Tag: love poem

I repeat the question in my head.

yes, he was my only brother.
it is much easier to disappear
but the house moved with
me; from freeze to open
like an unattended mortuary
moved to resurrect itself
after years of
neglect and

did you know,
the bones given a soft lick
will sparkle white
  like fresh-caught ivory
and once it feels the brush of
mouth
will file any joint to tip
with tooth
and gore the things that touches
it, that holds it
near to chest or
safely in its palm?

as it shreds the flesh from
crown to feet,
someone says to me,
with sincerest sympathy
and I fall into a fog.
was he your only brother?

as I pass a trashcan,
I fumble a little,
  make room in my bag
for lipstick.

“the sympathy card”

1

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)”

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”

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”

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I put my headphones in.

begin to spin the happy thought
into years; of us.
your brusqueness
  it’s just one breath
syncopated with whatever song
I assign it like I walked
into a film set; replay a scene
of you coming back and
behind me, your mouth
hot with acrimony.
your hands rough in
both touch from the ungloved carpentry,
spackled with white paint
and the way
you take my waist.
I hum out loud.
the loop is what I have to
worry about.
the way you press your teeth
to me.
        it’s just one breath.

“the men”

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I took myself
to the welfare office,
not even getting lost as
I’m prone to do.
          why can’t you just figure it out?
I live right down the street.

my shorts are stuck to my thighs,
and my neck is drenched.
I wipe my forehead with my hand
to her disgust.
“It’s unseasonably warm for June”
I begin and elucidate the drawl,
smile to beg for my Access card back
but here comes the recalcitrance;
she asks me for something
I don’t have and I
smacked my lips the wrong way
so I snacked on my servility
inch by inch as I
inched my way
back to “our place.”

months later,
I lose a diamond necklace there.
there is nothing more satisfying
than losing things or
shaving my head or
throwing away the clunky pepper
spray that women wraithed into chains
and hung from their hips
as if fear and trepidation
and weaponry have
ever kept me safe.
someone told me failure is perspective
but all I see are cops
pinching women with latex gloves
and all the little shrubs
that line the block look like
workers shaking their heads at me
      leave
or,

get on with then.
I am  throwing coffee grounds
into a leaky cardboard box,
our first CD is scratched  and
on top.
I’m on a bed that lifts
with one giant sigh
and no top sheet and
no frame.
they said risk meant courage
and I say you fucking
left me here
into your voicemail.

I’m eating sprinkles with a spoon
in a freshly inherited
two story townhouse.
It’s the sixth of June
so I got weeks to make
next rent.

“grace”

0

I love fighting.
brawling.
drawing out the syntax,
collecting arguments,
theory, obsessed
with subjective motive,
inarguable objectivity.
formulas and how
2:2 is not as pretty as
3:3 and how it is quite possible
to roll doubles four times
in a row if you just kind
of think that way.
the predilections of
others and how they
mount them,
ride them.

I am rehearsing smiling
in the mirror.
this is how i go on dates:
1. remind myself to behave.
remember an old flame’s advice:
just be normal,
someone else’s version of
normal, not yours.

2. take drugs.
3. see what happens in between.
with you, i made a pact.
be warm. be warm. be warm. be warm. be warm. be warm.

I am practicing standing still,
waiting, I fidget like
that,
fingers in the dirt,
scoop a stick,
watch a bug,
ask questions,
try not to play with
the straw. deep
breaths. don’t look
at the numbers,
don’t talk about death.
big smile!


and hug people
right when they walk
in the room.

“Honey”

0

the second one I called
was Hecate.

I am on the floor
in the stained glass
room with the brown carpet
and the yellow walls
and the paper flowers:
bright orange, white, red,
dusty and a sprinkle of
musk from the places
I shoved them and my
dripping skin;
eighty eight degree body
flailing impetuously
flattening them.

I am flipping over index cards.
the coral & lime sheet is lined
with shells, some broken
 and rocks, pieces of concrete I
remember picking up in Maryland
when I saw the perfect house.
a ceramic lemon bowl is full
of dirt from the catacombs,
a burned scripture,
red jasper.
my fingers digging
at the bottom,
tips filthy,
jagged, can
cut.

today we are reading up until
we are forced to stop:
is not easily angered
which means I have gotten
past does not envy
but I have not gotten
past temper,
or
I am indeed a wrathful
cunt so
the second one I called
was Hecate:
have purpose,
a patent resolve.

and I always pause to look
 in the mirror,
not unsure. just a
tremor. old reflex
to watch my eyes change.
part my hair,
look past something;
my facile understanding
of this and
my dolorous step.

we break men.

crushing debris
between my fingers
into a nanoscopic
form settling
permanently on my
floor or carried
everywhere
I go on my soles.

“the incantations”

0

the art piece was
grotesque in its
simple presentation;
an ostentatious gift to
yourself as I fumbled
openly with indecision,
one foot pointed west,
one stuck supplicating
beneath yours
and we moved right next to
a bar that was closed the
day I planned my relapse.
I wanted the burn of rum
mixed with lukewarm Coke
and the oblivion to follow
me home.


it was a dark copper albatross
that hovered at the top of
the stairs.
I think I was also under
a deep dehydration.
I needed limits and
boundaries but I also needed to
tear the art piece off the wall
and file each side into a lithe
pocket knife that I could
wear around my neck
as a signal of my
emerging masculinity.
have one taped to each arm
and to each thigh
and to each ankle
which is the joke about masculinity:
it’s supposed to contain
a dark wild feminine
but abhors any force,
needs appendage to stop it.

the fourth wave is
more insidious.
I didn’t notice the change
at first but I did gaze up
at the top and wonder
what it’d be like to
leap to the bottom step
and if you’d notice that first
or that a piece of
the sculpture was missing,
hidden somewhere.

“the black book”

0

later
you can tell has been rehearsed.
i’d be remiss if I didn’t reveal
a five feet of light bruising.
it’s heavy;
my tongue large with
little darted lullabies,
my endless provocation
and beg for hands
on me like
paddles or crops.
or just the way hands do
when hot, they
harm.

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