Saturday, and the sun is out.
you’re licking the salt from the crest
on the underside of my elbow
and asking
where I would like to live
next as I am pretending I
am unchained, and beginning
the slow fall to
devastation.
when I hear my name reflected
back I melt, I’m stone
mostly until I’m just a cloud
of maniac.

I am begging you to walk
away, being wrong about
the others but dead right
about this.
you love being right.
now dead right.

sarah, we are begging you
to run away from this.

“Post Mortem”

0

I value freedom most.
I wander
in both eyes and body
always collecting
but devoted to the last,
even fixated on the last,
even clutching the last
but also loose with most
acquaintances stressing
compromise, meaning
yielding to my rule
and enjoying breaks,
enjoying reaching,
enjoying screaming.

favoring opportunity over floor,
I become an opportunist.
favoring power over doormat,
I become a tyrant.
I value the sky and
currents more than houses.
 the ephemeral in
our lives while also walking
three inches higher than I am,
on tiptoe,
touching things,
making threats in the air
when angered and
you say I am

 for-mi-da-ble
and slow like that.
a bit virulent
is how you say it and
before we seek the advantageousness
of everything, it’s Friday
 and we are
 processing hard truths.
the way silence hits
and my hand opening,
 the spontaneity
of losing things.
tell me,
where do you keep your pocketknife?

 life is rushing and swamps
with its shades of
blue; azure
  (you name things)
sky, or cobalt fluid
or nightmare
like a wall of nail polish
you’re reading every
dressed up inch of you.
your rehearsed malignance.
your wry contribution
with your cocked smile
to hide your jealous
sulk.

the moon moves
from womb to waste
to task those unsewn wounds
 and you embrace things now
with reticence
but you’re open to the epitaph
scrawled across the rock hard
eyelid
       temperance
(that means patience)
my Venus in Leo
is running.
you made him carve something else
across  your eyes
that night on Jupiter:
          I remember everything.

but you didn’t want to be
so right and you didn’t really
ask
 for things:
you just opened a door
and walked in.
you made it clear
as you rummaged through
 the closet smelling him,
you are always only someone’s
secret. you are
unconditional when furtive
but otherwise,
rigid and passing
like a northern mist.

that means when kept.
when kept,
you’re just a blur,
vanishing,
just a sprint.

“venus in 12th house”

1

at least I give you transparency.

even when I’m moping,
I’m dancing
in songs of satin,
rippling with sob
and shimmering
deep    bright,
stretched for miles
like the sky and with the
same opacity.
I am combusting
publicly, usually:
a flood of recourse and
you are
drowning,

immersed
in capillaries bursting with
crisis
and then immediate clarity.
my hands let go of the
flood I’m cradling.
you watch me move
like a snake across your
ceiling draped in shifting
constellations
you have no choice but to
memorize and I’m wearing
the crescent as a crown and
your ears like a gown
and full of crypted
warnings.    me,
I’m a dream

cat
stalking rabbits
in the garden, or
waiting for the night
by the river for the
muskrat, leashed a black
gator to my belt for extra
guard, and then
later on your doormat
pushing the heads of mice
all around.
each night I go to God and ask
for favor.
I hand them back their most
prized possession as the only
way to get it:
a page,

one line;
one at a time
wrapped in
flakes of
shrimp like little treats.
my barbarity, I desperately
want to play psychopath
and you told me you were
starving for affection.
you also told me
I am the coldest
woman you’ve ever
met; catching your
goldfish, frying them up,
using your
own tank like
that. when they said I get one
favor, I asked for dreams.
I always ask for dreams.
not mine, I make clear.
let me walk through walls.

let me see.

“the aquarium”

0

sometimes I do ceremony.

