Tag: creative writing

I believe in wormwood,
dried root,
my brother’s ashes
in a silver heart or
a ceramic urn
locked in vase
locked in mirrored chest;
a chant, a poem.
datura when the time
is right.

sometimes I do ceremony,
sometimes I just let things pass.
we do that for others:
carry our grief quietly,
we bury things deep
within ourselves.
but sometimes in a fit,
I spill over,
tell you everything.
you said
I like to swim
so I am braised with razor;,
become a carnation lake
at your feet and
you said rain:
I like gardens.
so I condensed and
waited to show off my new arms
lined in fresh alyssum.
my cycle: I always meet them in
winter where my only
light is moon.
my flowers blossom
under the chilled night:
drip a dark nectar and
I am thirsty and
you already know,
I believe in
altar.

I believe in overflowing
chalice.  you believe in holding
space for growl,
holding me with
distance.
you watch me lay the
dill in bowl, line the bed
with tourmaline.
run the bath with
chamomile and yarrow.
I am full of tincture now.
I can move like a jaguar:
slow and black and
hungry.
I am hard to see that way.
you said
I am game.

you’ve been watching
jaguars move,
you’ve been memorizing motion,
 I drape myself in constellation
so you can better see me,
storm so you can better feel
me and I traipse across the forest
floor waiting to be found.
my tonsils growing
chelicerae,
my rib cage growing legs,
my bottom becoming fat
with thread and
I know what you like
and I know that
you are game.

you are writhing
game in tiny, tiny
snowflake threads
hung far above the
ground.
I said let’s switch places
and I know you said
my name.  I become the woods
encircling your howl and
you become the kicking,
screaming, young and
drowned.

in winter,
it is long and dark
and hard to contain my
grief.    I
am gorged with nectar
and hidden by
the wind.
sometimes we do that for
others: hide our
spines.
you watch me prey;
sip the drip of
the effulgent crescent
bulb I worship
and become the
nightmare you fear.
you become the shivering
deer, caught fly,
gutted bunny hooked in
jaw.
I become the bath
of blood.
you were right:
we’re the same.
rewind to the night you asked
if I would ever kill someone
if I knew I could get away with
it.

we become the woods
 and you become
my game.

“datura moon”

0

under my therapist’s guidance,
I switch chairs to talk
to my inner predator.
 now, now,
   listen to the guilt,
   it’s talking,
I want to find out more about
her; what to call her,
where she hides sometimes
before I feel her seep into
each step.

I decided to have some boundaries
with the universe;
lined the edges of my bed with
geranium and lilac threads,
lined the sills with limonium,
wove my weave with daisy.    
my tub dripped nightly:
 an altar of salt and
lavender sage.
watched my toes glide to the surface
 by a dozen votives.
tease the cat
with little splashes at her nose.
forget everything.
my entire winter
was littered with
shards of celestite
and low violin.
 I could see the sky when I wanted
from my dining room table
or on a brisk walk
to pick up oranges and Earl Gray
for the morning.
rediscovered medicine in prayer
 and herb and
 open mourning for my karmic retribution,
suddenly rectified,
suddenly deserved.
           (do you deserve the good?)

amethyst in my sock drawer and jasper
near the lamp, I held
one shout in my throat

in an effort to continue to
subjugate myself.

protect myself from myself.
protect myself from herself.

but it’s so tiring;
that anorexic
bloodlust,
insatiable mouth,
the doe eyes and
planned outfits,
the scent so close
you begin to change shape
without notice.

you begin to grow a
mandible heart.

you begin to drool.
you begin to chomp
a little at their
wrists as they hand you
something.
 I decided to get rid of my light
and aventurine,
I calmly tell her
the following week.
I tell her:

I plan to spend the year
fat; replete in web
and feast.

