Category: Uncategorized

i’m counting tokens in a
donated tank top and barely
fitting jean shorts, everything about me
awkward and also sort of heavy in
the impassable space between states
I learned to love,
between beds I’ve been thrown on
and various seasons of us;
theorized or touched
whether it’s real or not,
irrelevant to the curve that’s forming
in my back as I hunch over the weight
of things I stuff in my bookbag
that I find on my walks out:
China set, forks, two new mini
skirts, pot holders neatly placed in
cardboard boxes on people’s
front porches and  I am,

crammed with charity,
stretched to my limit
and timorous.
I’m two miles to the El
with enough tokens to get me there
and back and enough money to pay
exactly
one phone bill,

one internet bill,
power and gas but we are still
working the rest out and
I feel drops forming at
the base of my
sweaty and salt-lined,
un-licked neck.
thats’s what I miss most.
the way a man curls behind you.
the way his curtness catches you.
it’s just one breath.

II.

this is how thoughts start
and then ten years go by
and you’re still spiraling
like you hadn’t found the answer
but really I just
had to make rent.
that was my first priority

and I think I may be a masochist
which could wait just
keep everything in some sort of order.
focus on the task.
the one thought as I open
the door to the mid-August heat,
89 degrees which is nothing compared to
the south that can swallow you whole
in one boiling breeze and I’m out of
my now near empty row home
that you cleaned almost all the way
out before you left
except the dirty armchair, old couch–
all the furniture found.
all the dishes donated.
everything I left come back,
everything kind of circuitous 

like my anfractuous spine
that stood straight once but
fractured under the weight
of this constant need to materialize
public ovation and actual groceries and
the ability to discern between a happy
thought and an actual hand to hold,
I become the reed reaching deep
but bent,
sinuous,
cracked.

“if you write the book,
no man will want you.”

I am twenty inches taller,
laughing openly,
I mean a real hearty
treat to the ear.
he’s floored.

“I’ve been single for seven years,”
is my first remark.

“and?”
we’re squared.
“what does that mean?”

If I stand, I may perpetuate
violence so I make sure to stay
my pretty painted ass
on the couch.

“IT MEANS I DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT NO FUCKING MAN, MATE.”

but with an Australian accent.
for no reason.

I show up early to
make coffee,
drink coffee,
steal a couple pens
and a few donuts before the
meeting.
I’m here to look
good and watch people.

I am covered in
sweat by the time I sit down:
tan and thin from
the obsessive calorie cutting
that formed as a result of
penurious heritage,
bad timing,
mercurial interests.
I’m skinny and all
about it, wearing shirts that show
my sternum leaning hard
against the skin. that means
when I stand in front
of you, you can see the outline
of my bones.

I’m skinny cuz I’m hungry.
cuz I have been portioning
crackers. cuz I allow
myself only one piece of
bread a day.  once took a spoonful
of sprinkles in my mouth as a
treat and didn’t eat anything
else for hours.
I’m letting my clavicle
show, my shoulders bony
and in front of everyone,
glistening like olive marble.
hard.
I have two tokens in my pocket;
one to get home and
one to roam.
I cross my legs in front
of a blond haired boy,
take a sip of my seventh
cup of coffee,
someone begins
you are only
sick as your secrets.

I am 120 pounds and waning,
olive marble.

“August”

Part 4: The Act Of Chasing Things

“Jung ponders, “How can evil be integrated? There is only one possibility: to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness.”

********
************

“don’t be afraid to be this luminous
to be so bright
so empty the bullets pass right through you 
thinking they have found the sky 
as you reach down
press a hand in this blood-warm body
like a word being nailed to its meaning & lives.”
  –Ocean Vuong, Ode To Masturbation

you can shake your fist at any
foaming coast but her
break remains unscathed,
her scorn in
waves,
her calm in
tides,
wet snarls pacified in
moon-swept stages
depending on the time of month,
the climate or the
stage.

you are barefoot:
some pedestrian gesture of
worship.
shrine.
avoiding the shells and
ghost crabs that litter the beach
at gloaming.
you’re wild and roaming
again, seeking to slice wrists
with guilt and urgency,
pretension,
steal the scissors from his girlfriend’s
pocket.
                    what’s it like to be a hypnotist?
take a seat.
notice your veins rock,
glisten with munition.

life’s a seething blade
and you wear yours deep in your lungs.
the ways you have learned to assuage
are more permanent in placement
if you face it when you
say it.
write it on the page.
have them sing it with
vexation.
have them say it out loud and
curse themselves.

you watched your hands become tributes
to iniquity so you ask your feet
to become your fingers
now,
nothing from your mouth
going forward.
watch your toes curl in the sand
before you start wading.
you are practicing the dying art of
self-restraint.
you are practicing prayer, overdo
amends.
you are seeking a quiet rest
inside of  yourself.
you are seeking the
sudden wreck
that laid you.

 “king of cups” 

this next section is called:

transubstantiation

im writing a choose your own adventure fairy tale where unfortunately elements of the set may begin to come to life

**********

I am  walking behind three hooded women in some sort of cave. they are carrying torches so all I can see are the outlines of their bodies. I am not looking ahead of them. I am staring at the back of the woman on the left’s cloak when she turns around. they are all in black. they all look the same from behind. she says, you’re lucky, you know. but I couldn’t say anything. physically, I couldn’t move my mouth. the cavern opened to a well. the three women parted and walked around it but I couldn’t see them anymore. I walked closer to it. 

I wake up. I don’t know what time. I turn to the nightstand for my phone when I see her at the foot of my bed. cloaked, she is sitting on the floor, kind of leaning to the side. comfortable like she’s been there for a while and her eyes are green though I know it’s her. when she smiles, I know it’s her. she says

does she kill for you? does she kill for you? kind of hisses it. I can see the corner of her lifted aristocratic brow and her lips are painted a flame red. then she begins to stand.  pressing her arms into the mattress, I feel the weight of the bed move downward. I am not terrified but paralyzed. I can’t say anything. I remember feeling like I couldn’t say anything or move and in her full stance, she was much taller than I remembered. 

“Artemis”

“you’re a trouble maker,
are you?'” she says in a
thick Irish accent.

“looks, we both got red bracelets,”
I respond, as Australian as I
can be. “so we are the chosen
ones with the 24 hour armed
guards. how safe we are.”

I turn to face him.

“locked here, in the middle of
a civil war.”

doors #10

I have two constant insatiable needs:
clarity and validation and I
usually get neither.

my only true constant is my suffering;
that is how I relate to others.
my suffering is a secret comfort
because it allows connection.
we only know feelings by comparison;
yours, mine, ours.
this defines humanity–
our perpetual hunger,
our perpetual processing
about the matter,
our reaching hands,
and the inevitable suffering
that follows.

“doors #11”

“I think you’ve created some delusions to survive.” 

it’s his smugness
that pinches.
I’m trying not to scrape
a letter opener across my
eye and all I think to say
is
well shit, good doctor
I’m cured, all I have to
do is live in REALiTY
I emphasize the last word
and I can finally THRIVE
and LIVE PEACEFULLY
as I casually continue
these six mile walks a day
until my knees collapse
underneath me and I am
rendered useless to all.
you are, doubtlessly,
pure genius.

but I am also suddenly talking
in an Australian accent
and I have stood up
fists balled
where he sees I have somehow
gotten hold of his letter opener
to soothe my nerves
so this
is
where
detention
begins.

“detention”