Tag: love poem

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
during fits of sudden inspiration.
moved from sheets
to cushions
to sheets
to type it,
to shower once a week
if you’ll allow yourself
to feel the warmth

graze your chin, scalp,
untouched chest.
open your chapped lips to the sky.
feel the water
trickle down your navel.
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:
costuming yourself in grin,
tights and boots;
        you vulnerable, kid?
an expansive blankness
still drives your body around
to pick up soy milk for breakfast.

finish something you started.

there you are,
you cooing cobra.
the chills that almost ate
me: winter.   several
in a row.
the darkness and introspection of how
I’ve chosen to succeed:
lone and stolid
Two of Swords.
thanking my institutions
for showing me how to carve
pure copper into
green or something sharp to hold,
the likelihood that two things
look identical enough
to both be chosen,
that I will learn the
ways of mask
and holster; unfrozen
and burgeoning.

there you finally are.

“rage”

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carried with her
a weapon:  keys in hand,
disarming speech pattern;
accented and d r aw n out
drawl,  a couple y’alls
and no reason to suspect
her about anything.

I never tell a lie,
she said
leading me to
some house.
i’m tepid but halfway up
the steps, not even
inquiring the sudden need to mention
but the practicality:
and  how do you
get away with that?


I just never finish the story,
she said, half turned to the door
and I hung there in the frost air
hooked like an ornament
on the front porch:
slowly twirling, decorative to her
and glistening bright off her iris.

and not sure if I held any more meaning than that.

“How guys save me in their phone #12”

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for some of us,
freedom was a legend;
a cage of smudged windows
a foiled pine for everything.
crippled twirl,
pace around the apartment
with a wand in hand,
repetitive crescendo in head,
tennis elbow from the instinctual
bend.

or the sudden broken glass
on the porch, the
knot of fervent caterpillars
sliding through my guts and
prematurely spilling
out onto the floor,
dissolving into pools of blood
like little girls ripped in pieces
in the midst of a tornado’s whirl
when they should have hid in the cellar,
waited patiently.

incubated until  the day is finally warm
and facing them,
tear through the tether
unbridled in exodus, unimpeded
and ready to transform into grand ideas,
take off without interruption
like the little girl’s
nascent scorn; 

now grown,
an envoy of acrimony
and the blue-black tones of
home, I pause here to ask myself
before I commit to the
flight,: what does metamorphosis
really feel like? 
there is a visceral reply:
  my skin
tearing at the thread of
each inside, each wound
and stretching wide
for me to see,    wide
enough to case the sky
and black inside turned
outside;  now
black each wing of
bone and vine,
black my eyes and
black the sea I shoot
from; everything I touch is black
like me,

and I can see for miles.

“transition (pt. 2)”

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my hands are currently stinging,
ungloved and pallid and I do
this daily, these walks with my hands out.
I never wear gloves and I never put them in my pockets.

often times I blink,
realizing I’m not somewhere I thought I was.
sometimes feeling I’m back on a street
in Virginia.
kids always watch me. 


they’re the only ones that see me muttering
under my breath,
fingers curved then moving
like I’m counting
my thoughts as they digest
they smile.
they don’t think the same as adults
and can see secrets. I’m crazy. I change my route mid route passing them,
deciding suddenly to get coffee from a different place.
I  had been to the other place three times this week
and I don’t want anyone to know me.

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first, he showed me the block.
waved his hands over black ice,
concrete, gritted
      you know how to make things work

he walked several feet ahead as
we did a loop between two identical
intersections and stopped in a booth so
he could pay for the affection:
a vegan milkshake to soften
the contrast between two
nearly identical snow-lit
worlds; two winters in two
time zones but one was green and blue
and foothill-lined
and  one was bleak.
this one hung in the air:
gelid, tense, a dense and
mutable gray that changed from
partially cloudy to
biting fang
but what is more concerning is the
space between us.


I slurped the vanilla coconut cream
from the plastic straw without making
eye contact or anything known
and he laughed at the things
that just rolled off my tongue
in these little allayed fits. it was January fifth,
the middle of a
polar vortex and I hadn’t seen
the center of the city yet,
or west or anything but
Kensington.
I kept mumbling about the
loose trash  and he smiled.
my nose was running so
 I spent the evening
in silence wiping it.
trembling, 
cradled in his iron abdomen.

