“how many lives does a poor woman have?”
—Alice walker
keys,
a shuffle,
my half smile directed at a
windowsill and a forced
dulcet pause to
wrap a throw around bare shoulders,
strapless bra i’m mussed enough
to form new creases,
stretch my tousled jaw
into a long yawn.
I can see your long trail of spit
glisten lightly like snow,
still,
from elbow to the scar
above my wrist when I was
really hitting the wine.
I wipe it on the pillowcase.
my lips are sand dry,
knuckles crack a bit when they reach and
my toes are curled for a different reason
this time, I am emptied.
your shadow’s growing larger:
an elongated feeling that stretched and stretched
and stopped right before
it got to mine,
bit back,
ran.
toss a look over brawn shoulder.
i’m no feast, you know,
but you wait like March hunger
for ful lspring, so close
yet still light blizzard,
still heavy rain.
you want that
hot spot to hit the ground
but snow lingers you want
that drizzle then moist
and green, some sunflowers,
a tomato plant and bees
offer their honey from the bottoms of their
black bellies and you take all you can get.
sniff a tulip,
feast on cool breezes of
me
when I’ll have it.
I cough or sneeze
and no make no motion to ever
be haunted;
to ever be eaten,
to ever grow something from the arm
you licked that used to hold little butter knives
threateningly
towards him, towards me,
us hold scissors and
think about it,
hold shot glasses to not;
where I used to force myself to hug my brother
at Christmas
and nights, nowadays
any holiday,
I etch his name everywhere it fits;
where you watched the sun
shadowplay with branches on my olive skin
and you mistook them for
fingers to grab,
hold,
swallow;
where I stretched myself,
a bored tiger and lifted my once
impaled bones, my once river bones,
(wet for it every time)
up, held my hand up,
nails long and dry,
held your gaze,
waved without change in
expression and
your back is to the door.
i’m sitting up in a fetal position.
my profile is reflected in the
dusty whites of your eyes.
I have developed a new shade:
smudged green eyeliner and
the rest some kind of
lovely barren.
“beds”
the day I arrived in the hotel
in the financial district
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.
I thought that was
cute.
“how I made rent”
slugs salted on the patio,
cicada shells clinging to the moldering
legs of my childhood picnic bench,
hundreds of unclaimed Easter eggs
rotting under rusty swing sets,
a mouse writhing on a glue trap
that was just SHOVED
in a garbage bag
and me
just staring–
just
freshly out of love.
6.
my wings tip towards
the sun and I’m triumphant
in my emptiness,
my patient nihilism I
chew when the void becomes
the only measurable thing
in my life I don’t
notice the oncoming car.
grasshopper never notices
the magnifying glass
or pesticide gun.
dog with the mange and glaucoma
blithely to cage.
drunk blindly to rage
then car
then grave.
snail to salt,
cricket to web,
temple to gun
and you say
what I never notice is
us.
“love”
“Then what is there?
Nothing, I think,
only haste to die before I die.”
–Louise gluck
I wore black every day
just in case.
the train was fifteen minutes
late and I was
one month
and counting.
“the accident”
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”
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