“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”
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”
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”
at least I give you transparency.
even when I’m moping,
I’m dancing
in songs of satin,
rippling with sob
and shimmering
deep bright,
stretched for miles
like the sky and with the
same opacity.
I am combusting
publicly, usually:
a flood of recourse and
you are
drowning,
immersed
in capillaries bursting with
crisis
and then immediate clarity.
my hands let go of the
flood I’m cradling.
you watch me move
like a snake across your
ceiling draped in shifting
constellations
you have no choice but to
memorize and I’m wearing
the crescent as a crown and
your ears like a gown
and full of crypted
warnings. me,
I’m a dream
cat
stalking rabbits
in the garden, or
waiting for the night
by the river for the
muskrat, leashed a black
gator to my belt for extra
guard, and then
later on your doormat
pushing the heads of mice
all around.
each night I go to God and ask
for favor.
I hand them back their most
prized possession as the only
way to get it:
a page,
one line;
one at a time
wrapped in
flakes of
shrimp like little treats.
my barbarity, I desperately
want to play psychopath
and you told me you were
starving for affection.
you also told me
I am the coldest
woman you’ve ever
met; catching your
goldfish, frying them up,
using your
own tank like
that. when they said I get one
favor, I asked for dreams.
I always ask for dreams.
not mine, I make clear.
let me walk through walls.
let me see.
“the aquarium”
sometimes I do ceremony.
I stick only to a daily morning
ritual and then the day falls apart.
try to strengthen some resolve
without consumption.
I feed the cats, clean their
litter box, then stretch
and write my dreams down.
then I walk the neighborhood
to soak up sun letting
hours devolve like time
has no meaning at all.
sometimes I just
let things pass
like cravings or
weather.
I don’t need to ingest
everything I think but
my stomach growls and
my jaw clicks and I
begin to devour hours
well into the night.
like time has no meaning.
sometimes I do and say
nothing at all to
anyone for days.
we do that for others;
carry our grief quietly.
bury things deep
within ourselves.
but I feel the root rot and darken
without altar, water
or speech.
you walk in and
I’m here now
growing into a black stem.
you walk in and look
right at me
and I don’t know
where to begin.
but I found the
aperture.
you walk in and
look right at me and
my shiny white teeth
forge a new smile.
I begin to grow,
unfurl, hum
softly.
“datura moon”
you were given a choice.
you chose this road
first, then the
present.
become an alcoholic to
find a higher power.
meditate occasionally
to see how well it suits you.
fill the emptiness with Oreos,
coffee,
a smoking habit you detest
but gives your fingers something to
do when you’re speaking anxiously
in public,
when the caffeine is rearranging your
tongue into metaphors and you
need a moment of pause,
clarifying to the audience
with a descriptor you
previously forgot
and the story: winding,
inexplicably always
out of order.
run a 5K every three weeks
to give yourself a mission:
get back in shape,
hone your vision of
yourself.
bathe everyday.
tell the cat you love her
and pet her for an extra few minutes
before you walk for hours
to lose those new found vowels
completely.
pluck out your dead ends
hiding in a stealth spot.
begin a practice of voyeurism.
sit comfortably and
file your nails into sharp points.
lean into them.
write everything down.
start ordering your steak rare:
inhale the lost veal,
the lost zeal of an entire feedlot;
the scent of plasma and cud.
devour a a squealing colony
without remorse.
give cannibalism a chance.
you’re talking to yourself in public again.
the looks from the other patrons
don’t bother you.
you remember them with skinned knees on
bathroom tile; your stomach in
velvet knots,
your obsessive purge.
you remember them peering at you
in courtrooms,
you remember them in handcuffs,
in shackles,
side eyes as you make a scene
at the open bar, or get someone’s date to
carry it all:
vodka soda,
you lick his ear
like your boyfriend isn’t even there.
it’s not the groom you want
or ceremony you despise,
it’s the bride.
the way you’ve stolen and
groveled afterwards.
the way they held
onto those wrongs and their
condescending pats on the back
withdrawn.
how you’ve managed to
survive it all with gratitude,
without much impact,
you’ve suddenly risen
to their ranks.
get your wisdom teeth removed
and then
cut them into daggers.
check out Home Depot,
ask for “industrial size”
ignore all the
are you ok ?
you’re muttering again.
read the directions.
this stuff is toxic.
don’t get it on your eyelids.
press the bone back into your sockets,
flick the canines,
gotta be solid.
smile:
you’re still celibate.
you’re still hungry;
avaricious,
less slovenly from
all the exercise,
less addled than before
and armored like the night.
go back to the diner.
lick your plate.
click your tongue.
you showed them how
starvation’s done.
you showed them how to roam.
you put your money where your
mouth is glued into
your gums.
ring the alarm.
your mouth is lined with
homemade knives, and you’re
wafting noxious with each
breath you begin to teach
them how to
move again.
you begin to chew more
loudly.
Miss?
now that your dysphagia’s
done, you’re gonna smile
wide.
show them your veneers,
Ms. Salt and tell them
what you want.
I want it now.
