what does all of this
mean to you?
she waves her hand
to no one. 

you say it’s important,
ask me to tell it in
“linear order”
but how can I get away with
things telling stories like
that?
I have survived time
and cage and aged
in linear order.
my proof
    (I flex a ripped tricep)
is endless strength,
brimming veins
that have learned how to
vibrate, hum, cluck,
even whistle when your girl
walks by me       I’m
a snake

through her core
and now all you see is a doe
gored in your forest and
I got to eat the whole orchard
I asked for.
nearly choked,
quite frankly worth it
though. are you lost
or just quiet? 
just hiding.
you know I’m dense,

ice cold, flush with
forked tongue ready to puncture
someone,     i’m lush;
maintaining a sense of
dam and containment
even in my most berating
fits of temper or panic,
I manage to remain
frozen these days
like a cracking lake
you say I am
sharp and

bitter.
but underneath my skin,
that blue-lace casing,
a carnise river:
little tributaries to
the turning of the world
in linear delivery.
and you say
full of rage     and I say
ok, my love, just wait:

you and I are from
the same place
and I start to pace
the block once more. 

“rage”

this is fresh.
like the last word
someone said
or you losing to find
old photographs
of you unsure of
yourself in blue hoodie
set to the mountains
at sunset like you couldn’t
imagine not being there.
it was such a casual stance
to permanence you carried.
the last time you look at a place.
the space between states,
the plane ride to your
brother’s coma
this is fresh.

this is the last time you’ve ever
seen or heard from someone.
my intrepid cool affect
pushing edges further back;
my rehearsed gait.
I watched waves take things away
as a small child.
the sky was black and cut with
lightning, swollen
with compulsion.
a tropical storm touched the
ocean and on instinct,
it swallowed itself.
my aunt screamed,
came to grab me as I touched the
shore with my hands and
carried us both up to the house.
the whole way up,
i cried about a flip flop
drifting in the current,
begging her to go back.
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,
you would see
that peevish child
taunting the ocean’s
grip and dashing,
longing for her
endless swaddle,
invincible in
execution only if
carried everywhere. 

“the bay”

my notepad is open
and my hand is smudged
with ink, the lists.
the things I’m naming:

ways to feel unsettled in transition,
states, or,
I mean the way they wave
as you drive,
and the way the birds landed
on the trees outside my stained-
glass window.
all the while thinking people
should just understand
like they had your history
with them and
feelings.

my mom once hung a “feelings’ chart
on my door
so I could circle the face that
most resembled mine.
was it envy driving this
appetite? me,
always shaking in some corner,
full bladder,
crumbs on my lips,
dictating, taking,
moving everyone to room
to game.

I don’t talk much
sometimes.
actually sometimes I
let my mind molder
like an untended peach,
just growing brown and soft,
put everything I own in trashbags
and toss it out.
  it’s called a cleanse.
I do this every year.

but in malice, the brambles
that i’m tied to,
dauntlessness prevails,
action, swift, cardinal,
bitter.
they always say i’m bitter.
give me coffee,
watch me run in circles,
flash my tongue.
what it’s like to rule like queen:
favors coming at you and people
trembling in their seats,
the gluttony, the theft,
the power
What do I want?
and at your leisure.

my leisure:
the growth between getting
and having,
if there is truth that people never
change, I guess I am stuck
somewhere on a trail
walking and
wanting endless
provision.

Part 2:

The Act of Blaming things

“yeah the guilty is often
the victim of the injured.”

–khalil gibran

as if I am even hurting anything;
some embittered tremulous
thing shaking her fist at the
moon and praying for a tidal
wave.

you notice my arms are toned,
you say I really wear my weight.
you watch me lift bone to sky
and notice the notch in my veins
before you even notice
the flood.
i’m dripping past assaults
as a reason to affront
you into pushing me.
you feel mislead
standing on the ledge of a
slippery gate.
you were promised a mountain?

no,
you were promised a chasm
to cross.

“the bridge”

I’m obsessed with transition.
the form it takes
in movement and

thrown against a wall;
stalled in its pounce,
sudden landing
without intent.
and after all that patience
and miles of crouch
through the city,
to be suddenly seized
by your habits again:
your need for slow chase.
your salivation.
your wide open stance,
arms spread,
lips like decanter:
it is with love that i do this.

tips a holy red,
i begin to let my nails
trail the arms of strange
wool pea coats.

II.

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,
their own inculpability
and me, dripping virulence,

telling them otherwise and
pushing them out.

I really miss your hands on me.
the way you held me in sullen incubation.

the frame is melting and so am I.
in the cradle of tar black trees,
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.
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”

good profile.

have never seen her hair
she was
wearing a platinum blonde wig
when I met her and
then a brown one and then
a head scarf:
floral, purple, I
remember.

bangs peeking out but
the rest an
all black everything
including dress,
boots and nails,
eyes lined like soot
tracing the chimney top,
and she was a
studious observer,
a witch. 
told me she “burned a sigil”
for this and then she
licked her lips
(think about me)
touched her nails to her tongue
(listen to me)
ran her wet nails down
her neck
(wait for me)

and I’ve just been waiting.

“How guys save me in their phone #12”

mood swings,
kind of mired in
a circular prophecy
that she keeps repeating.
silent in spurts,
frozen when alarmed but
then bursts in and says to
me: “are you fucking
watching me?”
like we’ve been talking
all this time
and I haven’t even
spoken to her
or interacted with
her in months

but were you watching her?

i mean yeah.

“how guys save me in their phone #11”