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nice smile.

small.
unmonitored fidgeting.
nervous laughter.
seems to force her way through small
talk and presents as
calm but quite patently
fanatical
about some previous existential
crisis that she says
left her marked.
POXED, she
calls it.

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 #1”

I trap ants
in containers
of sugar to
see how long
it takes them to suffocate.

“the rooms”

my friends and i spent a lot of time in the ditch behind my best friend’s house. it was just a little spot of woods. a little creek. some beer cans along the way. a few Slurpee cups (ours) and we liked the reprieve of shade in August and we liked the shelter of no one else around. we would dare each other to do things. howl as loud as you can. do a cartwheel near the thornbed. press your whole hand in the mud.  jump over a pile. make it to the other side. actually they dared me to do these things. I just needed the green light and having gotten skin in rose stem, a little blood didn’t bother me. would often become engrossed in the cut before bandaging it. I took a lot of risks is the understatement of a lacerated life.

there was a time I tried to jump over one of the widest sections of the water. after seeing the boys make it and Stacey make it, thought this is a breeze.  but I overestimated my dismount. or, I got nervous in front of Johnny. I remember Stacey laughing and pointing at me which I hated. usually landing on two feet. (wait til your knees burst). walking the rest of the way with mud caked up my left knee and not going home to change either. just bursting into 7-11 for more gum with pride. wayward, disheveled orphan of the block. all gumption and big pockets. took more than usual that day just to prove I could.  it was losing I hated. didn’t mind so much the feeling of the dirt.

and then the spots of poison ivy hidden. I am courageous in charge and always tactile, touching everything I come across. and smitten with my mind. only listening for my name, otherwise, running my fingers across every greenery within sight. now poxed.  rubbing the perlicue against the knuckle of the other hand and letting the sst out. my face swollen and red so the guys in my class think I got in a fight. smirk. never tell them anything..  the relief of it. and almost moaning as I ran the prong of fork down my leg. scraped it along my calves. dug in at ankles.sst. poking each patch of red, hard like I’m trying to make a fat lip, then dragging it back up again. watching the blood run down. the effect of effect cooling me more than calamine.  then getting the washrag for that. inhaling the copper scent. licking it off a dirty nail bed. yeah, I liked the way blood felt
and  looked
and smelled
sometimes.

“the itch game”

I fight the urge
to dip my fingers
into the running
garbage disposal.
challenge mechanism
designed to fillet
with one pressurized
tip.

I could be the one
preserved.

“Saturn in Scorpio”

I lay on the floor,
tossing coins around.
peeled my tank top off,
I’m topless, down to underwear.
fan pointed right at me.
according to my hand,
I’ve got six more hours
of this. acid is unforgiving
in its length and it’s eighty three
degrees outside    I still
don’t know who the little
girl is.
Catarina.

I sobbed for forty five minutes
under a willow as people
walked their dogs.
pay my respects to some
marble obelisk in front of me.
some memory lurched
from the root.
a well.

“I guess with about a 98.6% accuracy,” I told her.

I’m  shrewd and
uncharacteristically
sentimental over this.
look up at the yellow boxed
mirror:
your name is Catarina
and I see the snaggy corners
lift. lips are sand
dry and my teeth,
blinding.
my men say I sneer.

your name is Catarina,
dear.

“the name game”

“your end game is establishing psychic stability
with extreme ordeals as part of your
metamorphosis.”

my need for superfluous
fluctuations in behavior,
lifestyle and mood.
I am  God-drawn,
celibate,
obsessively
testing myself and
binding myself to
new conviction,

I am wrapping myself
in my insistent
unhinging,
and my lovers’ brides;
for the way they scream my
name into the pillow.
but I am distant.
I am giant.
I am waving my hands
in the air and calling it
time.

the solution to all things
is to wait. oh, I am far,
far away and
quiet in my cave,
becoming whatever I say
am.
becoming whatever I say.

be careful what you think
but more importantly,
be careful what you say.


“the magician”

“am I always the lamb?” 

I envisioned myself crying earlier and then I felt the beginning ripple as I stood on my bedroom floor, suddenly up again.  I wanted to stay lying down but the shadows all over my walls moved. I could feel it rise in me. I would think of Hecate. this is what you asked for. this what you got. nothing. I started to sob unhinged:loud and childlike. knowing that your parents will vanish and so will your childhood. the house full of mold, soft. falling down. having hardly any remnants left of it living. many things gone too. the structure of your family dissolving. and the shell of it, me, here. heartbroken. missing so much of my childhood that will never be again or be seen again. the house itself  rotting.. it will be abandoned. it will be torn and something will be rebuilt on the land. I cannot explain or mention these things in passing, therefore I don’t get into them. here I am still, standing, facing the cream of the wall between paintings. 

only a second has gone by.