here is what I wrote down:

I had spent an hour walking one direction
without purpose or intent
only feeling the sun beat down on me,
me without water or
something to suck on
or a blanket to hold
and I was so thirsty.

 

without noticing, I was suddenly
surrounded by people at some outdoor
art show and I averted all the eyes
and tugged at my sundress;
the bottom always slipped up and
i could tell that they wanted to eat
my upper thighs,
see my tan lines.
   you are cold and dry
my tongue was dry but I was hot that day
so men were everywhere,
my lips were open to keep
my jaw from shutting
and I don’t know how I got to the
park that day but let me tell you
that when my jaw started to shut,
I said nothing to anyone in that crowd.
I took my hand,
cavalier about it,
gave a quick eye over my shoulder
  and opened my mouth with force
and continued not a break in saunter,
me terrified and looking for water
scared to shut my jaw.

you asked what living in perpetual fear
feels like and it is this.

 

“how guys save me in their phone #9”

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I am releasing the stiffness:
years of posing, postured
and pacing, chasing
gratification.
I’m indulgent at
least, greedy when
touched and hoarding.

 

when you drop the straw,
the miracle happens.

 

clutching at the edges of everything

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all day long
I vacillate between intention
and immediate withdrawal;
my habits, my beloved

hermeticism and the double meaning of
everything and I’m
ambivalent about every choice
I’ve given myself over to–
even in completion,
I shrug.
let the wind take me.

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“I am moved by fancies that are curled; Around these images, and cling; The notion of some infinitely gentle; Infinitely suffering thing.”

 

–TS Eliot

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Ive watched my nervousness

eat me daily,
clutch me with its
indecision   I am robed in
rosary, nodding, chanting throughout
the day but really I am
    fickle
is the first thing I write about myself
 and I am always
holding something somewhere in
my body.
like a claw lives inside
my jaw line and now
I have TMJ

       what’s that? sometimes
they wait.

a psychosomatic disorder where your
jaw locks when you’re chewing
and you slowly start to choke.

well not everyone chokes.
I just started to choke
when it closed the first time.

“the drowning”

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carried with her
a weapon: her keys in hand,
a disarming speech pattern
and no reason to suspect
her about anything.

I never tell a lie,
she said
leading me to
someone else’s house.

 


(how do you get away with that?)


I just never finish the story,
she said and I
hung there like a
Christmas ornament
glistening in her iris.

 

“How guys save me in their phone #6”

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She hit him hard with the paddle before he had a chance to speak.
 “Ow! Fuck! Why did you do that?”
He looked over at her.
 “No, not fair.”
 She set the paddle on the night stand.
 “All is fair in sex and war.”
 “I’m onto you.”
 She walked towards the door. Her heels made sound and they hadn’t before. At some point during the last story, she had put stilletoes on.
 “Where are you going?”
 She kept walking without turning around.
 “You only get one question and I didn’t respond to that one.”
 She turned to face him at the door.
 “Why did I do it? Because I could.”
 They stared at each other. He felt the sting from the paddle on his left thigh, fading.
 “You’ll love the next story. You may recognize it. It’s The 13th Story.”
 He looked puzzled.
 “No, it’s the third story.”
 She smiled.
 “Oh maybe you are catching on.”
 She winked and walked out. He felt the sting from the paddle disappear. He replayed her words you may recognize it. He listened to her heels clack down the empty hallway further away from him. He wanted to call her a bitch out loud but was scared she could still hear him somehow.

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Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies;
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes—
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might’st him yet recover!
–Michael Drayton
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“Just say yes and step into the consequence.”

–kaveh akbar, calling a wolf a wolf

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