I stick only to a daily morning
ritual and then the day falls apart.
 try to strengthen some resolve
 without consumption.
I feed the cats, clean their
litter box, then stretch
and write my dreams down.
then I walk the neighborhood
to soak up sun letting
hours devolve like time
has no meaning at all.

sometimes I just
 let things pass
like cravings or
weather.
I don’t need to ingest
everything I think but
my stomach growls and
my jaw clicks and I
begin to devour hours
well into the night.
like time has no meaning.
sometimes I do and say
nothing at all to
anyone for days.
we do that for others;
carry our grief quietly.
bury things deep
within ourselves.

but I feel the root rot and darken
without altar, water
or speech.
you walk in and
I’m here now
growing into a black stem.
you walk in and look
right at me
 and I don’t know
 where to begin.
but I found the
aperture.
you walk in and
look right at me and
my shiny white teeth
forge a new smile.

I begin to grow,
unfurl, hum
softly.

 

“datura moon”

0

you were given a choice.
you chose this road
first, then the
present.
become an alcoholic to
find a higher power.
meditate occasionally

to see how well it suits you.
fill the emptiness with Oreos,
coffee,
a smoking habit you detest
but gives your fingers something to
do when you’re speaking anxiously
in public,
when the caffeine is rearranging your
tongue into metaphors and you
need a moment of pause,
clarifying to the audience
with a descriptor you
previously forgot
and the story: winding,
inexplicably always
out of order.

run a 5K every three weeks
to give yourself a mission:
get back in shape,
hone your vision of
yourself.
bathe everyday.
tell the cat you love her
and pet her for an extra few minutes
before you walk for hours
to lose those new found vowels
completely.
pluck out your dead ends
 hiding in a stealth spot.
begin a practice of voyeurism.
sit comfortably and
file your nails into sharp points.
lean into them.

write everything down.
start ordering your steak rare:
inhale the lost veal,
the lost zeal of an entire feedlot;
the scent of plasma and cud.
devour a a squealing colony
without remorse.
      give cannibalism a chance.
you’re talking to yourself in public again.
the looks from the other patrons
don’t bother you.
you remember them with skinned knees on
bathroom tile;  your stomach in
velvet knots,
your obsessive purge.
you remember them peering at you
in courtrooms,
you remember them in handcuffs,
in shackles,
side eyes as you make a scene
 at the open bar, or get someone’s date to
carry it all:
               vodka soda,
          you lick his ear
             like your boyfriend isn’t even there.
it’s not the groom you want
or ceremony you despise,
it’s the bride.
the way you’ve stolen and
groveled afterwards.
 the way they held
onto those wrongs and their
condescending pats on the back
withdrawn.
how you’ve managed to
survive it all with gratitude,
without much impact,
you’ve suddenly risen
 to their ranks.

get your wisdom teeth removed
and then
cut them into daggers.
check out Home Depot,
ask for “industrial size”
ignore all the
 are you ok ?
you’re muttering again.
read the directions.
this stuff is toxic.
don’t get it on your eyelids.
press the bone back into your sockets,
flick the canines,
gotta be solid.
smile:
you’re still celibate.
you’re still hungry;
avaricious,

less slovenly from
all the exercise,
less addled than before
and armored like the night.
go back to the diner.
lick your plate.
click your tongue.
you showed them how
 starvation’s done.
you showed them how to roam.
you put your money where your
mouth is glued into
 your gums.
ring the alarm.

your mouth is lined with
homemade knives, and you’re
wafting noxious with each
breath    you begin to teach
them how to
move again.
you begin to chew more
loudly.
               Miss?
now that your dysphagia’s
done, you’re gonna smile
wide.
show them your veneers,
Ms. Salt and tell them
what you want.
I want it now.

“Veruca Salt”

0

I remind you over text
and apropos NOTHING
you make sure to emphasize
to someone that my style is
abruptly
and in all caps
that I enjoy the slam of
doors, interjections,
a hand tight around my forearm
 and learning the local
culture before intercepting about
the fine print of the law,
 how to skirt
a shadow, what a savior
secret arsenals
I present the trunk machete,
then the painted switch blade.
 I mean no harm
simply seething as I walk about
tracing panes, cracks in
paint and you hold me anyway
and in a way that I oblige;
loosely.

if I’m anything stasis
it’s anxious so
I at some point,
I have to be blindfolded,
only feeling
the way the soil holds the bones
of those we’ve learned to mourn
in private:
eternally and quiet
with an airy tightness and security
like the rosary barbs the
knuckles when it’s altar
or when its storm and I’m all fist.
the way the heavens hold the pious,
the mob holds the riot,
or the torch of arrival and
the way the ocean holds all that
falls below that deep blue
surge of sea.
a gentle immensity
lifts me in my
fits and that’s the way you
see me still;
intense and poignant,
pointed in her comments
but rather distressed about it
all so generally forgiven
for her onslaught.

