Tag: love poem

after each meeting,
I stood awkwardly and
made small talk.
I would give almost any
woman my number and barely
kept up with what I had told
anyone but I

 made efforts.
one day I got a fortune cookie
that said
“focus in on the color yellow
tomorrow for good luck.”
this meeting held
a lot of talk of God,
as it had a few catholics
and devoted disciples like
I, interested in the supernatural
themes of faith and
manifestation.
we spent many days
focusing on the third step
regardless of topic
and the passivity of that step,
being actually a willing action,
yet a passive stasis to uphold
is what kept me under spell.

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives
over to the care of God
as we understood him”


the carpet was blue
with yellow circles everywhere
and that’s probably why
I made it my home group
shortly after I got the fortune cookie.
after much reluctance to join
any of them, ironically,
I picked the only group
that was mixed but
mostly men.
just me and one or two others.
and these men were
not young, but old.
I slowly invited more women
and they showed.

what they always ask me
is what my motive is.
I cannot simply say
that I looked at the carpet
and saw it was yellow
as someone spoke about the
divination of action into form.
I did not intend
to build the group,
amass it,
celebrate it,
throw an anniversary picnic,
show up weekly and
listen, share, open
vulnerabilities but listen.
To wives and the ways advantageous
players play,
then let my serpent spine
sizzle in its case,
one day call them all sexist,
balk at the coming year’s celebration,
do nothing but exit
and get all of the women
to leave.

“God”

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sometimes when I think back
to my fuck ups or falling down,
I come here and I see all these
women and I think,
whose answered prayer am I?
she said
and that struck me.
when women speak
I put my head down deferentially
but also out of my own
need to curl up
inside myself.
It’s winter, 2015,
just past the new year,
I’m broken hearted
and knee deep in
some fucking secrets
but whose answered prayer
am I? who called
the wounded shepard
here? It’s 2015 and I had
just been gifted three thousand
dollars from my grandmother
that my parents called and asked
for back.

I gave them two thousand and
used the  rest to move out of
the townhouse
into a one bedroom
in the heart of Kensington.
embraced by the “Auspicious
Coin Laundry” service next door.
no one would ever miss my house.
I didn’t have anything left o
over but I never did.
it’s worth mentioning that when I was
eighteen and just home for
the summer from college,
my mother told me they had
cleaned out my savings account.


“family”

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I go to meet you
with my hand
smudged with ink,
a bad habit of mine.

this is 2014 and
I had things to remember:
about seven or eight phone calls to
make, the weaving of
committees plus incidents to report,
plus how much I stepped or made
or consumed and the beep of friends
 in need
like the outer rim of a leech,
stuck to hip and
 wasting me.
when I saw the melting
phrase, a faded scrawled “pw”
 near my thumb
 which meant paperwork.

I had to submit five more
things tomorrow but I was here to
get my scarf back actually.
focus on just reporting
earnestly my feelings.
I walk boldly
up the walk and
then upon seeing
you, tall,
I just scatter
every thought into the air.

grab the scarf
and go.
we are at
love is patient.
I am in my car and
gone.

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my hand is smudged
with ink;
marker actually,
I lick my finger tip
and check again,
try to rub it, realize I had
written it in Sharpie
before I stick the tab under my tongue.
this is
a bad habit of
mine:

writing to do lists on
my hand
with whatever pen I was holding
so I wouldn’t forget.
I saw the melting
phrase, a faded scrawled “pw”
 near my thumb
 which meant paperwork.
it was already Saturday.
this is 2018 to keep up.


there is one heart on my left hand
 to count the hours between when I took the
dose to now.
everything is obscured by
the fractions
of stories,  I am looking for
something that can
only be found by my favorite
scope of talent:
my eidetic memory,
my propensity to travel
from one section of
the ground to another,
my ability to walk backwards.