“gestalt”

1

it hurt
but not as much
as memory

“death (reversed)”

0

before I lived in the pink room,
I made you lug every piece
of oak antique two-piece
furniture up my winding third story
walk up and set it exactly where
I wanted it before you
were done.
I only like things with value
 I gestured to someone else
and everything I owned was wooden.

when we got to the room with
the stained glass windows,
the room cut in half,
cut with four windows and
we both eyed the pale yellow
stilted glass cabinet
that looked like it came from a carnival;
one of those old machines where you put
a coin in and a fortune comes out.
double mirrors, two legs and all that
was missing was the teller inside.
you looked at me as if you knew
I would ask but
it stays.

it came with the place and
years later, I made another man
rip it to pieces,
plank by plank,
and carry it back down the stairs.
I want the mirror
I said without looking at him,
looking only at my reflection
as it glinted at me from the living
room and I carried it back to
its place while also
ignoring his pleas for warmth,
his servitude to only benefit himself,
his displays of courtship
on his knees where I never
asked him to fall.
just clean this up.

I was focused on my legs.
I was focused on my thighs.
I was focused on my torso,
my serpentine twist of a spine.
I have yet to see either of you again.
and here’s a free scroll:
like the algid vortex that
blows from the north
and coats the town in
freeze and forces those to skate
across,
I break men.

I live in a pink room
with a rectangular mirror
propped against the wall on
the floor surrounded by
cards and flowers
and at night,
she comes to me
like the riding crop
that sharpens as they gallop,
I break men.

“the mirror”

0

I derive so much from one word.
The license plate that careened into the pole
instead of me that night read
“ prisons” and
I knew instinctively how he felt and
tonight I’ll do:

a spring equinox meditation.
brush my teeth.
cut grapefruit for the morning
and ride the waiting out
pay homage to my Pluto;
my twelfth house of self undoing.
i’m becoming a panacea of my own:
memory, tincture, flowers everywhere,
the fuss of first love never leading anywhere but
here in another meditation
on the river walk
and

draw my poems out of the older sutures:
undo, redress, pamper the wounds .
think about it.
send you a letter.
remember the way grief sits,
unsettled, right after dusk,
right under your chest,
right under your breath:
a blue river from your fingers.
send you that letter
with my wounds
pasted
in the margins.

reminding you to
think about it

pay homage to your Venus.
she is out,
casting cars into ditches
while you cautiously watch the lights
change.
you are holding selenite in your pocket,
standing where they
are now sitting and wilting
in screams, the way you asked:
one more chance please

you snap and they lose their
breath just like that.

“prisons” or “Venus in the 12th House”

2

I step on wet cat litter
 on the way to the mirror
and ignore it.

my feet are bare,
my knees are tired,
my legs are still spent from cartwheeling down your block
all summer: bruised, broken spindles
of scabs and bravado.
I’m ignoring the gravel
under my toes.
I’m plucking my eyebrows.
I’m picking out tights.
I’m meeting someone soon.

I try on several lipsticks;
take my time with each palette,
each gloss, each burgundy line
of delusory affection drawn into
a wide, wolfish smile.
I’m nude for a while
in front of the sink;
 my dry hands are
 unwashed but I can smell flowers
on my nails as I tease my split ends
into hair bigger than it is:
rosewater from the quick spritz
 to my face to pace myself
when I feel the urge to
go back in time,
erase and retrace things in
 illusive reception,
name them things like
us or
enough so I learn how to
stop.

unfitting for grown women
and I’ll continue to falter:
cut my hair unevenly
to the nape of my neck without
sexuality,    
be  incorrect
           and often
without attachment to its correction.
take my time with mopping things,
take my time learning ruby liner,
onyx lashes,
diffusing for a while.
spit in the faucet without washing
the couple spots the stream missed
and I stay waffling between color schemes
and themes of conquest.
I remember the years of unnamed longing
and I scream as I
suddenly soften.

heels are the last to go on.
they’re uncomfortable but I
like how tall I am as I prowl past your place
so you get one last double take.
I clack over the litter without a glance back in
its direction on my way out the door and
if I’m lucky,
if I am very lucky,
I’ll teach my daughter how to shapeshift her way
 to knighthood without compromise.
without insertion.
 she can keep her crooked breasts,
her imperfection,
her relentless gaze towards furtive weight:
 martydom.
her overused adjectives that she breathes
even in her sleep,
works into every passage;
how many times can one really be amenable or
replete?      but I am
 and often.
and sorry, how many times she is sorry
when she meant to say nothing,
when she meant to say don’t call me or
yell I’m starving.

my love will have a cradle and a blanket and
a mobile with the planets hung crookedly and
 carved into the center of Jupiter
hovering far above Earth,
her mother’s favorite emblem of luck and
expansion,
with a butter knife and an old eyebrow pen
the only poem I felt strong enough
never to rework:

rest girl,
you do not earn your birth.

