Uncategorized – Page 207

I am giant:
strong legs, flexed tonsils,
tight back from climbing your forearms
to get to your mouth. my nails are
filed and
scratching at your chest
on the way there to let your home
know what I own.
I compromise but I am
never quiet.

I’m full of bargains:
one dollar books and yesterday’s makeup,
hair knotted with century old lesions and
previous engagements so I
shave it off every chance I get.
try to forgive myself for
such large displays of
arrogance.
you want me to comfort you in
cadence and I obey it
deriving satisfaction with the way my voice
sounds as I practice inflection,
ending my prose in pointed questions
you will have to answer,
the pleasure of seeing my mask unfold
on screen i’m paralyzed in heat
so I often freeze when confronted
but in between I leave
sweet, murmured ellipses
all over your body.

but know
I’m a noose so tight you try wearing me
like a loose fitting garment
or just one hard day’s night,
I might flinch and
boy, I might hang
you.

“Scorpio in South Node, natal”

* i am inviolable. (done)
*how to be a goddess: write it.
*how to be a warrior: continue on with life (editing).
*how to be a secret: write it.
*be a maze: write it.
*be a question mark: write it.
* become a smile.

“Pallas in Gemini” or “Using Charts”

“Consider your own setting foot
in the heart’s desire:
you might not be this happy again.
Look at it this way,
as if it were real,
as if you were singing to the household saint
who grew tired of waiting and sang to himself
til the whole house was certain
and singing again.”

From The Inspector of Miracles in a “Life Without Speaking” by Mary Reufle

Part 3: the act of taming things

“Being born again and again has torn your smile into pieces.”
–Adrienne Rich

rafters lit with strobe lights,
smoke lines,
broken paneled reflections of
thirty years of bottled insights,
throttled insides.
the air is laced with metallic smiles,
a camaraderie that’s uninviting
and sporadic flickers
of someone else’s lighter.
I rock in the center absentmindedly.
I have no business stopping by.

you watch me with
staggered silence and
constantly,
smile wide and big and
sudden.
I’m impacted in seconds,
sides of me are split,
flowing as I stand
idle.
your smirk some
blunted rifle.

you watch me mask my panic
with ten plus years of
a bawling inner child,
unmanageable reflexes
that end in stifled violence,
milky looks and a muted
predatory hunger.
I am wearing
my best calf impression:

slow,
doe-eyed and anxious.
blue tights, black heeled boots that
scuff the floor as I
wander as I daydream in public;
rub a soft elbow,
sip a virgin seltzer tonic with
cherries and some other
light garnish.
stay as close to God as possible
watch you with marrow armor and
calculated patience and I am a spinning
blue black swirl of approachable
sainthood.
twirl somewhere nearby and deign to give you
open eyes for at least
twenty seconds at a time.

you crack a joke and
my laugh is deep,
loud,
brays right through you
like a swaying knife.

you asked for it.

“first dances”

but i’m a martyr for this,
I crave repercussion;

even self-abnegation
needs an audience
or else it’s just plain masochism
lonely and acerbic
without the gentle recompense,
the moist poultice,
the final amends:
the touch of her
sadist’s fingertips
after she laid her.

all cathedrals use pain as payment
and my crucifixion,
while self inflicted,
is just as spilling
brook and baneful.
my bloodletters will wash
the splashes from my feet,
take their time
with each laceration;

stitch
my gashes
into temples.

“Lilith”

The train was fifteen minutes
late and I was
one month
and counting.

“the accident”

they couldn’t take the
wanderlust,
the exhausting sadness,
all day naps,
three week periods, and
not even a fake smile but
always a goblet.
moonshine as promised.
I was a little
overgrown gerbil:

dependent, sitting in my cedar-scented
piss in a lounge chair in the backyard
picking pine needles out of my knots;
hollow but for some force fed
swallows,
rum-coated water,
stale lines and organic vegan pop-tarts.
a shriveling income and
hooked in my dejection;
my lifeline,
my blooming red moon.
centuries of howls and hands like
needles doping me
so I’m easier to ride,
and my braided tongue
lolling,
trying to unwind,
just licking up all the
shit
you fed to me.

with love,
you said.

“best wishes”