creative writing

let’s celebrate it:
our arrival to temperance.
throw an anniversary picnic
and let a year go by
shining underneath the map,
resplendent from the previous
events.

show up weekly and
listen, share, open
vulnerabilities but listen
to them carefully.
gain their trust before you
censure To wives and the ways
these advantageous
players play,
then let your serpent spine
sizzle in its case,
one day stand up,
call them all sexist,
balk at the coming year’s celebration,
do nothing but exit
and get all of the women
to leave.

“God”

January 25, 2021 0

first they elected me as chair.
no, first, I just showed up
regularly and shared
my leanings. I was seeking
divination and
wrestling with the
inconveniences of crisis
always followed with
a feeling of light
sprinkling above.
it was winter.
I was bundled but always
wearing tights.
they’ll say I trapped them,
I’ll say I felt trapped.

the meeting was called
“The Gratitude Meeting”
and I loved how much we talked
about God. I only liked
hearing of God. I only
liked advice that invoked
prayer or some sort of
ceremony in which we
asked to be undone, wind
to take us or
water to cleanse.
the transformation started
with acceptance of
peak smallness, humbling,
then the idea that I could
touch the pink bubble
and move it.

the carpet had yellow
circles and there was a map in
the back of the room.
I sat facing away from it
most of the time. it
was about missionaries.
I began to sit in the
same seat and show up
every Tuesday. you develop a
familiarity when you
become reliable.

I sat with it sprawling
above me so as they looked
at me, they might look
up to see a giant world
with red pins
stuck in it.

“the black book”
.

*******

January 24, 2021 0

after each meeting,
I stood awkwardly and
made small talk.
I would give almost any
woman my number and barely
kept up with what I had told
anyone but I
made efforts.

one day I got a fortune cookie
that said
“focus in on the color yellow
tomorrow for good luck.”
this meeting held
a lot of talk of God,
as it had a few catholics
and devoted disciples like
I, interested in the supernatural
themes of faith and
manifestation.
we spent many days
focusing on the third step
regardless of topic
and the passivity of that step,
being actually a willing action,
yet a passive stasis to uphold
is what kept me under spell.

made a decision to turn our will and our lives
over to the care of God
as we understood him

the carpet was blue
with yellow circles everywhere
and that’s probably why
I made it my home group
shortly after I got the fortune cookie.
after much reluctance to join
any of them, ironically,
I picked the only group
that was mixed but
mostly men.
just me and one or two others.
and these men were
not young, but old.

what they always ask me
is what my motive is.
I cannot simply say
that I looked at the carpet
and saw it was yellow
as someone spoke about the
divination of action into form.
I did not intend
to build the group,
amass it with females.

what I start, I do from
need, not forethought.
I move from depth,
a jaguar.

“God”

January 24, 2021 0

express the value of life
in lines and
charcoal.

Add the girl’s lids and
tinted lashes,
fixed eyebrows,
nose.
her lace collar under
overblown cloak.
Hair tucked beneath hood,
chin tucked to neck,
subtract her gloom
with an upturned lip..
Highlight her cheekbones in rouge.
Add breath to an otherwise
achromatic lover.

Add her troubled partner in the backdrop:
blue-gray with a hint of black at the corners,
small silhouette of a rainstorm
receding over the edge of the horizon.
Add some balance to a ruminating giant.
Subtract her moans.
Erase her nose.
Sharpen the clavicle.
Thin the waist.
Add some plum to the lips.
Add some gaunt to her face.
Add a remark.
“This will not do.”

Grab the Hi-Polymer.
Try to capture the gleam
of mistakes everywhere;
birthmarks, pencil marks, oil sheen,
eraser flakes,
lines that are furrows or scars or
wrinkles, ruddy blotches
on the thighs,
dry skin on the feet,
swan’s neck,
bucked teeth,
knife marks and a
revised smile.
Never trust a man.

She is flawless.
Precise.
Analogized you.
Contrast to your optimism;
your bubble of assurance
that is dominating,
that denies a compact or an inventory
and drawn in shady undertones
to hide complicated desires.

Proof of hidden bruise
shoved deep inside the confines
of gusto and canvas
come to life in the luster of pencil dust
and uncomplicated process,
stretched wide
for the world to admire.
A deflated mirror.

She still has all her freckles
and you are noticing
a few things
about yourself.

“doors #10”

January 22, 2021 0

keys,
a shuffle,
my half smile directed at a
windowsill and a forced
dulcet pause to
wrap a throw around bare shoulders,
strapless bra i’m mussed enough
to form new creases,
stretch my tousled jaw
into a long yawn.

I can see your long trail of spit
glisten lightly like snow
from elbow to the scar
above my wrist when I was
really hitting the wine.
wipe it on the pillowcase.
my lips are sand dry,
knuckles crack a bit when they reach and
my toes are curled for a different reason
this time, I am emptied.
your shadow’s growing larger:
an elongated feeling that stretched and stretched
and stopped right before
it got to mine,
bit back,
ran.

toss a look over brawn shoulder.
i’m no feast, you know,
but you wait like March hunger
for full spring, so close
yet still light blizzard,
you want that
hot spot to hit the ground
but snow lingers you want
that drizzle then moist
and green, some sunflowers,
a tomato plant and bees
offer their honey from the bottoms of their
black bellies.
sniff a tulip,
take all you can get.
feast on cool breezes of
me
when I’ll have it.

