when you came home
with the giant brass
industrial art piece that had no
smooth edges to hang on the wall
at the top of the stairs,
that I in fact was afraid would cut me,
I knew you were a libertarian
but I had the grace to not even
ask how much it cost.
I had bought us an entire chocolate
cake using food stamps
so I cannot judge and I
have learned
life is meaningless.

the third is ennui.
you become overcome
with a sudden fatigue.
almost as if you are floating
but not as happy or light
as that. like you’re being
controlled by a beam.
it’s more terrifying the
grip this new surrender has.
your arched back,
your upward gaze,
some kind of nothing
and the laughter is so 

deep and directed
at you.

“ennui”

I got stalked by a woman once for writing about a man so ive been hesitant to write these things but it’s the thing ive been holding back. you cannot write and lie at the same time. and you cannot hide your past.

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 covered
yellow and cream plastic table cloth
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 proposterous
thing but came in and handy.
I would sometimes crawl out of
my bedroom window,
my bed right beneath it and
able to slide the screen right open,
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 cream every sailor had.
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 leaving
more holding the sting and the breaking
way it felt forced to be fucked
to music like that

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
acquiring objects is half the battle.
the other half is unearthing.


“walls #1”

quickly I learned
what you could not publicly
talk about as a woman.

you were not allowed to talk
about your men
but I did throw them in the
quiet ocean,
and dragged them.

“squall”

“They should be careful not to get manipulated by others and to avoid getting hypnotized. It’s the easiest to have them under mind control because they immediately fall into trance when some specific techniques are being used on them.”

but i did it to myself.

moon in 12th

your house was yellow.

my house was blue and
a ten by ten box;
me trapped,
torn between watching them
pack up their stuff
from their own pact to self
and their own inculpability,
fragile glass faces
slighlyt cracked and me,
stunned and dripping a
flattening virulence,

telling them about themselves,
breaking and then
pushing them out.

I really miss your hands on me.
the way you held me in
sullen incubation.
I remember the oldest incantation:
the thrust I was given,
some gleaned anticipatory luck:
      God gave you a chance and

              an unfinished smile.

we needed a spark.
I grin full tooth to show you
my new porcelain canines,
casually.
now the frame is melting
and so am I
in the cradle of tar black trees,
I fight the urge to bow
and suddenly tiptoe
all around you;
two inches taller than you remember
and my tongue hits your neck
like a quill.

hold your breath,
I say and
baby,
I’m a smokeshow, they say.
wait

for some other current to take me.
bite your skin.
let the tips of my
fingers dig in and

there are no exits.

“chrysalis” 

I read a note out loud to myself,
something I had written in an urgency,
a mania and with its own
staggering precocity these little
messages keep me crawling
on the ledge:
    everything that is really hard
          is going to save your life

and a blackbird landed on the branch
outside my living room
window.
still, their eyes small and
sharp
waiting to dive,
waiting for the buzz of cicadas
to start again.
            that reminds me,

I say in my head
            i’m emaciating.
I take a sip of water.
starved, looking
without touching and
      I want too much
has many meanings.
I read the words aloud again
and pour myself a thimble
of almonds.

it is first that I craft the lie,
not out of revenge but
of general idleness and
devilment, the two things
slated to go hand in hand.
I begin to charm him.
                do you believe everything I say?

and then you become the
braced masochist
and I become
the looming hit.

“maelstrom”

the best defense is
to cripple yourself
like victim.

What do I want?
a soft nothing
like my jaw opening on
a pillow, feeling the satin
on my thighs and just
gawking at the glitter on my ceiling,
another thing I will miss.
my leisure:
the growth between getting
and having.
people never change.
I am stuck
somewhere on a trail
walking and wanting not endless
provision, but the
allegory made more
palatable.