my writing process:

thought, beat, tone or simple note in phone.
elongate into rhythym, find your step in cadence, and blossom.
begin to jot more notes down so you do not lose the feeling.
return to sitting.
delete all that felt superfluous or was more private:
like how many times you became suicidal in private.
begin to elongate in fluid cadence.
is this a story or a poem?
choose your book and place it.
rough draft it.
edit.

step away

edit.
choose your book and place it.

go for the next walk.

1

I begin to weigh the scales:
what’s the probability
that illusion grows legs
or that imagination is laden
with foresight?
you see if I don’t begin to
think this way, I will
begin to cross the bridge
and when my foot hits the
concrete, I want to
leap, arms spread.
it’s not about anyone coming
back. it’s about me
accepting love is a double edged
sword and I’m a fucking
whore. isn’t that what
you told your friends?
that you can’t date
a whore like that.

“the bridge #1”

0

before I moved to Boulder,
I developed a very good working
relationship with the Harris Teeter
in Ghent. I would do my local grocery shopping there,
pretty regularly, dividing my cart into half:
stealing that half and paying for the rest.
this is how people who have fifteen dollars
and a drinking problem live.
they neatly divide what is worth
paying for and what is worth ignoring,
letting go, stealing or conning.
when I moved to Boulder,
I developed a good working
relationship with the Whole Foods
but I cut my teeth stealing bike lights from
Target so that my partner and I
could go places at night.


I showed him how to pocket
toothpaste as mine was homemade
of bentonite clay and I am doting,
if not simply peacocking
about my bold chase of everything.
I showed him how to pocket the
Kombucha and show up to
meetings with it in hand like
it had no alcohol,
like I didn’t pocket the lip
gloss either.
when I moved to Philly,
I developed a good working
relationship with every Whole Foods
in the area.

I want to be remembered for the
ways I never died,
not for the ways my mouth
looked shut in meetings
every time an old white man
repeated an aphorism I have yet
to swallow: you are only as
sick as your secrets.

I want to be remembered as a
passing silhouette in your
night or the arms that
held you finally
so long as you know
my pockets are heavy
like chests.
so long as you
like little gifts
now and then.

1

my partner turned to me
so matter of factly
as we ate vegan nachos
I had made, and said
this is a place to cut your teeth
and then leave.

“Philadelphia”

0

suffering incursion will
change you. there are a thousand ways
to die, my head begins again.
nail in eye.
car to body.
man with fist.
I begin to count
and begin to twist the straw
in an effort to curb the brain
from going deeper, usually
the fixation begins from the most
likely place.
it was the end of February,
2014 and I lived in a rowhome
on the cusp of Port Richmond
and Kensington and knew two things:
cars don’t stop for anything here,
and neither do men.

I begin to count and organize and also
step into a dark long reverie
of a place that is warm and
seeking me, but I also begin to
count and create myth from fingers.
begin to list the ways I’ve watched the
Earth take: my aunt run over multiple
times, murdered. my eight year old cousin
died from a brain anuerysm. my uncle
shot his face off in his father’s
old house. my aunt drank her body to death.

you see I have to stop and enter
the beach seeking me.
you won’t make it otherwise
as I turn the headphones up,
just miss a truck but I can
hear the ATVS revving.
the sign says walk
but my aunt was once run over
repeatedly.

it’s the coldest winter in years,
they tell me after meetings,
and it’s not an easy time to make friends.

“doors #2”

1

“it was beauty, I learned, that we risked ourselves for.”

 

–ocean vuong

2

(first draft I wrote walking around town)

 

I walk around giving women bad advice..
Things like
when a man follows you,
turn around and smile.
That is bare your incisors
like maybe you’ve used them
to chew tendon before
and

 stand tall, taller than you are
and on tiptoes. don’t call
the police. fuck the police
is another thing I like to say
but
it’s not fair of me to
demand such things
knowing the ways we’ve been bent
and the price I’ve paid for
teeth
but
one time a man rested his hand
on my knee after a meeting
to converse.
to talk to me and I said
I am not railing, take your
hand off my knee.
and he loudly shouted to the meeting
that he had touched me and
 I freaked out.
it was february 2014
and I had lived there one month.

it is not fair of me to look
around and wait for the other women to
chime in; expecting anything from white
women is like expecting mice to suddenly
organize and take the floorboards
back. we know the cats and rats
own them and we know
where they hide.
I feel no loyalty to certain
things.

it is not fair of me to look them in the eye
and expect anything so I began the
quiet ascent right then and there
reiterating that there is no need
to touch me, a woman that you don’t
know to talk to me and he began to
turn blush red and stammer and
get louder with everyone
assuring the group that
I was freaking out. I guess
to let them know that
he was calming me down.
I forgot this part but later a
friend said he was in a bad spot
like I was allowed to be grazed
by men in bad spots
with bad tempers
in bad neighborhoods,
just hanging skinned meat
from a hook like a bag
to hug when they’re worn
out so I controlled the eye
roll and returned to the sea.
began to call stallions to
me to see if I could
ride them and began the quiet
ascent,
            I break men
and rather than complain
about hypocrisy and To Wives again,
I merely left that place and rather
than
repeat myself  to him,
 being new in town, making
friends and also finding ways to
 assert myself at night on my
lonely, cold walks as men
followed me in cars,
as men whistled at me in winter,
me, bundled, as they began to walk
steady behind me,
as a semi truck stopped in the middle of rush hour on
Aramingo to honk at me and look at me
and me reaching for the women to hear
that’s normal.

I repeated myself and noticed
no one said a word as this man
reiterated that I, the new girl,
simply freaked the fuck out when
a man touched my thigh.

one day I heard encroaching
steps and turned around
just for the scent
of it. sometimes men
sniff your hair when
you sleep and enter you
before you wake up
just for the scent of it. 

“the black book”

0

“perfect joy excludes even the very feeling of joy, for in the soul filled by the object, no corner is left for saying “I.”

 

–Simone Well

0

 

every day up at dawn
on my knees and thanking
God for letting me stay feral,
hand drawn
and as sick as all my
secrets.

2.

0

i am the magic,
they are the drawn.

magic magic clap clap clap
look who got her fangs back!

0

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