“Veruca Salt”
I remind you over text
and apropos NOTHING
you make sure to emphasize
to someone that my style is
abruptly
and in all caps
that I enjoy the slam of
doors, interjections,
a hand tight around my forearm
and learning the local
culture before intercepting about
the fine print of the law,
how to skirt
a shadow, what a savior
secret arsenals
I present the trunk machete,
then the painted switch blade.
I mean no harm
simply seething as I walk about
tracing panes, cracks in
paint and you hold me anyway
and in a way that I oblige;
loosely.
if I’m anything stasis
it’s anxious so
I at some point,
I have to be blindfolded,
only feeling
the way the soil holds the bones
of those we’ve learned to mourn
in private:
eternally and quiet
with an airy tightness and security
like the rosary barbs the
knuckles when it’s altar
or when its storm and I’m all fist.
the way the heavens hold the pious,
the mob holds the riot,
or the torch of arrival and
the way the ocean holds all that
falls below that deep blue
surge of sea.
a gentle immensity
lifts me in my
fits and that’s the way you
see me still;
intense and poignant,
pointed in her comments
but rather distressed about it
all so generally forgiven
for her onslaught.
squall hits and I
drag you under to show
what made me.
you’re surprised by my
physicality and stature,
my apt command
of rooms
so far
only seeing me flit
and not sticking around
to see me pull out
the skewer and demonstrating
all the ways in which a weapon
works.
and in front of
everyone like I feel most
comfortable in combat,
agitating and leading
regimes before.
like I’ve never once
had an apprehensive
thought.
and tall.
“furor”
this is fresh.
the way I put on blush
and got my bangs cut,
properly at a place just
to show up once,
just to take my scarf back
and without a hug.
like the last word
someone said
I was hoping we could talk about this
or me finishing packing up
anything belonging to my
ex; an entire bookshelf he left
which leads me to a shoebox
to stuff the card my new
ex-thing sent.
find old photographs
of myself unsure in blue hoodie
set to the mountains
at sunset like I couldn’t
imagine not being there.
it was such a casual stance
to permanence I carried.
the last time I look at a place.
the impassable space between
states, abysmal and
the plane ride to my
brother’s coma.
it all comes back.
this is fresh.
this is the last time I’ve ever
seen or heard from someone.
my intrepid cool affect
pushing edges further back
to margin;
my rehearsed gait.
the way I asked how are you
three times with a nervous gesture,
without listening or waiting
for response and then
a sudden turn away.
I spent all my time at the beach
as a child
watching waves take things away.
I’d throw sticks in there,
seaweed, sometimes bottle caps.
draw lines in the sand with my toes.
throw hermit crabs back.
the day the sky was black
and cut with
lightning, swollen
with compulsion,
a tropical storm touched the
ocean and on instinct,
it swallowed itself.
I was there at the edge.
watching waves curl up to
my chest and
my aunt screamed,
came to grab me as I touched the
shore with my hands and
carried me up to the house.
Sarah, why did you do that?
the whole way up,
I was crying, screaming
bout a flip flop
drifting in the current,
begging her to go back.
I remember it to this day.
it had white soles and yellow and vinyl
ribbon tied into a bow
at the toe.
I was trying to go back
into the water to get it.
you can’t tell anything
about a statue
except it’s resting form:
cool
but if you ever saw the contents of
my purse: the twisted straws,
the clutter, lists of
things to get or hold,
the collections,
you would see
that peevish child
taunting the ocean’s
grip and dashing,
longing for her
endless swaddle,
but also longing for
everything that ever
existed too.
invincible in
execution only if
carried everywhere.
people don’t change,
I think, and having second thoughts
throw the dinosaur
you mailed me away.
the birthday card he gave me.
the set of text exchanges.
people don’t change.
I empty the bin,
make space for lipstick.
the skulk,
scent,
need for slow chase.
salivation with a .
wide open stance,
arms spread,
lips like decanter,
trickling:
it is with love that I do this.
oh, you always say that.
*snaps* to wake
up. tips a holy red,
I begin to grow inches and
let my naturally long nails
trail the arms of strange
wool peacoats on my way to
the El or nowhere.
just circling Girard for fun.
It’s the beginning of December.
and I made rent.
I sort of grimace as
I sway the town, head to
toe in unbought clothes,
heeled boots,
hips flexed and
recently fucked.
let my hand hit the elbow
of an unsuspecting man,
unfucked, soon to
be turning around and
catching a flash of my
back, purple mock wool
and hear the clack
of my shoes walk
away.
it is with love
they say.
“the honey trap”
I’m obsessed with transition.
the form it takes
in movement and
thrown against a wall;
stalled in its pounce;
sudden landing
without intent.
the motion to freeze,
liquefy.
reabsorbed and to
precipitate or the moment
before, to reform.
and after all that patience
and miles of crouch
through the city,
admiring the syringe tops
and mortar and filling
the jacket lining
with bills and your ardor
growing big and bright
and pulling things towards you
like the moon
to be suddenly seized
by your habits again.
when I walked into the room
I saw you again.
you offered to show me upstairs
right away, ushering me with
your hand on my lower back
and I heard your voice
behind me, concerned:
watch your step
it’s just one breath,
that’s all it takes.
“the men” or “the loop”
daturamoon.com 