I think at some point
you have earned the right to say
I know already because you lived it
without acquiescing to
objective authority.
I asked to see it first:
the river’s mouth,
the sky bordered in torrent and
my envisaged pout,
my omniscient frown.
even though they said
I’d never make it,
it’s been a lot this far.
two fucked knees but
a back strong from bundle
and
I never said I didn’t
deserve it,
just that I could outrun it
if they gave it.
“the flood”
remind the audience that no one ever believes you,
the British accent says.
“also,” I skip along beside him.
glee is a quiet torture.
“No one ever belieeeves me.”
I am smiling ear to ear
and full of caffeine,
the slow grind of back teeth
back and frankly,
welcome. glee is
a hedonistic pursuit.
It’s June,
beginning of summer
and I have found
you.
“King of Cups”
this was years ago.
the first time I told them about it.
sitting on the edge of the bay
on a borrowed blanket, vomiting up
an Everclear Slurpee
and peeling back the bottom
of his parent’s quilt realizing
I had covered the entrance of the
ghost crab’s home.
taken by the dirt under my thumbnail,
the coil of a plastic straw and
embroiled in my own
deafening philosophy
about the closing of the day;
the way it moved–
death,
like an itinerant wave that followed me
—and only me–
everywhere.
I coughed that up second
to tell him
the rituals were there to
keep me safe.
the tide crept back
and I heard him light a cigarette,
felt myself starting to drown again
and then his hand on my thigh,
nails in my skin,
then nothing at all.
pain subsides in very
miniscule amounts
of time
if you don’t
repeat the
story.
(do not repeat the story)
my head is eighteen visions a second:
someone getting their face smashed
with a brick, someone getting into
a plane, slicing the skin of my fingers,
budding inability to swallow (we’re there)
blood. blood. a girl that follows me
and only me, everywhere.
and matching the numbers to the proper
order. reorganizing mantles.
bleaching my teeth and
every inch of my house.
first, you have to feel safe.
I begin to build the glass
around me.
and turning to you again, I
implore you to pick a title and
stick with it. for me, I say
cupping your baby soft chin,
(despite your fear of frozen lakes,
we advise you when the time comes–
between Australia and Alaska,
Alaska will be more safe):
do you like warnings or do you
like to drown?
“warnings”
get some rest,
girl,
it’s the
Four of Swords.
they say I must be
heedless to dabble in the
dark like that
and unarmed.
more unthinking;
a fiery capricious
tantrum,
stabbed in the fucking back
and fingers naturally
pointy and
webbed as things
develop into theory,
into pentacles,
into air.
time is a sequence of
cracking joints, more
misfortune and now
I blend into the wall
when I want and you will
know me by
eyes popping open,
or my purr of a
low growl,
low to the ground,
undaunted in my
new soft black
steps.
you just hang there.
“Arachne”
there you are.
Saturdays and the 1 pm
alarm clock on snooze,
the bare-faced evenings
in throw blankets;
languid, but there is still
a rabid tongue
between fits of sudden inspiration.
moved from sheets
to cushions
to sheets
to type it,
to showeronce a week
if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth.
graze your chin, scalp,
untouched chest.
open your chapped lips to the sky.
feel the water rush your neck and
trickle down your navel
to soak your unseen toenails.
do not question anything
for those three whole seconds;
it is the closest thing to orgasm
you can manage.
it has been a tough change in seasons:
costuming yourself in grin,
(you’re vulnerable)
tights and boots;
an expansive blankness
still drives your body around
to pick up soy milk for coffee.
finish something you started.
there you are.
some cooing cobra.
the chills that almost ate
me: winter. several
in a row.
the darkness and
introspection of how
I’ve chosen to succeed,
lone and the two of swords.
thanking my institutions
for showing me how to carve
pure copper into
green or sharp to hold,
the likelihood that two things
look identical enough
to both be chosen,
that I will learn the
ways of mask
and holster,
unfrozen and
burgeoning.
there you are.