12.

0

slugs salted on the patio,
cicada shells clinging to the moldering
legs of the picnic bench
I set my birthday cake on when I
was five and still clamoring the plates
together for attention,
(and now?)
dozens of unclaimed Easter eggs
rotting under rusty swing sets,
a mouse writhing on a glue trap
that was just SHOVED
in a garbage bag
and me
just staring at the thing,
just watching it suffocate as I
am mired in self pity and
freshly out of love.


my wings tip towards
the sun and I’m triumphant
in my emptiness,
my patient nihilism I
chew when the void becomes
the only measurable thing
in my life   I don’t
notice the oncoming car.

grasshopper never notices
the magnifying glass
or pesticide gun.
dog with the mange and glaucoma
blithely to cage.
drunk blindly to rage
then car
then grave.
snail to salt,
cricket to web,
temple to gun
and you say
no, what you never notice is
us.

“love” 

0

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 down,
to shower
once a week
if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth
graze your chin, scalp,
untouched thighs.
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:
tights and boots and an expansive
blankness that still drives your body around
after work to get soy milk,
make polenta for lunch,
take out the compost,
take out the trash,
finish something you once started
when it was
skirts and cherry blossoms,
some organic laughter and a patient optimism
that seems unvisited but should be
worked out by now.
sometimes it is actually raining.
it is harder than that too:
cold and cramps and no tissues
or pads and an anniversary coming
that stings
and does not let go.
and you do hear from them
but with expectations.
you have wrapped yourself tightly
in some binding perseverations
so you constrict yourself,
restrict your errands, and bleed openly
on the carpet.
and sure, there is hunger,
but it’s quick and
you succeed in a relatively
docile surrender.
so what is there outside?
sometimes it is a blizzard.

then it’s flowers and unexpected showers
but it is day longer, sun higher,
you are not mired in the date of departure
anymore, and you forgive the monsoons.
your sensualizing emotions present themselves:
the gloss and black tips,
hips in sheer nylon,
a gentle sway.
sometimes it is unseasonably warm
and you have to hold your cardigan in your hand\
but you have managed a smile
and some sense of buoyancy
and dragged someone along
with the sleeves of
your unworn sweater.
you get lucky:
they want to take the
long way and you have a tendency to
suddenly rush things.

you are both broken
doe and the trap laid
for their arrival.

“ambush” or “8th house”

0

lick the salt from the crest
underneath my elbow
where the flesh is softest
and my nerves are most
on end.
it’s a spot I never tell
them about.
you feel something in me,
something growing,
you know I’m antsy
itching to grow the
space between us large enough
to span separate states
 and you
let your lips rest there.

the polar vortex
has passed:
it’s Saturday
and the sun is out.
I am lying on my side
facing a bookshelf
that is only
half unpacked
nearest the crack in the
window and I feel a
breeze.   I hear
a sparrow call me.
I hear a car pull away
and feel a wet tongue trace
the blue vein underneath
the skin of my arm
in wonder,
inquisition.
my hands contain
a spate and yet
you hold them,
drunk from my fingertips.
I hear you say the slow word
I strangled:
s t a  y.
“Saturday,
and the sun is
out.”

 

0

you’ve tired of her.

her proletarianism without true
protest           feigned theses and
 shallow interests, a light
encroaching hum that spins into
white noise in the background while
you begin to obsess over another actress.
she can taste your indifference
in the space left of the mattress.
and anyway, you’ve been watching
tigers move.

you’ve been memorizing motion.
you’ve been stating needs and retreating
and she’s been stepping closer.
where’s the knife inside of you?
I say and
I’ve been eavesdropping.
I’ve been spinning webs.

you’ve been seeking the hunt in cats
and I’ve been catching mice
as traps
to rip it from your
nervous breath.

10.

0

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