 

the first hour is the hardest.
my stomach sort of lurches
realizing the first wave has already hit
this is acid so it’s harder.
I take half a tab so
my doors won’t melt
but still
I need to get out of a place that is wall to
wall carpet and packed with scribble,
pillows, cat hair, journals,
the air of segregation as
I chain myself to my five mirrors
not to be heard from for a whole year.
I grab eight stones and empty
everything else out of my bookbag.
I bring one water bottle.
I begin to walk with no
sound, letting minutes
weave themselves around my body as
I patiently walk down the
three flights  trying not
to be appalled by how crooked
the building was
or my sore knees or
the temperature of my men;
a reaching tepid.
I ignored the chipping bathtub
just to make it out the door.
I am remembering when I had bed bugs.
there are things I will miss
I think as my skin leaps.

other  things I’m naming:
ways to feel unsettled in transition.
states, or
how to move between things and
home also;  the way the birds landed
on the trees outside my stained-
glass window,
the way the pink light cut through
the room and all the green on my block
in summer which meant
blackbirds, blue jays, cardinals,
plus skateboarders.
my short dresses catching
on the points of fences.
I am opening the door to warmth
and it shreds me.

I spend forty five minutes
sauntering in presence,
pinching the skin of my purlicue.
tedium, ennui
or indifference.
 how much space
reverie takes in my brain vs.
results.
What do I want?
a soft nothing
like my jaw opening on
a pillow, feeling the satin
on my thighs and just
gawking at the glitter on my ceiling,
another thing I will miss.

my leisure:
the growth between getting
and having.
people never change.
 I am stuck
 somewhere on a trail
walking and wanting not endless
provision, but the
allegory made more
palatable.
by the time
I walk into the graveyard
hoping to see deer,
I am mired deep in belief
that it is a dead sister
I am seeking,
ignoring my real
brother’s name.

 

I take the Sharpie
out to mark the second hour
at the gate.

“the first wave (grief)”

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I send you a thank you card
in the mail just to remind
you I exist.

you could tell
I was very longing.
you had told me that was merely
absence doing that to me,
we were sustained.
I agreed but
I was cutting all my hair
off and I needed
diversion from
picking the skin off
my lips: something
tactile.
  I began to
recite all the things
I was grateful for daily.

*watermelon
*mangoes
*apples
*Alize

 

it always starts the same way.
something I can eat,
my cat and then I see where my head
is at:

*the tiny aberrations that make up
my brain. 

 

“the tiny aberrations ”

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you’re distracting,
I’ve heard before.
used to get moved all the
time in elementary school,
away from my friends only
to make more friends
and get the class chattering.
me, I’m just a little
hummingbird.

little innocuous
sending
you some mailed cryptograms
asking you if you like
peaches or nectarines
better. I’m becoming juice.
how will I know
which citrus bed to
 plunder, slather
myself in pulp you
can just lick right off?

 

me? I’ll go you
know, I’m wind,
so just take it.
just tell me what to
line my neck in.
you know it takes
you three years and I
show up head to toe
doused in rosemary
anyway,
choker dotted with
every piece of
tourmaline I own.
a tiny cross in my hand
from my nana’s broken
rosary. me?
I’m wind, I’ll
go.

kiss your cheek and
gesture to my attire,
wrapped in silver to fight
the dogs of moon,
 whisper got to keep
those ghosts away,
yeah?
me? I don’t mean
a thing,
breeze in hall
just scenting the
tops of your books
like I’m right to own
them. you?

you will know me
by my officious
typeface and choker
tight around the throat
lined in polished,
black stone.

