i’m turning another year and
I’m looking for checks,
counting my reasons for staying
or for running the other way.
I have overdue things.

recycling and wrinkles
 and Kombucha bottles
pile up
like the hairballs on the floor.
I avoid without cleaning sometimes.
make a zig zag to the door
where I cast spell:
the fits of importunity,
little raps at my neighbors door
       sugar, that’s all
that make me wish I had chosen the life
 of a mendicant
but my knees always hurt.
I have unchecked messages everywhere:
voicemail reminders and
grandma’s leukemia is pretty bad and
I’m rotten and everywhere like
 her snaking liver spots.
Mom bought me a new chain to carry him on.
i’m allergic to anything that looks like silver
but doesn’t hold its weight,
including nickel-painted gold
so I’ve gotten good at tearing things apart
to see what they are
 made of.

and the red spots line my throat,
white dabs of cream and my
strapless dress     taking out my earrings to dance
with the new one who laughs with
Delphic intention,
and I’m obsessed with the way men
strangle anything dear to them.

I got a new mural and icing lips
and white teeth.
no mercury caps unless you include
my orbiting lips.
dream of Christmas, cinnamon buns and
 him choking out an
“I love you”
with my color by numbers.
I’m remembering hugging an unnamed kitten and
trying to hold onto
this feeling.
I didn’t get impermanence,
just a new bike every year
to run away from home.
and suddenly my phone chokes out a reminder
 that the living are
hunting me.
  here we are.

my heels in the dirt, his hand in mine,
 smile
I say for no one.
nail polish named kerosene and
gums as red as love.
my hair is auburn in the sun
and today is partly drizzle and partly
made up in my head
      congratulations, baby, you made it.

wet cheeks and leftover streamers
and trick candles
and weak knees when I’m
bobbing to the rhythm.
polaroids on the table and
 girls that try to
tell me secrets.
I tell the sky all the things.
   I’ll show you all the films I like

we barely talk.
we watch films.
he finishes
on top of his fingers
and my wrapping paper.
i’m half asleep
but full of sugar
and thoughts like a
wadded piece of past
shaped like rope
tightening
and

I wake up in his forearm
biting through his moles
to get to you.

 

“ the birthday party (26)”

 

0

 

lightly doused
in panic:
the atmosphere,
the violin,
the food, it’s
everything.
I am scared, shaking and
 cradled by my
gnawing contrition.

your hand is in mine.
you are stroking a painted thumb
   this nail polish is called kerosene
smiling openly.
I return the gesture:
 show my unkempt life in off white teeth,
sore tongue,
gums as red as love.

someone gently rubbed glitter on my
forearm to make me
*pop* a little more and I
meant to respond.
 my heart is a brass bell,
frozen, staid,
caught between two
hungers.
my hair is up and partially mussed,
dark auburn when there’s sun.
I don’t wear my brother’s ashes
 around my throat
anymore.
I think that’s more telling
than I let on.

today is partly drizzle and partly
made up in my head.
you stand  taller than God and I
shrink; gothic in a mixed
drink and someone else’s
dress wrapped around my hips, 
daydream of someone else’s
rough lips picking at my thin skin,
someone else’s orgasm
propping up my knees,
someone’s meek kiss carving diamonds
on a weak spine
that is atrophying
on a bleak night,
and I almost turn twenty five
like this.
someone taps me,
asks me for a light.

my hair is half down and
 covering my eyes.
my feet are bare,
 rooted in mud somewhere near
a soggy paper plate
that has a dot of frosting on the rim
 scraped from a cake
that probably read
congrats on breaking indigent!
but we devoured it without skimming
as if ten plus years of
bohemian arrogance is anything to celebrate.
I should be dead.
I should be erupting.

you are muffled laughter and
showing another woman the view from the balcony,
holding space for her pain in a way
 that romanticizes internalized rage.
I am watching.
I am  the dark breaking sky
who forgot how to storm
so she just lightly pours
another flask full.
my chest is broken and brass and
coughing politely.
“Ahem,” I hear
them say, still waiting
for my matchbook.

I point to the moon
and start running.

“the birthday party”

0

and suddenly elucidated,
I remember,
I am the dark thing
inside of me.

“datura moon”

0

 

seventeenth set is most definitely
about you.
i hope you find my gaucherie
amusing.

i find it excruciating
to even stand
near a thing I admire.
i like starting things,
putting them out,
my parents rushed me to
the sink at five years
old; i laid my finger
flat to feel
what leaves feel
right before they fall.
right as they hit the
burning metal trashcan
in my backyard
as we removed evidence
of debris and a precipitous
October,
I touched my finger
to the flame.
it was the brilliant orange
that drew me and force,
contained like that
right here in our backyard.

shapeshifting to a final
face like
me, a hot knife
and warmed up,
having sliced through
tendon and you just
suddenly
soft like warm butter.

 

0

all the trash cans get stolen

so people bag up their trash,

litter bags, pizza boxes, futon springs,

mb drive,  colonies of lone shoes,

and they throw it on the sidewalk

so if you happen to be walking

you get a whiff of everyone’s little whittled life.

It smells like government fingers and quiet hurts.

This is a concrete cell.

 

“kensington in january”

0

I have eight dollars in my savings account. 

 

I thought I would move to Philly
to make something of myself,
and I laugh because
who says that?

0

i go on a smolder binge.
lick my lips
like you are licking me
from inside
the lens
my lips are drier
 than they look,
pursed slightly,
fuschia with a hint of quiver,
black corset with the straps
 pulled down to reveal
soft breasts and
rock hard shoulders
used to baring the brunt
of the pain they
spill to me
and expect me to carry. 

I trace a broken nail
over the length of my clavicle
to remind the camera
I have been touched
before.
he says my eyes are “bright”
and pauses for impact.

they are traced with
 sharp blue pen
smudged with charcoal and
unblinking, wide open
ready to receive and a very
false articulation of how
 I actually feel
when touched.
as if a question appeared,
I answered,
    I am usually shut tight,
     braced for impact

thinking of finger-filled nights,
someone else’s on mine,
sternum pillows,
tonight im
missing hem,
torn stockings,
dirty feet and unkempt nails
with grime underneath
picking at the past.

its perpetual,
a haunting you can’t
name,
your death or
is it everything in
between?

“vanity”

 

0

 

I come over wearing everything
 I own
so it takes forever to get to
 the bottom of things, and
 you take forever to say
anything

we take our time licking at the scratches.\
the wounds from the boulevards
stay wide open
like our suspicions,
a flood when teeth are involved.
we drown in each other’s
solipsist phrases
keep going
you taste a tad like probity
ruined but I can’t tell if it’s
me or the other ones doing it.
i feel a lot like chapel steps.
but taste like others’
men and
i look like
what do I look like?
like someone waiting

0

An estuary of first thoughts and
what color is that bruise?
Forced life into this ossuary,
forced me to take progestin,
forced me to give birth to nothing but a long
dictionary of underused adjectives and
nothing ever sticks.
The paper was lined with my hurried tonic of
spite and estrogen and sealed with your
brusque argument against it.

“colorado” or “plan B”

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