God made me a monster
and God makes pacts with
predators, (redacted)! 
I scream at  you as you make your way
to your fifth meeting of the week.
me? I’m
chilling in bed,
reading Louise Erdrich and
when you see me again,
I will be serrated.

all day long I do equations
in my head.
as I walk to the laundromat
shifting the hamper beneath me,
I think about how many quarters I brought
and what that will get me doubting
my skill yet every month,
I still have some left in my cup.
what chore is coming next.
I need to wash the windows
and also I’m ankle deep in someone
else but that might
be conjecture
I think as I place the bin on the
ground knowing I have two more
at home and three flights of stairs
and I think       that’s an understatement

I think.

I think a lot about my
own divisiness and the ways to get
more or away or someone.
how I mask it.
what I can do.
what I’m doing.
how what I thought I about
yesterday compares meekly
to the euphoric way the sun
hit my shoulders just today
and no other day will compare to
this feeling so I mold it into
tangibility, twisting a straw,
photographing the figures of me
opening the door for someone
on way to get my second load
and thinking, so happy
to witness.

also
I love probability
like
what’s the likelihood I’ll see your
friend again, seeing him three times
already and you never there cuz
I don’t set foot on your lawn,
your territory, not mine
to fight for and
what is it going to take to hypnotize
a small crowd and at what cost to my
well being and I was practical so
how much money will I  make
if I devote myself entirely
to one thing vs. side things
and how honestly bad I
crave the hustle
but also I would like to crave stability
and statistically speaking,
we have to look at patterns,
not just equations but
trends so then here comes
more of the past.
I’m real used to it:
being three places at once
if I’m any less than nine.

 

I turn the headphones up.

you gave me a bouquet of
weeds as I was drinking
my third cup of coffee.
you had picked them from
our backyard when I wasn’t
looking. 

you were smiling
big, and I thought I loved
 you. I had gone upstairs to
change into a sundress
and tore a muscle near
my spine.
I called down to you.
 it feels like I pinched a nerve
and am having trouble breathing.
what should I do?
you looked up the staircase
 on your way out
the front door and tossed a
I don’t believe you
my way.
someone else drove me to
the doctor  and doctor
confirmed it,
 prescribed me Flexeril
and wrote me
a note for work.
I laid in bed waiting for the
drugs to subside.

you came home
and attempted to justify
why you always felt
deceived by me.
I lay numb,
relieved of feeling anything as you recited
everything I’d ever done
that bothered you.
you weren’t sorry,
it’s Sunday and I feel
nothing for you
now.
I drop a pair of panties
on the sidewalk
on the way out and
someone calls me from
the corner.


I turn my headphones up.

it’s Sunday and
it’s true, this too shall
pass and boy,
do I feel nothing for you now.

“Sunday”

0

if you write this book,
no man will ever trust you and I respond

good let them drown. 

and I watched four thousand
pages fall right out of me.

0

you are only as sick as your
secrets the old man says
and I nod emphatically
like I found them and

I have just
applied a fire engine red
gloss to my lips and
sat down in the middle of five
men: black tights, black
skirt and black pleather jacket.
my hair is slicked
and how I should have started
was confessing that Whole Foods
should hire better security but what
I choose to say is nothing
and sip the five
fingered
alcohol infused Kombucha
like I earned this
deviancy and I start by
saying “I had no idea
this was a men’s meeting
but thank you so much for
allowing me to be here”
and brave a smile
but what I should have said
was every inch of clothing
from my velvet black push up
bra that has drawn some neighbors
nearer to my high heeled
mock suede boots
stretched out in the center
like I just need this space so
much is absolutely
 unpaid for;
one way or another,
nothing I hold
has been paid for
yet. 

“confession #1”

0

“when your nemesis gives you the superlative:
sexual predator, accept it
and try not to think too much about
it.”