“the letters”

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when we met, I was
inching my way back
to my robust self  having
established myself as a
case manager. having
scraped my savings to
buy an oil leaking car
that almost caught on fire
in the first week of work
back in August.
I then borrowed money
to buy a car that didn’t.
I had paid rent for three months
without much to do.
I was high on repayments,
seeing I could repay,
in fact,  and

adding cookies back into my diet,
unworried about my teeth
for seconds at a time.
the party had vegan brownies and
I made sure to get plenty.
still I  could touch my ribs
and almost wrap my hands
completely around my waist.
a measure of security.
I often squeeze my ribs to
see if I’m still thin.


when we met,
I had freshly chopped
pixie hair and clear skin,
green eyeshadow to make my
brown eyes pop.
limited eyeliner and a shy
way about scooting next to
you, feeling contagious.

when we met, I had a wardrobe
that consisted of colorful
and flowy items,
hand me downs,
and a reticent entrance.
I was seeking incorporeal
thrills via touch and
you were freshly
out of love. 

 

“the rebound”

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it helps me to fall
into haze in these
moments of adaptation
 or just  length,
time that has
to pass and my
adjustment to fluctuations
in my general
circumstance or
mood is dependent
on the haze.
i like fighting, I smile.
I have a few blocks to go
and every man is facing me
and forming a crooked
cock so I just step
 into the haze.

 

I remember this
one day where I met you
to get a Slurpee to
cool off for a while.

your face was most open
 outside
drenched,
you tried to hug
me but I am

closed,

drenched in day old
bourbon sweat,
show up unshowered and
in a deep swallow;

a persisting contrition
coated in plum wine,
whatever else I just said,
Bourbon,
I wave my hands over the glass.
that was last night.

that was last night and it
was pretty bad.


but we sit side by side
like it’s something
non-contagious about me.
well except when you smile,
he said.
but I blush and I couldn’t
stand that so I

focus on my knees
 remembering
 what it felt like
under sheets
and I fell open.
then there’s my brother.

then there’s the new
hard edged smile
on the top of a frosted mug: 

ubiquitous half smirk.

 

“I used to be in love,”
I say out loud
and I’m about one
block from the El
in front of another group
of men with their cocks
crooked and leering.
I close my mouth,
probably drooling,
adjust my strap,
walk forward.
I wake up like that
often and here 

in the middle of Kensington.


“August pt 2.”

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I show up early to
make coffee,
drink coffee,
steal a couple pens
and a few donuts before the
meeting.
I’m here to look
good and watch people.

 

I am covered in
sweat by the time I sit down:
tan and thin from
the obsessive calorie cutting
that formed as a result of
penurious heritage,
bad timing,
mercurial interests.
I’m skinny and all
about it, wearing shirts that show
my sternum leaning hard
against the skin. that means
when I stand in front
of you, you can see the outline
of my bones.

 

I’m skinny cuz I’m hungry.
cuz I have been portioning
crackers. cuz I allow
myself only one piece of
bread a day.  once took a spoonful
of sprinkles in my mouth as a
treat and didn’t eat anything
else for hours.
I’m letting my clavicle
show, my shoulders bony
and in front of everyone,
glistening like olive marble.
hard.
I have two tokens in my pocket;
one to get home and
one to roam.
I cross my legs in front
of a blond haired boy,
take a sip of my seventh
cup of coffee,
someone begins

 

you are only
sick as your secrets.

I am 120 pounds and waning,
olive marble.

 

“confession #”

 

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I am surrounded by men
who are wolfish in detonation
but repenting for a lifetime
of substance abuse
so we nod when they say
things that are aptly
reflected instances in which
they felt a guilt greater
than themselves.
they usually begin with things
 like
I took advantage of her
and 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
and I am mostly plain.
I wear light blush, mascara and
chapstick but I don’t spend all
day about it.
it is important as a woman
to catalogue what you were wearing
and how you generally look.
also I had gained some weight
first, before I  discovered that
counting beans will gain you
phone bill money.
 when you tell the audience the story
they can gauge reaction better.
were you homely, girl?

I was neither homely nor
exceptional,
merely watching the blue chips
of nail polish flake onto
the floor as I found
my hands to be urgent
suddenly.

“confessions #2”

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