Tag: poetry

how to lean into the sharp points.


the first thing you notice about me is
the way I saunter
even to grab a ginger ale from the cooler
               “it’s my favorite.”
brush you, smile at your friends
and kind of swarm them
like an imposition
starting conversations about the
ludicrous state of things always alluding
to my prescience without
saying anything
you’ll say its the smirk I
 mastered not the crowd.

but then I retreat.
but then  I linger near the
exit the rest of the night with the crumpled straw
 in my hand
and the temper on my tongue
contained,
my earlier rage not expressed
or not handled as boldly
as it deserved to be;
the proclamations
the exits

I like way you held my hand
and said my name.
       my name is artemis.

sometimes buildings just catch on fire.
you say I always crouch with a
bow in hand.
            “I’m just nervous”
and that when I am lying I look away really
fast so you can’t see the sneer spread
and you know
I fucked your friends
and you know I’ll fuck some more
and you see me on the screen
 my name is Artemis.
parting lips, combing bangs,
practicing inflection as I said
I would.

you said you’ll always remember
the way I laughed LOUD
and so sudden
    touch his shoulder
like you were the funniest man in
the room.
and I’ll always remember
the way the door frame dripped
and bled to one sorrel-orange.
no, it’s not that you said yes.
you said “ok”
kind of folding,
tempering and allowing
which is the way I like
my men to lean.

I walked across the welcome mat
throwing matches as you swept,
the windows becoming a
 carrot color and me
disappearing.

“how guys save me in their phone  #4”

 

(13 odes to CKacyrek)

0

 

 once upon a time
I floated
through rooms.
we were ghosts
draped in human furs and
red felt flowers
to keep ourselves warm and
using illness as an anchor,
I was a grave when I wanted to be
a stove. 

you
twirled to the sound of my fluttering
 lashes: broken and
 sloppy     untimed;
the way you glanced towards me
on street corners.
I could tell by the
way you held yourself,
the books
and your heavy eye contact,
a light coat and no gloves
 and no verbal complaint
about the term addict
 being thrust upon us that
you were cold 

and you
 didn’t just act strange,
you possessed it,
            the leaves are turning,
I sniff patiently.      sip hot water with
lemon and basil.
someone sang on a makeshift stage of
upside down milk crates.
you looked sidelong, gingerly,
an afterthought that led me here.
I played with my hem and revocation,
 silence that halts
you make me feel young, I mouth
to the ground.
you returned the gesture with
a prepared grin and returned to
accompanying yourself.
the ground fell away and
I was a picked thorn;

some perspiring flower,
I knelt in a corner
stem growing from a red plastic cup,
cowering and open
knowing this crowd rocked you
in her drunk cradle.
you walked by with a glass
and no one else and
a relentless
first sight and I’m swallowed,
staggered,
swollen with ideas of our
first life.
come first light
I will be buried in drool,
wandering around squinting,
tiny eyes and barely a
 move, I watch you pass
 effortlessly
like my continual gap years.
turning to give each other one last glance
over our now bronzed shoulders,
I adjust my strap so you think about skin
 (I’m swimming in it)

 

and that chilly way we do:
show a little set of teeth and move on
in a pool of cool air and unresolved
 disorder, I keep coming back
to the idea
 of meeting
you.

i need that.
like a shark
needs blood.

 

“pool”

0

     “I have no future plans,”
I began calmly.

 I am arms outstretched
walking nowhere but with
ardency so
I am labeled,
whimsical and manic,
a troubled woman
not to marry and
like a wound up
fairy, the character that
keeps the music box

spinning.
until it’s boring:
the repetition,
the posing,
the pink smile and
matching slippers
leaping from her
gold coiled post
sprinkling glitter,
growing nerves and
ankles that bend flat
to walk to run to
crawl

 people like me because
 I have
 no plans,
am honest about it,
resplendent teeth when
writing sonnets to the men
and a sense of fury when
reflecting on affairs.
big,
have wings that carry weapons.    I
hear in a distance
   someone repeat it
I use intimidation as a tactic
to seize opportunity
well,
I am blessed with delusive
lips and
 I also use
 black magic.