 

squall hits and I
 drag you under to show
what made me.
you’re surprised by my
physicality and stature,
my apt command
of rooms
 so far
only seeing me flit
and not sticking around
to see me pull out
the skewer and demonstrating
all the ways in which a weapon
works.
and in front of
everyone like I feel most
comfortable in combat,
agitating and leading
 regimes before.
like I’ve never once
had an apprehensive
 thought.
and tall.

 

“furor”

0

me, I’m good!
I exclaim
wholeheartedly;
just a fifteen foot wide
circle of kerosene,
twirling and incendiary.
watching men throw
matches at me.

0

this is fresh.
the way I put on blush
and got my bangs cut,
properly at a place just
to show up once,
just to take my scarf back
and without a hug.


like the last word
someone said
          I was hoping we could talk about this
or me finishing packing up
anything belonging to my
ex; an entire bookshelf he left
which leads me to a shoebox
to stuff the card my new
ex-thing sent.

find old photographs
of myself unsure in blue hoodie
set to the mountains
at sunset like I couldn’t
imagine not being there.
it was such a casual stance
to permanence I carried.
the last time I look at a place.
the impassable space between
 states, abysmal and
the plane ride to my
brother’s coma.
it all comes back.
this is fresh.


this is the last time I’ve ever
seen or heard from someone.
my intrepid cool affect
pushing edges further back
to margin;
my rehearsed gait.
the way I asked how are you
three times with a nervous gesture,
without listening or waiting
for response and then
a sudden turn away.

I spent all my time at the beach
as a child
watching waves take things away.
I’d throw sticks in there,
seaweed, sometimes bottle caps.
draw lines in the sand with my toes.
throw hermit crabs back.
the day the sky was black
 and cut with
lightning, swollen
with compulsion,
a tropical storm touched the
ocean and on instinct,
 it swallowed itself.
I was there at the edge.
watching waves curl up to
my chest and
my aunt screamed,
came to grab me as I touched the
shore with my hands and
carried me up to the house.
Sarah, why did you do that?
the whole way up,
I was crying, screaming
bout a flip flop
drifting in the current,
begging her to go back.
I remember it to this day.
it had white soles and  yellow and vinyl
ribbon tied into a bow
at the toe.
I was trying to go back
into the water to get it.
you can’t tell anything
about a statue
except it’s resting form:
cool

but if you ever saw the contents of
my purse: the twisted straws,
the clutter, lists of
things to get or hold,
the collections,
you would see
 that peevish child
taunting the ocean’s
grip and dashing,
longing for her
endless swaddle,
but also longing for
everything that ever
existed too.

 invincible in
execution only if
carried everywhere.
people don’t change,
I think, and having second thoughts
throw the dinosaur
you mailed me away.

the birthday card he gave me.
the set of text exchanges.
people don’t change.
I empty the bin,
make space for lipstick.

0

the skulk,
scent,
need for slow chase.
salivation with a .
wide open stance,
arms spread,
lips like decanter,
trickling:
it is with love that I do this.
oh, you always say that.

*snaps* to wake
up.   tips a holy red,
I begin to grow inches and
 let my naturally long nails
trail the arms of strange
wool peacoats on my way to
the El or nowhere.
just circling Girard for fun.

It’s the beginning of December.
and I made rent.
I sort of grimace as
I sway the town, head to
toe in unbought clothes,
heeled boots,
hips flexed and
recently fucked.

let my hand hit the elbow
of an unsuspecting man,
unfucked, soon to
be turning around and
catching a flash of my
back, purple mock wool
and  hear the clack
of my shoes walk
away.
it is with love
they say.

“the honey trap”

0

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