Tag: creative writing

deep breath.

 

I carry tempest in my
lungs,  a cold black murmur
that hooks it hums
in earthworms and writhes
to surface after rains
 winding street lamps to
devour them like dirt cake.
I hit the corner as
you are walking up.


the light goes out
and somewhere near
a tire screeches drowned
by the sharp inhale
you take when
a cyclist scrapes his tire
on a criss-crossed track
and spins into a tumble
that splits his helmet
on a bumper and someone
screams: are you ok?
(this city is full of
accident lately).
I stand still on
the flashing yellow,
not afraid but respectful.
your hands are clenched
in pockets waiting for
the red, face turned away.


I’d been walking slowly,
wearing cotton sundress and
consenting saunter.
a practice.
my hips are wide,
lips are pursed and
I am quiet, light and
diffusive but lucky for this
place mostly mired in
my own insides.
there are twelve dogs
with meat in their eye
nearby choking on their
collars.

I am wearing a blue alyssum
in my hair but
you will know me either
by my touch
if in enough of a rush and
close proximity to brush
an elbow with a thumb,
or the sudden sun I permit:
open laughter near your
chin, grabbing you
with force,
 inordinate apology
for the accidental brush
and really everything,
moist I’m sorry spills over
my freshly-done, pink
velvet lips as we collide.
wait for green or
similar direction.
there are sirens in the distance.
I open my mouth
to say this city is full
of accident lately,
isn’t it?

you?
you will know me by
my fang-toothed smile.

“morphic resonance”

0

I have a fear of swallowing pills
sometimes, and sometime I am fine
but sometimes I stick my zinc
inside my water
and wait for it to dissolve.
dress the glass with
lemon slices,
don’t cough at the medicine taste.
daily I take:
*I put my thumb up to count*

b12, nasal spray, rose hips (for the vitamin c),
vitamin c packets (for the vitamin C),
liquid chlorophyll for the lungs, elderberry for
the immunity, and aloe vera for the reflux.
(that’s one way I almost choked).
plus I dab in mugwort for the dreams
and movement of any sluggish blood,
coltsfoot for the throat, mullein for the
allergies, cohosh when I’m cramping
up or need a baby out.
nettles for some iron.
marshmallow root to coat my
irreparably dehydrated throat.
 chamomile at night to rest
my wanton soul from leaping
out her skin.

honestly, I’m just trying not to go outside
 or touch my face.
wash my hands.
bathe the day in isopropyl alcohol
and bergamot.
I ended up increasing my walks
to twice a day.
I don’t touch a single thing.
honestly. also
I almost choked to death five
times so this kind of means not a
thing to me.
plus I’m a nihilist.
my jaw clenched shut twice while eating
and a mouthful lodged itself.
a cherry pit got stuck in bolus,
two pills got caught in esophagus
and once I swallowed a safety pin
after placing it in a shot glass I then
used for vodka.
I somehow managed to cough and pull
it out.
oh and once I am pretty sure I got
alcohol poisoning.
oh and once I ran headfirst into
a cement mixer with my car
and broke my sternum and now
have a traumatic brain injury,
once I fell down some stairs,
once I got sucked in by a wave
and almost drowned,
once I leapt off my balcony after being
locked out and my landlord even
walked by me.
I waved.
could have told her but
I had a cat I was hiding.
we weren’t allowed to have cats.
I waited til she went inside the other building,
she was showing a couple around.
I took a breath, jumped  and
 barely missed the pole
that was poking out of the ground
right below my apartment.
 it was about five feet high.

honestly, I’m just trying not to go outside
or touch my face,
i’m not thinking about anything.
just sort of
twitching uncontrollably
which is why you maybe think
I’m more frenetic or stressed than
I am.
oh and I’m not allowed to eat
turmeric,
*I smile to show him my white teeth*
so I had to buy a capsule.

sometimes I’m scared to take that one too.
but no, I’m not any  more anxious
than before. what did you ask
me? Im sorry. 

