I plan to spend the year
fat; replete in web
and feast.
“the web”
the first thing you notice about me is
the way I saunter when I walk anywhere,
even to grab a ginger ale from the cooler
“it’s my favorite.”
but then linger near the
exit the rest of the night with the crumpled straw
in my hand
and the temper on my tongue
contained,
but I’m waiting for a siren
to let this thing out.
my name is artemis.
sometimes buildings just catch on fire.
you say I always crouch with a
bow in hand.
“I’m just nervous.”
and that when I am lying I look away really
fast so you can’t see the smile spread
across my face and you know
I fucked your friends
and you know I’ll fuck some more
and you see me on the screen
my name is Artemis.
parting lips, combing bangs,
practicing inflection as I said
I would.
you said you’ll always remember
the way I laughed LOUD
and so sudden like you were the funniest man in
the whole world.
and I’ll always remember
the first time I was invited anywhere.
my name is Catarina Kocurek
may I come in?
you said yes.
no, it’s not that you said yes.
you said “ok”
as I walked across the welcome mat
throwing matches as you swept.
“how guys save me in their phone #4”
rainstorm.
unscheduled and I had been
comfortable in shifting drought.
avoiding the wasps
hidden in the grass
with my clumsy, calloused toes
seasoned from walking too far
and too hard in unpadded sandals
when the first sign of spring hits,
and my sky blue sundress seems a
sudden hindrance:
flimsy, strap always falling down and
blows up in breezes
so I have to keep watching the way I
carry myself around men.
I crouch and the hem crawls to
expose my left thigh and the
garter you gave me:
not the daisies I wanted,
a ring of bruises
in the shape of your open mouth
still fresh with conquest;
lasting impact of
your parting breath that
said nothing and now
just hangs there and hurts
when I shower.
wait
I’m counting cicada shells
under the picnic table;
a gesture of presence.
someone told me to stop everything
and I needed a year to pass.
I scrubbed away the last of your fingernail
but I have to ride those
bite marks out.
blinked once and a ripple in the sky
burst; liberated and aimless,
she shows just one day’s worth
of self-containment uncondensed,
without tension, falling naked
she’s black and soft and
seamless surfeit with mild
violence, crackling and
completely cageless.
my feet are covered in mud
before I even notice the shadow
wash over my bangs.
wait.
drenched in flood my head
is dark red because you liked
“subtlety”
and I liked demonstrative movement;
a hint of auburn wasn’t enough to show
blood with just a little bush
so I adorn myself with ritual:
hair dye and cleanses,
little thorns,
little kills to draw your
attention. my knees hurt and
all those cicadas are dead
so I stand to lift my face to the thunder;
a small gesture of inflorescence.
Wait.
open my arms purposefully
like petals of a rose exhaling
in relief for the drink
her master brings.
parched from the work my dry words had done
undoing
as they roamed free all over
your front yard.
God makes pacts with penitents
and you barely have a face that isn’t
my reflection so I’m itching to be clean and
fresh and start
again.
stretch my neck with pride to
to catch her drops on my tongue,
bold with repentance
and ready to wash away
the phantom jaws that bait me.
but suddenly charged,
the gray sky remembered
she held lightning.
and suddenly illuminated,
I remembered
I am
the dark thing
inside of me.
“prayer”
preoccupied with two men
but not against my trespasses.
my name is Hecate.
came with two friends but ignored
the male.
my name is Hecate.
intently staring straight
but hawk-like periphery,
I know because she brushed my arm
when I waltzed past and cut in between them
but with precision.
like she was waiting.
my name is Hecate.
had a dream about her.
had a dream about her every night
this year?
she slinked into the party
dressed like a rubber cat,
snapped her fingers and said:
my name is Hecate,
repeat after me.
“3.”
I used to move once a year,
no matter where I lived,
I felt the urge to change apartments annually,
I begin for him and
he says “that’s a lot”
while falling asleep before
turning me over in the bed,
unzipping my jeans,
entering without verbal contract.
but another time I told him I felt
like I was merging the two pieces of myself
as I rested on top of his elbow.
like two pieces coming together as one.
he is falling asleep.
I mean me and your friend,
I whisper.
“2.”
the theme this year is handmade
and hidden.
eat your chocolate-covered raspberries
and please,
try not to cry:
not in public,
and not in that dress.
not on this day.
wipe your sticky handprint
on a towel and throw it in the
hamper.
blot your glistening lipstick
on a tissue and make sure it
makes it to the wastebasket.
wipe the counters with lemon-scented
dish soap.
light a candle.
set the table.
embrace him when he enters.
he made those carob-coated kisses
from scratch.
you deserve this and
he deserves that.
you earned that swelling thing.
he earned that red ring around his finger and
his base
and that homemade batch of quick mix cupcakes;
the cardboard leaks into the batter
but you mostly taste the crushing waste of
conversation, of
years together, of your
creativity misplaced.
today is priceless and
boy, you sure worked hard at hiding those
resentments.
you should be rewarded.
wet your whistle with some low class
cognac.
show some teeth,
bat an eyelash.
give those big burgundy lips a big, juicy
smack.
make him yearn for those polished tips
climbing down his back;
sculpted to scoop frosting,
you let him taste the vanilla from your
index.
make him work the dishwasher for it.
but first make sure he swallows each
homemade mouthful;
gulps each morsel,
glazes his throat and everything that touches it
sticks.
he’s satisfied his girl can do this;
his girl can prove it.
wait til you hear his lips smack back.
boy, you sure look good in that apron
hovering over him, a domestic
giant and he looks so good
choking at your ankles
tasting all your sprinkled
thumbtacks.