I cough or sneeze
and make no motion to ever
be haunted;
to ever be eaten,
to ever grow something from the arm
you licked that used to hold little butter knives
threateningly
towards him, towards me,
us hold scissors and
think about it,
hold shot glasses to not;
where I used to force myself to hug my brother
at Christmas
and nights, nowadays
any holiday,
etch his name everywhere it fits;

where you watched the sun
shadowplay with branches on my olive skin
and you mistook them for
fingers to grab,
hold,
where I stretched myself,
a bored tiger and lifted my once
impaled bones, my once river bones,
(wet for it every time)
up, held my hand up,
nails long and dry,
held your gaze,
waved without change in
expression and
your back is to the door.

i’m sitting up in a fetal position.
my profile is reflected in the
dusty whites of your eyes.
I have developed a new shade:
smudged green eyeliner and
the rest some kind of
lovely barren.

.“beds”

January 21, 2021 0

I spent a week
cleaning out the bookshelf
and trying to decide what toread in the short
time I had left with
his books.
I was also debating
how I should present
myself next:
wholly, or
with my rigid cuts.
things that I remember:

painting my toenails blue
outside under a clear sky
and a very bright crescent moon.
we sat in front of each other
on a bench outside of the supermarket,
and you were amused
that I asked if we could
stop walking so I can paint my toes.
“that way I can stay out later,”
I said.
when you said
you wanted to see me more.

I make myself recite
love is patient
from Corinthians daily,
however, I let too much time
pass and I always have to go
back to the first line as
I am learning it but
today we are at
does not dishonor others
lucky you,
I think.

I’ve been reading some
leftover Anne Waldman
and your Eastern philosophy,
lucky you,
today I eschew making
myself a porcupine
and then making things brittle
enough to break
and
just chewing the inside
of my cheeks
as you pick up the boxes,
leave the antique china
cabinet you promised
you’d keep.

“the bookshelf”

January 19, 2021 0

it helps me to fall
into haze in these
moments of adaptation
or just length,
time that has
to pass and my
adjustment to fluctuations
in my general
circumstance or
mood is dependent
on the haze.
i like fighting, I smile.
I have a few blocks to go
and every man is facing me
forming a crooked
cock so I just step
into the haze.

I remember this
one day where I met you
to get a Slurpee to
cool off for a while.
your face was most open
outside
drenched,
you tried to hug
me but I am
closed,
drenched in day old
bourbon sweat,
show up unshowered and
in a deep swallow;

a persisting contrition
coated in plum wine,
whatever else I just said,
Bourbon,
I wave my hands over the glass.
that was last night.
that was last night and it
was pretty bad.
but we sit side by side
like it’s something
non-contagious about me.
well except when you smile,
he said.
but I blush and I couldn’t
stand that so I

focus on my knees
remembering
what it felt like
under sheets
and I fell open.
then there’s my brother.
then there’s the new
hard edged smile
on the top of a frosted mug:
ubiquitous half smirk.

“I used to be in love,”
I say out loud
and I’m about one
block from the El
in front of another group
of men with their crooked
cocks and leering.
I close my mouth,
probably drooling,
adjust my strap,
walk forward.
I wake up like that
often and here
sometime,
in the middle of Kensington.

“July/September”

January 17, 2021 0

it is the sun streaming through my
bay-sized sliding door windows
and the white-apped mountains
framed within them
that I will miss most
in winter.
clearly, I can’t hold
two things at once without
favor, and
today I have
a piece of paper,
a dozen dead things
wilted in their vase
to remind me.

there is a touch of red
sprinkled around the glass
that browns and sets as dry
on the sill in
my small uncurtained bedroom that
I pace when I have
too much on my mind
and today they remind me

life is a patient rot
to tomb, a gauntlet and
fluid so I better keep
moving.

life is a patient
gut to get to
wound it was April
on Earth Day when I wrote
My Brother Is Dead
in the back of a notebook I would never
look at again.

thrown away to make room
as I packed the car
two years later.

“grief (part two)”

January 17, 2021 0

I just have to make rent.

I read a note out loud to myself,
something I had written in an urgency,
a mania and with its own
staggering precocity these little
messages keep me crawling
on the ledge:
everything that is really hard
is going to save your life

and a blackbird landed on the branch
outside my living room
window.
still, their eyes small and
sharp, waiting to dive,
waiting for the buzz of cicadas
to start again.
that reminds me,

I say in my head
i’m emaciating.
I take a sip of water.
starved, looking
without touching and
I want too much
has many meanings.
I read the words aloud again
and pour myself a thimble
of almonds.

it is first that I craft the story,
not out of revenge but
of general idleness and
devilment, the two things
slated to go hand in hand.
I begin to charm him.
do you believe everything I say?

and then you become the
braced masochist
and I become
the looming hit.

“maelstrom”

January 17, 2021 0

5. sort out near death experiences, drive to
make sense of it.

(cats have nine lives)

19, severe drinking
problem–so much so that
I had been arrested for
playing the stoplight
game with my boyfriend again.
the stoplight game is something
I made up out of fear of
intimacy: we take a shot of
vodka at every red light.
they found us in a parking
lot; me pissing, and
them thinking I’m a whore.
made me walk a straight line.
made me recite the alphabet backwards.

easy.

blow. .28
they were impressed.
i was 123 lbs, 5 7
and I admitted to them
that yes, I’d been drinking.
just five shots,
I said. which wowed them
more. I had taken at least fifteen.

it wasn’t jail but the second
morning of my alcohol group
that almost did me in.
in my shakiness,
I reached for my shot glass
and poured myself my hair
of beagle. certainly, any shot
glass on my shelf would do.

and as I began to gag in horror
feeling the sharp metal in my esophagus,
stuck, people home but
pride will kill you too,
I began to choke,
really choke.
cough and stand up,
clutching my neck,
somehow by iron will
spit the safety pin out
in my hand and recall
in horror, the designation
of that glass as
“utilitarian.”

to keep pennies
and safety pins in.

“near death experience #5”

January 17, 2021 0