“OCD” or “the iteration series”

0

I’ve been learning
performative emotion
to keep the ones I’m fettered
to warm, and to feel their
slippery manacles tease
the tops of my feet
like feathers as they pull
me.
paint my lashes black
and they’re wet  and
shaped like little
bolts.

 

we watched fireflies and I
licked your earlobes,
tried your fingers on
while I played with truths,
denied them.
felt your chest pressed hard
against mine.  we clanked
with ease
and I took in the scene
of two people unclothed and
unseen
underneath some crescent
in your backyard
without friendship between them;
without people between them and I dared
to stare in a way that endures more than
deciduous planting.
I broke at the
not now
you spoke back
with a masculine fragility
I had never known     envied,
tried on later with pants,
unplucked eyebrows
and alone.

you became red.
  I became an unwatched bull
headed to your porch,
snorting and you were
bare faced and guarded
 in all the ways
I have yet to learn.
I’m so obvious:

a scarlet blaze that starts with a joke,
two bodies parting,
an unreturned question that ends
with a sharp exclamation,
annihilation of something.
ends with a reminder from someone higher
to stop destroying something
to eliminate one part.
I am a wave of coercion
pulling you in and under
when I should have been
patient;
when I should have been laid in the grass
gently, next to the ant hills,
where you can learn my lifelines:
breasts,
spine,
toes curled without injury.
when I should have been pausing to notice
there are no people between us.
when I should have been gracious,
with you and bare-faced,
or wet cheeked or

I remove the rest of my top
and close my eyes deliberately
to show you the length
of each thorn.
wear my eyes like a hooked rose
with my tongue pressed
against your chin,
my lips trace
your jaw       I say
more softly
than  ever before,
having been tempered
and forced close:
you know,
darling,
let my teeth hit your lip

I have never
become divine without first
becoming storm.

 “ascension”

0

kitten ears and painted whiskers
tumble down my block   in rows
rehearsed
in leotards and black lace gloves.
yowls float through
 open window
TV taught them how to meow
for Kit Kats   Snickers Almond Joys
male applause.
one bends over to tie her shoe
and seduce the nearest father;
he eyes the crevice peeking through her
black tights. 

I’m dressed like Glinda the Good
Witch but sluttier: crop sequin top
and matching sequin mini skirt,
star wand and hair in pink curls
and crown and bubble gum lip gloss.
 hovering in a sing song
way, I’m on my front steps
throwing out Peanut Chews and
I burned a sigil for this
I whisper to the small girl.
she wants attention from her own father:
a photograph or upward twirl,
burning torch,
purr in his lap while he strokes her hair
without fetish
or just acknowledgment that she is the prettiest
girl dressed up as space cat,
those others are unoriginal, just regular
cats, he says I love yours best
and pats her on her head
and there is no offense taken.
she will grow up  to be even smaller
than  she supposed:

silent    enduring still,
not awake in her own power,
her own body
like a stillborn tiger:
expelled with a tear,
coated in the blood of her mother’s
screams as no one prepared her for the
slow cooked torture;
 ecstasy following expelling
something
parasitic and omniscient;
a future rival.
she lands on the floor
fetal,
the thing no one wanted
without even a congratulations!
bouquet or a single lotus
to symbolize completion.

we aren’t worthy of those feline
 endowments thrust upon us
when we are playing
mole     carcass on the doormat
aborted from our burrowed holes
for something more vociferous
to grab onto and finish,
our kinship;  the lions.
we are nothing like our ancestors.
our virile mothers
who know nothing of preening
or tail feathers.
take what they want.
they don’t grovel at their fathers’ feet.
they honor the slaughter,
the one they started
before the harvest and pay homage
to the sky for the water provided
before they stuff themselves
with vision.

we lack vision.
we just paint our nails black
and dress like witches,
talk shit;
start shit for derision.
and we keep turning to our men
for forgiveness when we are wayward
or won’t marry them
or stand up when they
crush our necks and they
say the rope is coming next.
we should be
stuffing our faces with the meat they provided,
learning fillet knives,
smiling like shovels and
burying them.

she’s got a silver tulle gown.
matching silver flats, black tights and
a silver and black crown.
eyes with those white orbs
and reserved.
I lean down to meet her.
Happy Halloween, princess,
I toss an extra piece in her
pumpkin: may the odds
be forever in your
favor. 


