good profile.
have never seen her hair
she was
wearing a platinum blonde wig
when I met her and
then a brown one and then
a head scarf,
floral, purple, I
remember.
bangs peeking out but
the rest an
all black everything
including dress,
boots and nails,
eyes lined like soot
tracing the chimney top,
and she was a
studious observer,
a witch.
told me she “burned a sigil”
for this and then she
licked her lips
(think about me)
touched her nails to her tongue
(listen to me)
ran her wet nails down
her neck
(wait for me)
and I’ve just been waiting.
“How guys save me in their phone #11”
nice figure and
sharp glances.
obsessed with her wrinkles when
passing window.
thirty three years old and can’t seem to
thwart her own self persecution.
but an alpha.
told me to sit down on the bed.
told me to lay face down on the bed.
told me to consent.
said she liked ass play
and pegging and
doing things in pieces.
“how guys save me in their phone #10”
mood swings,
kind of mired in
a circular prophecy
that she keeps repeating.
silent in spurts,
frozen when alarmed but
then bursts in and says to
me: “are you fucking
watching me?”
like we’ve been talking
all this time.
“how guys save me in their phone #9”
made me walk to her house
and collect 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.”
when I asked about the stones,
she looked perplexed.
said to throw those away too.
“sisyphus” or “how guys save me in their phone #8”
you become loosely creased
looseleaf reduced to a crumple
floating to the floor
without altar,
a harmonic little
m o r e
in my palm
on your way
to the tile
where I gently lay
you leave you
altered without prayers
once more.
leave you twisted
in want
like me and
deformed.
“warning forms”
carried with her
a weapon: her keys in hand,
a disarming speech pattern
and no reason to suspect
her about anything.
I never tell a lie,
she said
leading me to
someone else’s house.
(how do you get away with that?)
I just never finish the story,
she said and I
hung there like a
Christmas ornament
glistening in her iris.
“How guys save me in their phone #6”
the theme this year is handmade
and hidden.
eat your chocolate-covered raspberries
and please,
try not to cry:
not in public,
and not in that dress.
not on this day.
wipe your sticky handprint
on a towel and throw it in the
hamper.
blot your glistening lipstick
on a tissue and make sure it
makes it to the wastebasket.
wipe the counters with lemon-scented
dish soap.
light a candle.
set the table.
embrace him when he enters.
he made those carob-coated kisses
from scratch.
you deserve this and
he deserves that.
you earned that swelling thing.
he earned that red ring around his finger and
his base
and that homemade batch of quick mix cupcakes;
the cardboard leaks into the batter
but you mostly taste the crushing waste of
conversation, of
years together, of your
creativity misplaced.
today is priceless and
boy, you sure worked hard at hiding those
resentments.
you should be rewarded.
wet your whistle with some low class
cognac.
show some teeth,
bat an eyelash.
give those big burgundy lips a big, juicy
smack.
make him yearn for those polished tips
climbing down his back;
sculpted to scoop frosting,
you let him taste the vanilla from your
index.
make him work the dishwasher for it.
but first make sure he swallows each
homemade mouthful;
gulps each morsel,
glazes his throat and everything that touches it
sticks.
he’s satisfied his girl can do this;
his girl can prove it.
wait til you hear his lips smack back.
boy, you sure look good in that apron
hovering over him, a domestic
giant and he looks so good
choking at your ankles
tasting all your sprinkled
thumbtacks.
“valentine’s day”
you’re precarious, and I write a final
warning in the sky:
get out of this town.
but you want to show something off:
gather your pack,
skin some hides,
cross into this side of the hills.
yea, I’d risk swapping infections with you:
scarf down the whole town in an effort to escape
yourself, myself,
we both fuck and run
for fun,
but it seems I’ve been absconded
from my all male zoo, and
you salt my face with spit
when you tell me
you’re mine
and you’re snacking on my cheeks,
really laughing this time.
I’m yours for the slaughter,
wild elk for the taking.
besides, I’m the only one left
who doesn’t scream
when you chase me.
you’re a wolf.
I’m a swaddled baby
trapped in a cave,
I’ll prove it,
come taste me.
abandon your cloak,
the cover of trees
camouflaged in the leaves,
fur like bark
so I mark you on accident
with my sordid tongue pen.
I leave my initials everywhere I’ve
ever been.
come find me and
feed.
treat me like you need me
to survive this coming season.
step on my neck.
pull the skin from my teeth.
suck the moisture from my breath,
whisper:
home
as I bleat,
as I lay at your feet
and empty my guts on your
claws.
“from your secret admirer #19”
(What if no one’s the killer & no ones the martyr?)
he always talked to me
like I was a word problem:
he furrowed his brow and
looked 100 years older than me
but didn’t leave any more
of an impression than that.
he was an egoist with a small penis
and he licked my face sometimes
when he finished.
that’s when I left
I thought about screwing the entire community
to get them off my fucking back
but the way you touch me
feels less tenuous,
spacious like breath,
like lungs rising from their skin cocoon,
a lot like late June
before the heat hangs us
with her relentless swarm
so I keep my gaze towards you.
we used to talk about my feelings a lot
but I could tell it bothered him
when I brought up the fear of pedophilia:
but you can’t tell some of them are 17:
not the way they move when they run,
shirts off, they could be
20
21.
I’m a creep too.
like a sale on day old bread:
fifty cents is not a lot
and I just want it all.
he always said “interesting”
after everything I said.
I was a loony tune caught in the moon
pretending to love his censorious stature,
but really when we fucked
I just thought of those young men
arms wrapped around me,
tongues on my neck,
18 and over.
the more I remember
the more the whole thing seemed like a poorly written rough draft
and I just kept waiting for the twist,
the prize behind Door Number Three
that turned out to be a supernatural force that drove me
to contrived madness
and I just ended up feeling bad about everything I ever said
to them.
silence is astounding
and I filled it with talking spaces,
unfinished business.
he called my sadness “savage”
when I ate my own heart during the famine
but it was better than doing a rain dance
with our shriveled. cowering tongues out
and no gray in sight.
in my defense, judge,
I didn’t know the bitch was coming back
to dig up her brother.
those little siamese cats
what a bloody, noisy mess.
had I known that;
how loud it would be,
the squeal, the cry at the first
touch
I would have started by ripping
out the larynx.
“the hush”
you’re something else.
something that can’t hang around
but also can’t spell
retreat without a
book being forced
in your face.
I’m a thesaurus, and I’m
suddenly panting
like an exiled Arabian
falling in love with every mirage
that promises water,
mouth as cup,
swift recompense for the previous harms
done by your
fathers.
we’re meeting in the middle
of a wide abyss that I picked,
and the first thing you want to
know is:
how did you get here,
and where do you really live?
and I want to know if you
brought any food and
why you ever let someone you don’t
know in.
you are unphased by the red veins
in the clouds, and the way they clap
black as my mood shifts,
the exes in my eyes,
the way the night moves out of my
way every time I step outside
to greet the twilight,
the portending moon,
and I am hoping we can
finally talk about the way it
felt when we left it up to
God.
just so you know,
I begin,
the greatest trick the devil ever played
was herself, and she’s the only one
listening to your
impetuous cries
tonight.
“the emergence”
daturamoon.com 