“valentine’s day”
you’re precarious, and I write a final
warning in the sky:
get out of this town.
but you want to show something off:
gather your pack,
skin some hides,
cross into this side of the hills.
yea, I’d risk swapping infections with you:
scarf down the whole town in an effort to escape
yourself, myself,
we both fuck and run
for fun,
but it seems I’ve been absconded
from my all male zoo, and
you salt my face with spit
when you tell me
you’re mine
and you’re snacking on my cheeks,
really laughing this time.
I’m yours for the slaughter,
wild elk for the taking.
besides, I’m the only one left
who doesn’t scream
when you chase me.
you’re a wolf.
I’m a swaddled baby
trapped in a cave,
I’ll prove it,
come taste me.
abandon your cloak,
the cover of trees
camouflaged in the leaves,
fur like bark
so I mark you on accident
with my sordid tongue pen.
I leave my initials everywhere I’ve
ever been.
come find me and
feed.
treat me like you need me
to survive this coming season.
step on my neck.
pull the skin from my teeth.
suck the moisture from my breath,
whisper:
home
as I bleat,
as I lay at your feet
and empty my guts on your
claws.
“from your secret admirer #19”
(What if no one’s the killer & no ones the martyr?)
he always talked to me
like I was a word problem:
he furrowed his brow and
looked 100 years older than me
but didn’t leave any more
of an impression than that.
he was an egoist with a small penis
and he licked my face sometimes
when he finished.
that’s when I left
I thought about screwing the entire community
to get them off my fucking back
but the way you touch me
feels less tenuous,
spacious like breath,
like lungs rising from their skin cocoon,
a lot like late June
before the heat hangs us
with her relentless swarm
so I keep my gaze towards you.
we used to talk about my feelings a lot
but I could tell it bothered him
when I brought up the fear of pedophilia:
but you can’t tell some of them are 17:
not the way they move when they run,
shirts off, they could be
20
21.
I’m a creep too.
like a sale on day old bread:
fifty cents is not a lot
and I just want it all.
he always said “interesting”
after everything I said.
I was a loony tune caught in the moon
pretending to love his censorious stature,
but really when we fucked
I just thought of those young men
arms wrapped around me,
tongues on my neck,
18 and over.
the more I remember
the more the whole thing seemed like a poorly written rough draft
and I just kept waiting for the twist,
the prize behind Door Number Three
that turned out to be a supernatural force that drove me
to contrived madness
and I just ended up feeling bad about everything I ever said
to them.
silence is astounding
and I filled it with talking spaces,
unfinished business.
he called my sadness “savage”
when I ate my own heart during the famine
but it was better than doing a rain dance
with our shriveled. cowering tongues out
and no gray in sight.
in my defense, judge,
I didn’t know the bitch was coming back
to dig up her brother.
those little siamese cats
what a bloody, noisy mess.
had I known that;
how loud it would be,
the squeal, the cry at the first
touch
I would have started by ripping
out the larynx.
“the hush”
you’re something else.
something that can’t hang around
but also can’t spell
retreat without a
book being forced
in your face.
I’m a thesaurus, and I’m
suddenly panting
like an exiled Arabian
falling in love with every mirage
that promises water,
mouth as cup,
swift recompense for the previous harms
done by your
fathers.
we’re meeting in the middle
of a wide abyss that I picked,
and the first thing you want to
know is:
how did you get here,
and where do you really live?
and I want to know if you
brought any food and
why you ever let someone you don’t
know in.
you are unphased by the red veins
in the clouds, and the way they clap
black as my mood shifts,
the exes in my eyes,
the way the night moves out of my
way every time I step outside
to greet the twilight,
the portending moon,
and I am hoping we can
finally talk about the way it
felt when we left it up to
God.
just so you know,
I begin,
the greatest trick the devil ever played
was herself, and she’s the only one
listening to your
impetuous cries
tonight.
“the emergence”
I drove through ghosts and all of middle Earth
to get here;
to lean into the sharp points
of middle hurts.
the difference between you and I
are only a couple stealth instruments
but we both murder with force;
with words that creep down the esophagus
in the middle of the night,
rupture guts and my stomach turns in half
like a huge, hungry mouth just
folding from the pressure,
investigating old sutures with
her incisors and voraciously
eating itself.
i’m trying self-immolation since the recovery
stopped working.
stalking your shadow,
waiting for high noon,
marauding around the Conoco station with
two kinds of Plan B in my pocket:
one for the inevitable fetus to follow and
one for you and I to cut in half and swallow
when you make your decision
and I’m the one that gets to record the way
it felt to watch you dragged to the altar
that foreboding day.
I wish had more words for
everything hurts.
i’m the paper bell you inspected,
glued glitter hearts all over,
licked like an envelope being set somewhere else
and ultimately flung from the shelf
before she had time to prosper.
in true poet’s parlance
i’m nothing but death: soot palms, a trash can full of
worst thoughts,
one pen, colossal regret,
charcoal-colored romance with the
murdered children to accentuate my
growing malaise.
kamikazes are lazy, cowardly fighters.
(give him the truth)
you have to stand in your wreckage,
own your slaughter.
makes more sense to avoid the fumes and
blood-orange sting that the flashy
hara-kiri brings.
(give him the teeth)
i’m your match.
(give him that spark)
there’s nothing left of me
to burn so I become
the portending light
and you become
the ashes.
“urns”
daturamoon.com 