“Halloween”

 

FINISHED

0

I first named myself
Sada Black.
this was years ago,
January 2017.
actually I first named myself
Sarah Recusant, sometime
spring of 2012.
I used to meet strange men
in strange places or in my studio
apartment, linoleum flooring
covered in dust and let them
photograph me naked,
legs closed and grit
when they asked for more.
I have never been nice.
I have always been a nihilist.
I’ve always been ethnically
and age ambiguous.
I’ve always had
a propensity for lies,
or as my family
 cutely named them,
jokes.
secrets.

I do better solo.
shoplift solo.
grift solo.
wander solo.
walk.
when I began to walk the night
in heels, I began to emit
a low growl to evoke
the corner walls to talk.
when I began to tell the jokes,
 I began to show them
my letter opener first.
when I began to crack a smile,
they felt the first pinch of skin
opening.
I give an inch, you
take a mile?
when they cried out,
I began to review the rules:

1. Do not make a single sound.

 

and I lifted my skirt to
show them the right leg
with the right one to cut.

 

“Sada Black”

0

sarah,
 we are begging you
to run away from this.
throughout my life,
I’ve heard this little voice:
run.
that’s all it would say
run
and I used to think it was asking me to run
specifically
from a feeling or person
or there was a danger in my mind,
as it always happened when I daydreamed.
entombed in that kind of fanciful wave.
the intrusive thought happened
so frequently and  didn’t align
with my natural healing
which was to stare at a mirror
that’s also a lie.
my natural inclination is
to freeze, fight
then flee.

I was told that when it started
a voice that sounded like
mine would start to repeat things to
me but not to be alarmed
and
try not to repeat them out loud
as she says them.
that was the trick.
keep walking calmly and wait until you
hear run.
run.
always sounding like mine
but less scratchy from the daily
inhalation
so I can’t discern between
thoughts, preternatural omens
or the fantastic bubble I keep
my life immured inside like
quiet coffin, or

orchestra.
don’t touch that.

 

I stand up in six inch platforms
my name is Catarina Kacyrek.
jaw shut, stern, no feeling behind
his eyes. me? I’m chilling,
fresh stamped cattle on
cattle ranch.
you polish? he says in
a thick Russian accent.
third generation,
I say without tremble
may I come in?
I have to be invited.
but not only that,
I’m surrounded by two
large men  with two fillets
in mind so I am a bit
stalling.  understanding
suddenly when I hear the
meek
run and also
most men roll in packs,
and a gift:
he who stands at the place,
goes back.

but my first inclination is to
freeze,
then fight.

 

“the aliases” or “the woman who saw her own death”

0

“your end game is establishing psychic stability
 with extreme ordeals as part of your
 metamorphosis.”

my need for superfluous
fluctuations in behavior,
lifestyle and mood.
I am  God-drawn,
celibate,
obsessively
testing myself and
binding myself to
new conviction,

I am wrapping myself
in my insistent
unhinging,
and my lovers’ brides
for the way they scream your
name into the pillow.
but I am distant.
I am giant.
I am waving my hands
in the air and calling it
time.

the solution to all things
is to wait. oh, I am far,
far away and
 quiet in my cave,
becoming whatever I say
am..
becoming whatever I say.

be careful what you say.


“the magician”

0

what does the word emotionally available mean to you?
my therapist asks me. 

 

it’s nonsense, I think,
no one is ready.
 I know my problems.
have taken inventory.
taken a fourth step.
haven’t taken a drink in years.
seen this woman every two weeks
for four of them.
t’s amazing how mired in
a cloud you can be while constantly
checking yourself.
this is the cloud I live in:
of close but never ready.

“I have that effect on people,”
I accidentally say out loud.
what effect?
she asks scrupulously.

