I think at some point
you have earned the right to say
I know already because you lived it
without acquiescing to
authority so I asked
to see it first:
the river’s mouth,
even though they said
I’d never make it.
I never said I didn’t
deserve it–
just that I could outrun it
if they gave it.
“the alligator” or “uranus in sagittarius”
this next section is called:
The Woman who saw her lover’s death
this was years ago.
the first time I told them about it.
sitting on the edge of the bay
on a borrowed blanket,
I was vomiting up
an Everclear Slurpee
and peeling back the bottom
of his parent’s quilt realizing
I had covered the entrance of the
ghost crab’s home.
embroiled in my own
deafening philosophy
about the closing of the day;\
the way it moved–
death,
like an itinerant wave
that followed me
and only me,
everywhere.
I coughed that up second
to tell him
the rituals (pinch the
straw, doll) were there to
keep me safe.
the tide crept back
and I heard him light a cigarette,
felt myself starting to drown again
and then his hand on my thigh,
then nothing at all.
pain subsides in very
miniscule amounts
of time
if you don’t
repeat the
story.
(do not repeat the story)
my head is eighteen visions a second:
someone getting their face smashed
with a brick, someone getting into
a plane, slicing the skin of my fingers,
blood. blood. blood. blood.
and matching the numbers to the proper
order. reorganizing mantles.
bleaching my teeth and
every inch of my house.
first, you have to feel safe.
I begin to build the glass
around me.
and turning to you again, I
implore you to pick a title and
stick with it. for me, I say
cupping your baby soft chin,
(Alaska is safer than Australia):
do you like warnings or do you
like to drown?
“warnings”
Saturdays and the 1 pm
alarm clockon snooze,
the bare-faced evenings
in throw blankets;
languid, but there is still
a rabid tongue
between fits of sudden inspiration.
moved
from sheets to
cushions to sheets
to type it down,
to shower
once a week
if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth.
graze your chin, scalp,
untouched thighs.
open your chapped lips to the sky.
feel the water rush your neck and
trickle down your navel
to soak your unseen toenails.
do not question anything
for those three whole seconds;
it is the closest thing to orgasm
you can manage.
it has been a tough change in seasons:
costuming yourself with
sincerity, (you’re vulnerable)
tights and boots
and an expansive blankness
that still drives your body around
to pick up soy milk.
finish something you started.
there you are.
some cooing cobra.
the chills that almost ate
me: winter. several
in a row.
the darkness and
introspection of how
I’ve chosen to succeed,
lone and the two of swords.
thanking my institutions
for showing me how to carve
pure copper into
green or sharp to hold,
the likelihood that two things
look identical enough
to both be chosen,
that I will learn the
ways of mask
and holster.
there you are.
“rage” or “the fifth wave”
what wave is this?
there you are,
some cooing cobra,
the chills that almost ate
me: winter. both
the darkness and
introspection of how
I’ve chosen to succeed.
thanking my institutions
for showing me how to carve
pure copper into
green to hold,
the likelihood that two things
look identical enough
to both be chosen,
that I will learn the
ways of mask
and holster.
there you are.
“rage” or “the fifth wave”
shake my head no.
“I don’t intend to hurt myself.”
my thighs are cut with finger shaped
bruise and the smell of
someone else’s
laundry detergent
I am windswept,
gutted and frank,
even in malaise, I
fork my tongue to cut:
“I can only cry at hospitals
and then I usually leave.”
lean in, and they said
be gallant. he has
blue eyes.
“most of my family is dead.
I just want to be seen.”
my throat sore from
conversation. persisting
mucus. the taste of him.
takes my hand.
takes my neck.
takes my waist.
stop talking.
but I just can’t.
“catharsis” or “nine of wands”
im not pressuring you
im just putting thoughts in your head,
some things are better left spoken
than unsaid.
“the hypnotist”
get some rest,
girl,
it’s the
Four of Swords.
they say I must be
heedless to dabble in the
dark like that
and unarmed.
more unthinking;
a fiery capricious
tantrum,
stabbed in the fucking back
and fingers naturally
pointy and
webbed as things
develop into theory,
into pentacles,
into air.
time is a sequence of
cracking joints, more
misfortune and now
I blend into the wall
when I want and you will
know me by
eyes popping open,
or my purr of a
low growl,
low to the ground,
undaunted in my
new soft black
steps.
you just hang there.
“Arachne”
“My recommendation is that you vanquish fear from your dreams and from your life, in order to safeguard your unity.”
–The art of dreaming, Carlos Castaneda
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