“rage” or “the fifth wave”
typically, an episode starts
at the mantle any time of day
but something has to hit
and it’s usually
three things at once:
stasis plus drugs,
(that means im fucking dizzy and
no one will listen)
an acid wave in
my stomach and
a recurring thought,
(some say intrusive or imply im responding
to internal stimuli)
caffeine, throbs, jaw
tightening into one flat line–
then there’s the timing.
in no particular order:
can’t breathe
can’t swallow
can’t move my legs
and then the heart leaps
start; staggered,
the rhythm is irregular.
racing.
my pulse burning.
mouth turns to stone.
tongue desperate, bone-
dry, lurching outwards and me
biting it to stop talking.
just want to stop talking.
saying everything that’s happening out
loud and answering their questions
but snapping, imprudent.
i don’t know what I notice first:
that I haven’t exhaled,
swallowed or stood or
or
that I can’t seem to do anything
nor stop the group from
swallowing me whole,
screeching orders.
desperate choral grove.
the candle on the altar.
blow it out.
no, lick it.
just get up.
listen to me, Cat. me first.
children all around.
when I’m still, the breezes hit
and then suddenly the room falls
away. I can feel the blackness
pervade as if there is a hand
around my neck;
this ostensive power
beyond me.
i’m clutching the rug,
bottom of the ocean
as the first wave hits.
“the labyrinth”
I checked the time
before walking home.
a habit.
10:26 pm, no magic
in that but the drizzle
feels good on my bare thighs.
my obsession with clocks
began years ago.
everything in threes,
I am sobbing in front of the
young attending.
and I just can’t stop reading the titles.
begin to pick my lip.
sometimes I feel like I am choking.
sometimes I think I am willing it
through like it’s a choice
to breathe or not.
they didn’t check my throat,
not even once but they
did give me a pregnancy test.
sympathetic nodding,
no real connection to the
young man but an hour of
purging. weeping.
wrote me a prescription.
I am always arranging everything.
I call Monday.
the psychiatrist doesn’t take my insurance.
can just peculiarly count rhythm
hearing a few notes.
and can align thoughts with
crescendo, and can align time too.
I decide to skip it altogether.
collect new rocks for
my mantle.
move art in new corners
spend a day composing.
later i will find out
that i have severe dysphagia,
a nodule in my throat.
and that swallowing is in fact
the most insidious
danger.
there are whole nights I don’t sleep.
check the clock for it.
“3:13”
a friend told me,
let vengeance drive you.
and some say
it is better to pray that
your enemies have everything you want
than to pray they go without.
so we are both knives forward
and out
seeking revenge
and
this
is
where
the
poem
begins.
—-
we parted due to irreconcilable difference
—-
as long as I am writing does it matter what?
—-
we don’t fuck anymore we just hold each other.
—-
the amount of times I screamed privately and you still think I asked for your help.
——-
you need people around you who don’t need anything but make you look good and I need family. you like when people have status and i like when people care.
—-you just have to write
—-
catharsis is screaming in a bathtub and also “destruction is an action”
—
you just HAVE TO WRITE THE LITTLE GHOSTS SAID
shake my head no.
“I don’t intend to hurt myself.”
my thighs are colored: red
and with a finger-shaped
bruise, the smell of
someone else’s
laundry detergent wafts about
me; spectral evidence of being
wanted, licked, used
and
I am windswept,
gutted and frank,
even in malaise, I
fork my tongue to cut:
“I can only cry at hospitals
and then I usually leave.”
lean in, (and they said
be gallant). he has
blue eyes.
“most of my family is dead.
14 members at least and…”
my throat sore from
conversation. addressing
myself and the little girl in the corner
of the room.
“you can’t see her.”
persisting mucus. it’s an affliction;
laryngopharyngeal and
also, the taste of him
takes my hand.
takes my neck.
takes my waist.
stop talking.
“MA’AM WHO?”
but I just can’t.
where are your friends?
the EMT said to me.
“I just want to be seen.”
“freight” or “nine of wands”
“hard times have a remarkable way of opening your eyes.”
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