 

sometimes I just stop in the middle of things,
realize I am murmuring or gesturing
or five miles past where I need to be.
it’s happened.
my knees are weak.
i’m outside in front of a brick townhouse
with a white bunny on the window and in
light yellow letters it says
“Happy Easter!”
I have no idea what day it is and
I want to take the mask off.
no keep the mask on.
it’s dirty outside.
 I used to stick my hands
 squarely in mud and
pull up clumps to catch worms.
nothing is ever coming back.
 I have that effect on people.
“I can’t believe im gonna fucking live
through this,”I say out loud and a woman
with a chihuahua
walks the other way.
of what?
I hear her say.
what effect?

 

I  really shouldn’t lie this much
 I think to myself but I keep going,
keeping appointments,
keeping arrangements.
my thighs burn.
I don’t drink enough water.
I meet him at the corner of 12th and locust.
I keep my mask on.
I don’t extend my hand
but I turn on: a bright
bulb of sanguine excitement.

 

Hi!
I’m Ava Allinger,
the one who emailed you.
I am a nurse at Jefferson
looking for some extra disposable
scalpels.

 

I feel like I should tell my therapist
about the aliases,
and the lies but instead
I just say,

 

I dont know what I mean
and shrug.

 


“the aliases”

0

this was years ago.
the first time I told them about it.

sitting on the edge of the bay
 on a borrowed blanket,
I was vomiting up
 an Everclear Slurpee
and peeling back the bottom
of your parent’s quilt realizing
I had covered the entrance of the
ghost crab’s home.
I was 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,
and finally to tell you
the rituals were there to
keep me safe.

the tide crept back
and I heard you light a cigarette,
felt myself starting to drown again
and then your hand on my thigh
and then nothing at all.
pain subsides in very
miniscule amounts
of time
if  you don’t
repeat the
 story. 

(do not repeat the story)

but I’m
witnessing plane crashes
and matching the numbers to the proper
order, reorganizing mantles
and 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:
do you like warnings or do you
like to drown?

I think at some point
you have earned the right to say
I know already because you lived it
without acquiescing to
authority so I asked
to see it first:
the river’s mouth,
even though they said
I’d never make it.
I never said I didn’t
 deserve it
just that I could outrun it
if they gave it.

“warnings”

0

I value freedom most.
I wander
in both eyes and body
always collecting
but devoted to the last,
even fixated on the last,
even clutching the last
but also loose with most
acquaintances stressing
compromise, meaning
yielding to my rule
and enjoying breaks,
enjoying reaching,
enjoying screaming.

favoring opportunity over floor,
I become an opportunist.
favoring power over doormat,
I become a tyrant.
I value the sky and
currents more than houses.
 the ephemeral in
our lives while also walking
three inches higher than I am,
on tiptoe,
touching things,
making threats in the air
when angered and
you say I am

 for-mi-da-ble
and slow like that.
a bit virulent
is how you say it and
before we seek the advantageousness
of everything, it’s Friday
 and we are
 processing hard truths.
the way silence hits
and my hand opening,
 the spontaneity
of losing things.
tell me,
where do you keep your pocketknife?

 life is rushing and swamps
with its shades of
blue; azure
  (you name things)
sky, or cobalt fluid
or nightmare
like a wall of nail polish
you’re reading every
dressed up inch of you.
your rehearsed malignance.
your wry contribution
with your cocked smile
to hide your jealous
sulk.

the moon moves
from womb to waste
to task those unsewn wounds
 and you embrace things now
with reticence
but you’re open to the epitaph
scrawled across the rock hard
eyelid
       temperance
(that means patience)
my Venus in Leo
is running.
you made him carve something else
across  your eyes
that night on Jupiter:
          I remember everything.

but you didn’t want to be
so right and you didn’t really
ask
 for things:
you just opened a door
and walked in.
you made it clear
as you rummaged through
 the closet smelling him,
you are always only someone’s
secret. you are
unconditional when furtive
but otherwise,
rigid and passing
like a northern mist.

that means when kept.
when kept,
you’re just a blur,
vanishing,
just a sprint.

“venus in 12th house”

1

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