carried with her
a weapon: keys in hand,
disarming speech pattern;
accented and d r aw n out
drawl, a couple y’alls
and no reason to suspect
her about anything.
I never tell a lie,
she said
leading me to
some house.
i’m tepid but halfway up
the steps, how do you
get away with that?
I just never finish the story,
she said, half turned and I
hung there like a
Christmas ornament
on the front porch
glistening in her iris.
“How guys save me in their phone #12”
it took me two hours
to let the ants out
of their sugar container.
my vicious sneer
melting into your chest
nearby as they scrambled,
running every which way
as I considered retrapping
them, trying again to watch
them suffocate.
they say I’m a masochist
but my men know me
differently. a
sense of loneliness
led me to look for families
which left me enraptured
by cults.
I mark the corners
of my house with
sigil, command.
I’m surrounded by
five mirrors,
in the favor of
male form, my blade lined
mouth opening.
“The sadist”
but to you there’s no difference between
decimation and solution,
so you’re palms out
begging for it
full of resolve
and here comes the reaper
wearing your blood.
“Saturn in Scorpio”
we are two indolent house cats.
striped with ribbons of each other.
soft paws and voracious,
scratching at each other’s scabs
to remember how to
hunt.
“the aviary”
but I feel the root rot and darken
without altar, water
or speech.
you walk in and
I’m here now
growing into a black stem.
you walk in and look
right at me
and I don’t know
where to begin.
but I found the
aperture.
you walk in and
look right at me and
my shiny white teeth
forge a new smile.
I begin to grow,
unfurl, hum
softly.
“datura moon”
you kiss me hard
and hold it.
the water is lavender scented,
red, full of salt and pink roses
and
you say nothing for the hour,
allowing me this still and
grand ballet of thought.
of ramble and kiss the back of
my clean neck so
softly, I melt and stick to your
chest for the remainder.
all the ways in which we’ve sat
in water a dozen times before
doesn’t compare to just once,
in tactility, not in musing.
your eyes were green once.
and woman.
you are letting your nose
rest between my shoulder blades
and I am close to sob.
I am letting it emerge.
I am letting it rise before
beach, caught below,
the little girl with book
in hand, snickering.
one of my first memories is
taking a shower with my father.
he laughed a lot.
in dreams,
your eyes are blue and
I am terrified I will
get swallowed by the ocean.
often, I am outrunning a
tidal wave. sometimes,
I am in the middle of two waves
coming from opposite directions
and there’s no land in sight.
once, the girl brought me to
return a book in the current
as the wave was
building, and she had no fear.
for those who believe in fairy
tales, first comes love,
then betrayal, then
the crow to tell the
morbid wail of
widowed,
accused.
and the hidden thread;
the unreliable narrator
springing from the
Lullian Circle,
knave at side or
just a knife around
her neck.
in dreams,
your eyes are blue and
I am terrified we both
get swallowed by the ocean.
often, I am outrunning a
tidal wave. sometimes,
I am in the middle of two waves
coming from opposite directions
and there’s no land in sight.
once, the girl brought me to
return a book as the wave was
building, and she had no fear.
for those who believe in fairy
tales, first comes love,
then betrayal, then
the crow to tell the
morbid wail of
widowed,
accused.
and the hidden thread;
the unreliable narrator
springing from the
Lullian Circle,
knave at side or
just a knife around
her neck.
you just have to begin.
you hold my hand
when I speak.
I am nervous inexplicably.
just existence is a trial.
count the candles.
set the rocks.
in my waking hours,
I practice walking across a lake
with black boots.
it’s an icy sidewalk on
a ledge but I pretend
that it’s a long pond.
have 13 visions of every way
he’s cut to pieces in front of
me, swallowed by the
ground.
when he first comes around,
I notice my wrist,
then my jaw,
surrender.
I have an urge to burn the
house down first
but in a long quaver,
forget the nonsense:
the counting of the pulse,
the spotty mason jars,
my blood dripping on a red
throw blanket, laundry,
my childhood–effete,
mold speckled shingles,
my sullen dead father
and his one last breath
alone,we think
sometime after midnight.
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