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all day long
I vacillate.  I set intention—
maybe I move a couple steps forward
or skirt one craving
and I applaud myself for days.
my knees get some desperate rest
or my body gets water
but it’s followed by immediate
withdrawal.
indulgence,  glutton
three walks:
four coffees, twelve cookies
and picking a fight.


cherished: my leisure,
my habits,beloved
hermeticism and my ability to make believe–
find  double meaning
of everything. I’m really just walking,
compulsive ambivalence.
I shrug.
sip the coffee

let the wind take me.

now I am
in Philadelphia,
with an Access card to
buy toilet paper. .
I am dog sitting; house sitting for
money in Queen Village,
and I spend the days
drinking their hazelnut flavored
Keurigs,
sneaking their chocolates.
using their washer for my own
heavy blankets,
and walking the pit bull
without the choke chain
she gave me.
I observe the doors of people
in Society Hill:
clean black or mahogany
with the numbers painted on
them or in brass next to their
outdoor lanterns, their empty
flower boxes soon to be leaking
zinnias, petunias, geraniums.
soon to be fingered,
picked by me.
I am obsessed with the material
possessions of others
and knowing I’m no good
marked this place for
later:

we should rob them.

begin to circle the area
with the pit bull
understanding clemency only
gifted to the few who
have smiles like
little sunshines
and white skin;
tanned but porcelain
otherwise.

“doors #1”

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I carried little pieces of God
everywhere;
whittled pine needle,
robin feathers,
a baby garnet for luck.
besides the
straws, I liked
natural things; Earth

to touch during
sedentary moments
quell the fidget inside.
today, a pint-sized celestite
entertained my skittish fingers.
it was a part of a larger cluster,
but I liked the cyan sparkle
so I broke off a piece.

I am surrounded by repentance,
men with wolfish outlines.
“allies.”

I nod when they say
they feel a guilt greater
than their desire. I relate
having consumed an entire
night’s portion .before walking here.
when they want my approval,
they usually begin with things
like
I took advantage of her.

I cross my legs.

I am wearing brown tights, brown
heeled boots and a cream turtleneck
sweater dress.  my hair is
short, uncombed and strange.
I am mostly plain.
save light blush, mascara and
chapstick..
it is important as a woman
to catalog what you were wearing
and how you generally look
in any moment.
also I had gained some weight.

 when you tell the audience the story
they can gauge their reaction better.
were you homely, girl?

I was neither homely nor
exceptional, a frozen
brown blob blending
into the cream walls
and watching the blue chips
of nail polish flake onto
the floor. as he spoke
of his life of
trespassing,
I found my hands
to be urgent.

and remembering the whisper
of the woman who shushed
the last girl who shared her rape
in a room just like this,
I watched a speck of light blue
crystal join the floor.
saw the red swell and trickle
into a dot capping my finger:
blood     and   watched
the tiny celestite break.

“fury”

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they say I talk too much
and I’m inclined to agree.
perhaps I’ll
sew my chapped lips shut,
show them the scorpion etched
on my shoulder
first and no one
has ever seen my childhood home.

but I’m compromised
by the simple fact I think
I might be a ghost so I’m
always checking mirrors
and calling 911, waiting for
the fireman to touch my arm.
they say
“your leg is not numb, ma’am.”

but I can’t be sure so I make
him touch it again.

one trick is never tell them
anything. I like my men
to think I wait in lonely
cave: ache
and pray for them.
palms clasped and reverent,
sort of rocking like that.
real southern too.
just sort of worshiping
the idolatry of shadow.
please.
they make me repeat it:
please. and thanks
for everything.


my men remember me
incessantly and always
cut out of starry dough:
soft, head half-cocked
looking up at them
 with servitude but
sideways like I’m
about to laugh,
then me in my day skirt,
hair covered and
muttering.
candle lit or twenty seven
if I’m out of time.
devout.
pocket full of them.

what a violent question.

you’re sunburned,
gone for weeks without
inquiry and now
a wash of here:
 forehead fervid,
a humid wind clasping
the back of the choker
while your left hand lifts
my skirt.
thighs are soft,
reminiscent,
it’s the skin that brought
you back, isn’t it?
what’s that?
you say,
looking at the blue and
black ring of shadow mouth
 above my  birthmark.

it’s the way your jaw
bulges as you bite your
ocean tongue
that was just kept safe
and wet under me
before you begin to
pull the clasp rope
til the emerald center
pushes hard against  the
front of my throat
almost as if you are going to
bring the stone inside me
that proves it.
and please,

what a violent question,
love. 


“Five of Wands”

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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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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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