“veruca salt #1”

0

in Colorado,
his name was (redacted).
I am passing 3rd street unaware
of my hands withering,
clutching my phone.
another bad habit of mine,
not wearing gloves and never
placing my hands in
my jeans or coat pocket
or any warmth.
I’m always fiddling or
adjusting the volume.


he was very young and
wide eyed and used to doodle
through meetings,
watching the layers of people
shift in their seats, gathering
outlines with his pencil.
I would try to peek
to see how he made them and
who he most favored
knowing my cheekbones were perfect
but some things are more discreet and I
said hi to him only if I passed
him but mostly enjoyed the thrill
of picking a home group full
of freshman in college,
the perversion of me
unfolding like that,
so uninhibited in my quest
for sobriety and undivided
attention

spreading my
legs in the chair
in my turtleneck dress and
brown tights betting they could
smell my fever from here.
three children catch me muttering
and smile.      they watch
my fingers curve around an object,
then divide as I tap each tip
with my thumb like
I’m counting.
 they are thinking
I have secrets,
not that I am crazy
because children see parallel
lines.

one time,
he kept his eyes closed as everyone
in the circle shared.
when it was my turn, he popped
them back open and stared
the length of my story
like he had come here for this.
I was too confused to make
direct contact with him;
this being so flagrant
and sudden, I fluster
with bold advances
preferring to be the aggressor
not the pursued;
not the doe in the reticle
but the bear from behind.
I spent one whole year fantasizing
about him.

not lured by his youth
which makes him easy to command
but the way he was clearly taken
by me, his obvious insouciance,
and his right to be that way,
being only eighteen and
forced here to survive
among such alphas.
such witches with prowess
and skill and eight years
of drowning, emerging.

the children notice my
mouth moving as I walk down the
street, reviewing.
they all think I am writing about
them. I am writing about a cloud
I passed once.
cry cry cry and then
just start fucking laughing,
I say out loud
so the ten year old widens
her eyes
as she passes
not alarmed at the way
I keep touching things,
but the way I say fuck
in front of them so
unabashedly and in the
middle of the story like
we’d been talking this
whole time.

“xxx #1”

0

this is the blue book. it’s the closest you ever came to suicide. be humble. it only takes one terrible day to go from ideation to leap.

0

how long has it taken you to complete this?

complete?

 

yeah.

 

oh, this isn’t completion. this is unearthing. this is nothing ever ends.

0

I learned to drift
young and
listened to my Papa’s
stories, my aunt’s stories,
the whole family telling stories
and I learned to joke
too. it’s about knowing
what people respond to
but also a dauntlessness.
everyone in my family
laughed big and loud,
smoking cigarettes sitting around
the picnic table,
a pretty red wood covered
with some tawdry pear-slathered
yellow and cream plastic cloth
made to absorb ketchup
and beer cans everywhere.
the empty ones there for butts.
and bottles of Coke in giant
two liters   their tan slender fingers
and the confidence of lighting up.
I perfected the flick of an ash
off the end of a burning cigarette
long before I held one.

it’s ninety percent the way
your neck looks when you’re listening
and ten percent what you say
when you finally move to
enter the game.
I learned to grift too.
there were many ways.
more about fun then–
just how to sneak out
at night to grab cigarettes
from the bowling alley cigarette
machine; a preposterous
thing but came in handy.
I would sometimes crawl out of
my bedroom window,
my bed right beneath it and
able to slide the screen right open
without breaking it,
it was easier then the back door.
I had to tiptoe.
we had thin walls.
I slept with my door shut,
pitch black and covered with
pillows scared of my closet.

sometimes we took beer from my friend’s
parents cooler,
or candy pocketed from 7-11
or lip gloss from Eckerd’s
or something from a man’s house,
anything really.
I liked to take photographs of them
and items of clothing to smell
before they leave me.
sometimes I would stare at the pictures
he left out on his dresser
suddenly. not sure if they were planted
or just forgotten as he
offered me a shot of tequila on
his barracks colored carpet;
that off-white every sailor had;
stained with Friday nights
and teenage vomit.
movie ticket stubs falling
out of my coat pocket.
I always took my shoes off
out of politeness even though
I could see the scrape of dirt
from welcome mat to
cot and today:


a picture of him and his wife
on the rocks on the coast
of San Diego,
a card she left him,
something in spanish.
I would listen to the CDs he played
on repeat to get over her, later
alone, more holding the sting
 and the shattering way
it felt forced to be fucked
to music like that.
fascinated that grief can transcend
between two people, same song,
two different ways.
two different meanings.

where are you running to now?

I’m at Lehigh and 2nd
giving a man directions
to the 15 stop and he is asking
me where I am going.
I have no job or friends,.
but tons of antique wood
furniture and I kind of nod
to myself without answering him,
just keeping that buoyancy of
knowing that
acquiring objects is half the battle.
the other half is unearthing.


“walls #1”

1

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