Tag: fiction

consumption is the theme.
consume me.

it’s the new moon in pisces,
3.13 2021.
made a playlist for this
it’s all  winter 2017.
it’s sometime the summer 2018
and you send me a video of you
playing keyboard as I watch the sun
bleed from the clouds on acid
and a mushroom tincture.
combining plot points,
you synthesize too?
burned retinas, sigils for
this.
it’s the beginning of the pandemic 2020.
I’m in spain,
learned Spanish saints and their
prayers for this.
I’m in a bath.
I’m in your arms.
learned the lines of cathedral, loss.
I’m slowly cutting a line from my shin bone
to ankle with blade.


I’m in Philadelphia in the
middle of a warm bath
and just shot my head up and
gasped, birthed with severe
carpal tunnel so much that my shoulder
might be dead, it’s numb
and my wrist so bent so it’s
hard to open things, use spoons,
write my dreams and
inflammation,
two broken knees, a
closing throat, dysphagia,
growling stomach, thinning
clavicle and waist,
lockjaw, confused
but surmising I may be alive,
eh, I say out loud.


the child cannot bear to lose.
we have that going for us.
watch the soap bubbles swirl
my left hand, study the middle finger:
only a half a nail, I notice.

“ARTEMIS”

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rub petals on my shoulders,
jawline. warm,
heather water.
feel their disintegration
in hand and
for the first time,
my fingertips found
utility, want.
feel the lift of the
veil. the word DAD appears
in lavender soap bubbles.
my nails are Easter purple pastel
and I remember the way my dad
said my name as I ran to collect
each plastic egg before anyone.
the child cannot bear to lose.

rubbing roses on the back of
my neck, feel the prick of the nail
cut in half, sharp like
a thorn.
I’d had a vision
of me slicing my fingers off as I chopped
watermelon and hours later, returning
to the yellow plastic cutting board
to clean before the ants found new congress,
I looked down to see the tip gone
from my nail , (look up)
lying upwards on the counter.
had no recollection of the event.

remember my dad saying
slow down    be careful (name)

it’s all one long blur of
portending forethought
mushed by ingested substance.
  indecipherable bursts of running,
planning, writing.
the indelible effects of
surge of memory as you finally
sit. begin to let the chest
rock, cry, and
a daring and
earnest coo when the
boy touches your scalp
for the first time.

“the 8th house of death”

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it took me two hours
to let the ants out
of their  sugar container.

my vicious sneer
melting into your chest
nearby as they scrambled,
running every which way
as I considered retrapping
them, trying again to watch
them suffocate.


they say I’m a masochist
but my men know me
differently. a
sense of loneliness
led me to look for families
which left me enraptured
by cults.

I mark the corners
of my house with
sigil, command.
I’m surrounded by
five mirrors,
in the favor of
male form, my blade lined
mouth opening. 

“The sadist”

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the water is lavender scented,
red, full of salt and pink roses
and
you say nothing for the hour,
allowing me this still and
grand ballet of thought.
of ramble and kiss the back of
my clean neck so
softly, I melt and stick to your
chest for the remainder.
all the ways in which we’ve sat
in water a dozen times before
doesn’t compare to just once,
in tactility, not in musing.

your eyes were green once.
and woman.
you are letting your nose
rest between my shoulder blades
and I am close to sob.
I am letting it emerge.
I am letting it rise before
beach, caught below,
the little girl with book
in hand, snickering.

one of my first memories is
taking a shower with my father.
he laughed a lot.

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in dreams,
your eyes are blue and
I am terrified I will
get swallowed by the ocean.
often, I am outrunning a
tidal wave. sometimes,
 I am in the middle of two waves
coming from opposite directions
and there’s no land in sight.
once, the girl brought me to
return a book in the current
as the wave was
building, and she had no fear.

for those who believe in fairy
tales, first comes love,
then betrayal, then
the crow to tell the
morbid wail of
widowed,
accused.
and the hidden thread;
the unreliable narrator
springing from the
Lullian Circle,
knave at side or
just a knife around
her neck.

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you just have to begin.
you hold my hand
when I speak.
I am nervous inexplicably.
just existence is a trial.
count the candles.
set the rocks.
in my waking hours,
I practice walking across a lake
with black boots.
it’s an icy sidewalk on
a ledge but I pretend
that it’s a long pond.
have 13 visions of every way
he’s cut to pieces in front of
me, swallowed by the
ground.
when he first comes around,
I notice my wrist,
then my jaw,
surrender.
I have an urge to burn the
house down first
but in a long quaver,
forget the nonsense:
the counting of the pulse,
the spotty mason jars,
my blood dripping on a red
throw blanket, laundry,
my childhood–effete,
mold speckled shingles,
my sullen dead father
and his one last breath
alone,we think
sometime after midnight.

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made me walk to her house
collecting stones along the way.
said she was building something.
my pockets and fingers were dirty
and when I arrived,
she was sitting, arms crossed
and
throw that conch shell away
is how she greeted me.
I feigned my deference
and regret it now.
she never wanted me to kneel
but to toil for her favor.

she didn’t greet me with any body part
but squared me.
when I asked about the stones,
she looked perplexed.
gestured to the kitchen where the
trash sat and said
throw those away too.

“sisyphus” or “how guys save me in their phone 4”

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if you shrunk her to the
size of a pine needle;
remember her
previous stature–
platformed boots,
four inches taller than she really
was and towering some men,
not just in height but in
arrogant loquaciousness,
abrasiveness,
wealth.
but if you shrunk her and
hid her in the bunk of
a barn underneath the bales,
I don’t know,
he waves his hands,
for revenge.
you could even tape her mouth
shut, quell the
squawking

I bet
she would shine
like a comet;
self immolate,
ignite herself and
begin to set the barn on fire
so you could find her.
I bet

yes every time
that even hidden like a penny
in a cornfield
she’d grow vowels, legs,
a scream.
made sure you would
find her.

“how guys save me in their phone #3”

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the first thought of the morning is always
today is the day I jump off the bridge.
I have a frenzied compulsion
to walk to it, sometimes
  cross it
but there are days I can’t.
I can’t  face the ice-tinged railing.
the dirty sidewalk filled with
discarded straws I want to touch,
put in my mouth.
begin to spin the happy thought of us.
take another route to nowhere.I’m high by 8 am.
pull my boots up,
hat, double tights.
it’s gray. no sun and
today is the day I jump off the bridge,
I declare.
it’s January 25th, 2017.
I haven’t said a word to you yet.
just holding it in,
clenched, clasped
to my throat,
pushing
like my blue plume
of breath.

“the bridge”

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smirk.

black lipstick and naked eyes and
lied about time
when I asked her.
she looked at her wrist to
count the hearts but missed an
hour and she is
dulled,
not rusty but
blunt and I know
when she walked away,
her hand was
steadily sharpening.

“how guys save me in their phone #3”

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