“seven of cups”

0

ooh

I am here during the dance of wolves:
pitch black,
some hooded room of knives.
talk of betrayal,
and me blindfolded
without warning.

the past
come slowly dragged:
it’s
weighty and pressured,
almost settled at this depth
in acceptance of its rot,
its forfeit but we are
curious about causes.
so there’s a forced decompression
and chipping sides and
losing even more aesthetic,
a film developing as its
exposed to air
 like a sunken ship
exhumed solely for gawking,
touching, petting for its
tectonic power, I am a compressed rage
expanding into tower,
the tallest feline in the room
and I demand method
and production.
I am big like sun rays,
just as far, true,
 but warm.

my cancer in the 12th.
 my house
guarded by a tiny scorpion
so no one knows how
to step and
what else?
you want to ask to hear
the most assured yes:
this is 6.

not previously numbered.
you are an arithmomaniac
because you count your worth
in things and people and
to hoard both things
you need numbers.
lead a couple lambs
to slaughter.
have him drink directly from
your ceremonial wine glass
left most days hidden.
clear but for the black writing
and polka dots:
“not every witch is
from Salem” and he makes a joke
says because we’re not in
 Salem
and you say,
I’m not from

Salem and you’re halfway
to the spider now.


“6.” or “full moon dinner party in cancer”

0

what does all of this
mean to you?
she waves her hand
to no one. 

you say it’s important,
ask me to tell it in
“linear order”
but how can I get away with
things telling stories like
that? and besides,
I have survived time
and cage and aged
in linear order.
my proof
    (flex a ripped tricep)
is endless strength,
brimming veins
that have learned how to
vibrate, hum, cluck,
even whistle when your girl
walks by me       I’m
a snake

through her core
and now all you see is a doe
gored in your forest and
I got to eat the whole orchard
I asked for.
are you lost or
just quiet, just hiding
from the butcher inside
it?
 you know I’m dense,

ice cold, flush with
forked tongue ready to puncture
someone,     i’m lush;
maintaining a sense of
dam and containment
even in my most berating
fits of temper or panic,
I manage to remain
frozen these days
like a cracking lake
you say I am
sharp and

bitter.
but underneath my skin,
that blue-lace casing,
a carnise river:
little tributaries to
the turning of the world
in linear delivery.
and you say
full of rage     and I say
ok, just wait,

you and I are from
the same place
and I start to pace
the block once more. 

III.

0

 

sitting on the edge of the bay
 on a borrowed blanket,
I was vomiting up
 an Everclear Slurpee
and some sort of philosophy
about the closing of the day;
 the way it moved
death,
like an itinerant wave
that followed me
everywhere.
the tide crept back
and I heard you cough,
felt myself starting to drown again
and then your hand on my thigh
and then nothing at all. 

pain subsides in very
miniscule amounts
of time
if  you don’t
repeat the
 story. 

do not repeat the story

“how to be a river”

or

sit in it.

“how to be a lake”


and turning to you again, I
implore you to pick a title and
stick with it.   for me, I say:
do you like warnings or do you
like to drown?

I think at some point
you have earned the right to say
I know already because you lived it
without acquiescing to
authority so I asked
to see it first:
the river’s mouth,
even though they said
I’d never make it.

“warnings”

0

we are sharing visions.

during our forced intermission,
I became a lantern and
my own crucifixion was
paused to grow my
sparkling spine sharp like
sudden beams of light
shining
on your morning sex and
I walked forward slaughtering
everything hidden with a
 wave of my hand, focused
eyes    incantation, scribe
and text      I having been reborn with bone
 like wand, am luring rooks
for guns and ;
turning mice to men
with a flash of tongue
and then turning men to wolves
to find him.

the queen is fat now
gorging herself with army;
the war you begged for
and are bound to get
 is here on time.
I gather every friend I know
and share my plans
for combat
 enticing each one
 with a different reward.
this is the queen you
|asked for:
acerbic communist,
generous with her
violence, but you?
you will know me
by my sharp interjection,
sport–you?

you are
Persephone’s
final futile hours
picking berries in the
garden,
sniffing tulips absentmindedly,
        nevermind the bees or sunset
plucking lilies from the water,
watching the ripples form circles
around your fingertips
and then you’re
screaming at your flowers
being swallowed by the ground
  switch places
an earthworm bit her and said
as Pallas emerged with reminders,
a sello from the water,

floral crown and
speaking in her native tongue:
ways to blow direction,
ways to conjure storms.
oh, here it is again,
that little lie about choice
she goes with her knees
falling through the earth,

but she goes and keeps
her head above that dirt,
what’s a curse to those who
know the power
of reverse?
you.

