swollen
with compulsion.
a tropical storm touched the
ocean and on instinct,
it swallowed itself.
my aunt screamed,
came to grab me as I touched the
shore with my hands and
carried us both up to the house.
the whole way up,
i cried about a flip flop
drifting in the current,
begging her to go back.
you can’t tell anything
about a statue
except it’s resting form:
cool

but if you ever saw the contents of
my purse: the twisted straws,
the clutter, lists of
things to get or hold,
you would see
that peevish child
taunting the ocean’s
grip and dashing,
longing for her
endless swaddle,
invincible in
execution only if
carried everywhere. 

“the bay”

my notepad is open
and my hand is smudged
with ink, the lists.
the things I’m naming:

ways to feel unsettled in transition,
states, or,
I mean the way they wave
as you drive,
and the way the birds landed
on the trees outside my stained-
glass window.
all the while thinking people
should just understand
like they had your history
with them and
feelings.

my mom once hung a “feelings’ chart
on my door
so I could circle the face that
most resembled mine.
was it envy driving this
appetite? me,
always shaking in some corner,
full bladder,
crumbs on my lips,
dictating, taking,
moving everyone to room
to game.

I don’t talk much
sometimes.
actually sometimes I
let my mind molder
like an untended peach,
just growing brown and soft,
put everything I own in trashbags
and toss it out.
  it’s called a cleanse.
I do this every year.

but in malice, the brambles
that i’m tied to,
dauntlessness prevails,
action, swift, cardinal,
bitter.
they always say i’m bitter.
give me coffee,
watch me run in circles,
flash my tongue.
what it’s like to rule like queen:
favors coming at you and people
trembling in their seats,
the gluttony, the theft,
the power
What do I want?
and at your leisure.

my leisure:
the growth between getting
and having,
if there is truth that people never
change, I guess I am stuck
somewhere on a trail
walking and
wanting endless
provision.