Tag: creative writing

the last one smelled like fever and
dead roses,
an imposing home,
a candle burned to the base
with each one of my steps
moving away
but still a resounding
n      o
at the end of our day.

you smell more like
dawn;  a sun blooming
despite the surreptitious stars
and to welcome day home.|
a retreat,
an argument building
in that little shell
you panic inside
and you want to face it,
I can taste it.
a step forward.
you smell like fresh scabs,
and cologne.

I gift you an unending
labyrinth that I twist in my
sheets waiting for the moon
to settle,
for the score to settle,
for the spring to burst forth
and enchant me
with her rows of
green and pardon.
if you can make it through
my winter, you can
get me.  if you can make
it, you will have
me.
you will see the garden
beneath my
bramble.
you will see the garden
beneath my night.

“antidote”  

I made a deal with God
I would use my beauty for good
by releasing it
but I’m thinking too much about my hair
again.
You come over to remind me
what the outside looks like,
what weathering something means.
I demur at your suggestion that I’m
better than I am.

My mouth is sore from oral surgery
so I don’t have to go down on you.
The hydrocodone is kicking in and
it’s retrograde so you fuck me with
familiarity, like you knew me once and this would happen
and you’re a cloud passing by
and I’m a budding tantrum.
You leave.

I skulk around my third world neighborhood;
watch the men watch my backside shrink
as I scurry further from them.
Tuck my ribs in and
I’m at your feet again.
You carefully take the tangles out of my hair
with your sadist grip
as I threaten to cut it.
As you force my head down
to remember my part in this.

You rock me with familiarity like you knew me once
and this would happen
and I’m back at God,
withering trying to remember how not to
          (I take the scissors)
fuck up
    ( I start with my bangs)
everything you said I didn’t even have to touch
    (watch the hair fall to the tile)
I wait til morning to sweep the pile.

No one is here.
I am alone,
a squalling infant,
and
”you’re full of secrets.”

“cat calls”

they call me curious.
no, they call you two games at once,
he corrects me.

I am whiskers and diamond eyes,
a silver glitter topped headband
with ears at the top,
pink lip gloss and
baiting teeth; videos
on repeat that project a
moving constellation at night
slicing through each corridor
with claws the size of countries.

they call me
catarina
he says, no they call
you God.

“catarina”

I’m mad at God for every season
that brings the
buried back.
you still creep around my edges

like the protruding roots of
our favorite birch outside
the bedroom window.
the branches scratched the glass
in gusts, and you
asked me how I was never
startled.
you said: even in nightmare,
you play it cool.
this is nightmare to you?
come cross me on an unprotected
plank and I’ll show you what nightmare
can do.

the leaves fall dead in the
winter, but the trunk
is thriving in places
hidden.  I am bathed in
slivers of moonlight and
gelid anger
watching shadows dance behind
the blinds, biding time
in heated blankets,
cusps of friendship
with men I might feign
to like to move
you.
I can feel your silent steps,
I can feel your body cross the
garage.

you still know my home real well:
my fetal curl, my pillow smell,
and you still visit me sometimes
to trace your teeth long up
my thigh.
my ever longing service bell:
I ring, you crawl,
your incisor blades
are seeking throat.
I can smell you in her bed
all right,  but you still hold me tight
at night

like one long
and steady
choke.

“letters to exes”

we’re lying on the edge of October
in thick cotton nests;
my place.
my thigh wrapped in burgundy nylon and your
loosening grip.
I held the space between our necks
with stoicism,
a revisionist past that kindly removed
the details of the ephemeral contract,
a fevered longing for binding shielded by my
tepid forecast.
I was drawn to your morbidity and
we had similar graves to tend.

handed me a handkerchief for my deepening cough
and didn’t notice the sudden mollifying in your fingers
where I reached and held gaze;
your eyes like fountains I sipped in my July dehydration,
a nourishing after months of asexual experimentation,
mouth the word queer to the mirror,
how to fuck yourself from different positions
and forget you ever came.
I thought autumn meant morning frost but it was eight am
and I was deathly hot
for it and you were,
back facing me
reminding me of our agreement
tying a shoe and I blew my nose,
handed you some andalusite to suggest
all healing is pragmatic but you
absorb organs,
pick one good one,
move on.
we had different ways of saving ourselves.

