and what else?
this is my 12th house.
I wake up in his forearm
biting through his moles
to get to you.
and what else?
you repeat and
I say something cute:
honey, dip a spoon into the
past and you’re going to watch it
lick you.
“grief”
your house was yellow.
my house was blue and
a ten by ten box;
a cage and me trapped,
torn between watching them
pack up their stuff
from their own pact to self
and me, dripping virile,
pushing them out.
we needed a spark,
I pounced and
shortly after,
the railing tumbled on my
sprinting ankles,
the basement rattled and the
floorboards dropped
filling the place with the kind of emptiness
that is so dense
it smothers.
smoke smells a lot like
ticking minutes
if we scented time the way we
spray each other.
I hear a bark.
hope the turtle remembers how to
duck and cover.
the cat’s sure got it.
remember me as a black-winged fury
hovering over your bed at night because
there will be nothing left by dawn
except some burning blue
cedar wood and a cheap comb
that found its way buried in the dirt.
the photo albums gone,
dusty cookbooks charred,
vanished remote controls stay hidden
and the asbestos and fiberglass ceilings
imploded despite our fear that was the
thing that would kill us.
I am left with a cancer
that gnaws through the joints
like packs of rats chewing through cables
to take the attic back.
and I need this.
I really miss your hands on me
and the convivial cluster of caterpillars
that swallowed the bark
the day in the orchard
when you held me in sullen incubation
before the devastation of the forest,
before I made way for us,
the start,
the parting and somewhere
an empty crib stays unfurnished.
someone starts an engine.
the varnish is melting and so am I.
God gave you a chance and
an unfinished smile.
a smoke alarm malfunctions
mocking your reluctance
to just grin and bare it,
to just open up your arms
and catch me when I jump;
but first here comes the fish tank
catch me with all the fit I threw.
we all look like burnt books
blowing in the breeze
and now, I too,
am wafting with the exhumed memories.
before my legs even hit the dew,
you watch me dwindle to a million floating pieces
in the cradle of tar black trees.
you see the contract ascertained a certain
ephemeral appeal
and I’m too thirsty to complain
about anything but the heat in here.
hold your breath and wait
for some other current to take me.
baby
there are no exits.
“chrysalis”
“An opportunity for happiness:
earth we cannot possess
only experience.”
–louise gluck
it’s like a woke up a black and gold butterfly.
Oh, and what is my
true form then?
you’re a sadist, Sarah.
“forms”
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
-Emily Dickinson
oh, it’s non stop stories month.
chapter 22: I am fine, xxx is dead.
nice figure.
sharp glances,
obsessed with her wrinkles in
passing window.
thirty three years old and can’t seem to
thwart her own self persecution,
said she liked ass play
and pegging and
doing things in pieces.
“how guys save me in their phone”
one day I had a dream
you bit the head off of a blue jay
and spit it back into her nest.
when I asked why you said:
To prove you will never leave me.
here I am,
on command about to run
across the canyon and I
laugh real loud in my
skin tight
dress:
the one cut real low in the back
in the shape
of an obtuse
triangle;
jarring contrast to my
scared-straight spine
but I still
slouch.
I twist the straw into crooked pieces
and tell myself things:
make sure they know
you are having
a real good time,
show your teeth,
hearty laugh
with belly and mouth and your
lips are stretched to the limits like your
social apathy.
show your full moon eyes
and hide.
hold your tonic like a wand;
fall asleep
inside of yourself
in the middle of
everything and wait for
the night to break.
later, he will show
you photographs
to prove you were
there.
if you are lucky,
he notices the story
dripping from your
eyes, the door
opening, the splash
of scarlet on your tights
as you replace each page,
as you become the
walking lake flooding
the wake that held
you, and he becomes
the witness that love
is a quivering knife.
“tributaries”
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