 

“the magician (reversed)”

2

 

I have two constant insatiable needs:
clarity and validation and I
usually get neither.

my only true constant is my suffering;
that is how I relate to others.
my suffering is a secret comfort
because it allows connection.
we only know feelings by comparison;
yours, mine, ours.
this defines humanity–
our perpetual hunger,
our perpetual processing
 about the matter,
our reaching hands,
and the inevitable suffering
 that follows.

 

0

Express the value of life
in lines and
daubed charcoal.
Add the girl’s lids and tinted lashes,
fixed eyebrows,
nose,
lace collar under
overblown cloak.
Hair tucked beneath hood,
chin tucked to neck,
subtract her gloom;
then what would she do?
Harder to draw,
harder to draw something
in.
Highlight her cheekbones in rouge.
Add breath to an otherwise
achromatic lover.

Add her troubled partner in the backdrop:
blue-gray with a hint of black at the corners,
small silhouette of a rainstorm
receding over the edge of the horizon.
Add some balance to a ruminating giant.
Find and add
her absent brother.
Subtract her moans.
Erase her nose.
It’s too bull flare.
No one will take her like that.
Thin the clavicle.
Thin the waist.
Add some plum to the lips.
Add a remark.
“This will not do.”

Grab the Hi-Polymer.
Try to capture the gleam
of mistakes on her face:
birthmarks, pencil marks, oil sheen,
eraser flakes,
lines that are furrows or scars or
warrior wrinkles,
ruddy blotches on the thighs,
dry skin on the feet,
swan’s neck,
bucked teeth,
knife marks and a
revised smile.
Never trust a man with an
airbrush and a promise
the clouds whisper. 

She is flawless.
Precise.
Analogized you.
Contrast to your optimism;
your bubble of assurance
that is dominating,
that denies a compact or an inventory
and drawn in shady undertones
to hide complicated desires.
Proof of hidden bruise
shoved deep inside the confines
of gusto and canvass
come to life in the luster of pencil dust
and uncomplicated process,
 stretched wide
for the world to admire.
A deflated mirror.

She still has all her freckles
and you are noticing
a few things
about yourself.

 

“the artist”

 

 

0

your house was yellow.

my house was blue and
a ten by ten box;
a cage and me trapped,
torn between watching them
pack up their stuff
from their own pact to self
and me, dripping virulence,
pushing them out.
we needed a spark,
I pounced and

shortly after,
 the railing tumbled on my
sprinting ankles,
the basement rattled and the
floorboards dropped
filling the place with the kind of emptiness
that is so dense
 it smothers.
smoke smells a lot like
 ticking minutes
if we scented time the way we
spray each other.
I hear a bark.
hope the turtle remembers how to
duck and cover.
the cat’s sure got it.

remember me as a black-winged fury
hovering over your bed at night because
 there will be nothing left by dawn
except some burning blue
cedar wood and a cheap comb
that found its way buried in the dirt.
the photo albums gone,
dusty cookbooks charred,
vanished remote controls stay hidden
and the asbestos and fiberglass ceilings
imploded despite our fear that was the
thing that would kill us.
I am left with a cancer
that gnaws through the joints
like packs of rats chewing through cables
to take the attic back.
and I need this.

I really miss your hands on me
and the convivial cluster of caterpillars
that swallowed the bark
the day in the orchard
when you held me in sullen incubation
before the devastation of the forest,
before I made way for us,
the start,
the parting and somewhere
an empty crib stays unfurnished.
someone starts an engine.
the varnish is melting and so am I.
         God gave you a chance and
              an unfinished smile.
a smoke alarm malfunctions
mocking your reluctance
to just grin and bear it,
to just open up your arms
and catch me when I jump;

                but first here comes the fish tank

catch me with all the fit I threw.
we all look like burnt books
blowing in the breeze
 and now, I too,
am wafting with the exhumed memories.
before my legs even hit the dew,
you watch me dwindle to a million floating pieces
in the cradle of tar black trees.

 

you see the contract ascertained a certain
ephemeral appeal
and I’m too thirsty to complain
about anything but the heat.
hold your breath and wait
for some other current to take me.

                    baby

there are no exits.

 

“chrysalis”

1

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