I met you in skin and sun
and distant cicada sounds,
street jazz in the background.
met me where I was
(liquefying)
and made no promise to keep me.
you unrolled your tongue
and the palm of your hand holding your girlfriends’
tiny waist and a note that I’ve read,
god, a thousand times before,
but still cuts like the first fall
that said
ha! ha! nothing ever changes!

you taught me about unsustainability as a relationship model,
how to rip nylons off with my teeth and
leave;
the orgasm of the shattered pieces
that you squeeze to fit into each crevice of weaning;
masochism as a finish line;
and me,
which all seems no better than the men but
   (well, here we are)
so much softer in my hands.

“ha!ha!nothing ever changes!”

exhausted from the effort my
hips have made to
prove my might to
men,
I let her show you
with her flesh and borrowed guile,
more cultured manner,
a divine proclamation:

she summarizes
what I really meant
without all my nervous
containment and flustered
public self-flagellation.
she seems objective
so you trust her,
and she had a dream like that
once so you conclude
I am the cat that chased her,
skinned her,
wore her like a trap
you fell right into.
she is a mouse
wearing my mouth
and she is quavering.
I needed her to say the one
thing you had been thinking
but had yet to fully take
so I possessed the space
inside the shaking room
between us.

take a kneel.
I’m in your ear
wearing my best butterfly
costume.
      you could use something.
when you fall asleep,
why don’t you give way
to the chase?
you’ve watched me hunt you
every night this week
from the safety of my yard,
but here I feel your emaciation.
your ribs.
you are starved.
take a knee.
          take a run.
take your jaws and
put em on me.
I become the doe,
and you become the forest
trapping me.
            you could use something.

it’s time you taste
your own shaking
prey.

“spiritual practice”

“Name your torture,”
one of them said
with a cute wink.
I wanted an orchard
but I swallowed the vodka
he handed me
willingly.

I don’t believe in simplicity
or explaining the meaning behind things
            it’s why I write poetry
I say with a hint of clarity.
He fingers my locket,
I recoil in panic.
I choose the silence,
complicity over barreling ascension
every time I meet one I might
like.

I had a mission to destroy my darkness,
but darkness has a way of consuming
all it follows
so I spent the winter indoors.
started to explore and name every puncture:
early childhood rape,
early childhood confessional
in bad dreams and pissed sheets,
early childhood neglect without a male
role model or a safe space to yell about it,
early childhood sibling who later hung himself with
vodka ropes, and a funeral attended by
no one.    I swirl my glass,
listen to the chunks of ice beat me up
inside.
There are only two sentences I’m ever
after: birth
and subsequent fatality.
I do a quick twirl on the way to his bathroom
to show off  my scorpion tail
so he understands his options
for the night.

I asked him to stay awhile
while I calmed my own poltergeist.
he just wanted to hold hands
and watch me cry without connivance,
without adding words to delusion
alluding in silence
that I don’t need the completion.
I need the space
to see the illusions I created are
in dire need of straightening before my ire
turns to rueful violence,
turns to self-asphyxiation,
turns to creeping vines of fear threatening
to bind the whole garden in budding violence
and complacent nooses I wear boastfully,
as if the greatest power comes from murdering
yourself in front of an
audience.

My madness looms sometimes;
a distant thunder that never sparks but
erupts into sudden forest fire,
 lightning strikes right behind me
so you always know how to find me.
I only hear voices when they’re booming
so God usually delivers things in a way I hate
to get me to listen, breathe,
cut my own intestines from the ceiling
where I hang myself most days.
God demands I stay,
but I let go of his hand and
turn to him and say:

“Well, if you’re not going to kill me or fuck me,
what are you doing here
anyway?”

5.