poets of wordpress

kitten ears and painted whiskers
tumble down my block in rows
rehearsed
in leotards and black lace gloves.
yowls float through
open window
TV taught them how to meow
for Kit Kats Snickers Almond Joys
male applause.
one bends over to tie her shoe
and seduce the nearest father;
he eyes the crevice peeking through her
black tights.

I’m dressed like Glinda the Good
Witch but sluttier: crop sequin top
and matching sequin mini skirt,
star wand and hair in pink curls
and crown and bubble gum lip gloss.
hovering in a sing song
way, I’m on my front steps
throwing out Peanut Chews and
I burned a sigil for this
I whisper to the small girl.
she wants attention from her own father:
a photograph or upward twirl,
burning torch,
purr in his lap while he strokes her hair
without fetish
or just acknowledgment that she is the prettiest
girl dressed up as space cat,
those others are unoriginal, just regular
cats, he says I love yours best
and pats her on her head
and there is no offense taken.
she will grow up to be even smaller
than she supposed:

silent enduring still,
not awake in her own power,
her own body
like a stillborn tiger:
expelled with a tear,
coated in the blood of her mother’s
screams as no one prepared her for the
slow cooked torture;
ecstasy following expelling
something
parasitic and omniscient;
a future rival.
she lands on the floor
fetal,
the thing no one wanted
without even a congratulations!
bouquet or a single lotus
to symbolize completion.

we aren’t worthy of those feline
endowments thrust upon us
when we are playing
mole carcass on the doormat
aborted from our burrowed holes
for something more vociferous
to grab onto and finish,
our kinship; the lions.
we are nothing like our ancestors.
our virile mothers
who know nothing of preening
or tail feathers.
take what they want.
they don’t grovel at their fathers’ feet.
they honor the slaughter,
the one they started
before the harvest and pay homage
to the sky for the water provided
before they stuff themselves
with vision.

we lack vision.
we just paint our nails black
and dress like witches,
talk shit;
start shit for derision.
and we keep turning to our men
for forgiveness when we are wayward
or won’t marry them
or stand up when they
crush our necks and they
say the rope is coming next.
we should be
stuffing our faces with the meat they provided,
learning fillet knives,
smiling like shovels and
burying them.

she’s got a silver tulle gown.
matching silver flats, black tights and
a silver and black crown.
eyes with those white orbs
and reserved.
I lean down to meet her.
Happy Halloween, princess,
I toss an extra piece in her
pumpkin: may the odds
be forever in your
favor.

“Halloween”

FINISHED

April 8, 2020 0

what does the word emotionally available mean to you?
my therapist asks me.

it’s nonsense, I think,
no one is ready.
I know my problems.
have taken inventory.
taken a fourth step.
haven’t taken a drink in years.
seen this woman every two weeks
for four of them.
t’s amazing how mired in
a cloud you can be while constantly
checking yourself.
this is the cloud I live in:
of close but never ready.

“I have that effect on people,”
I accidentally say out loud.
what effect?
she asks scrupulously.

sometimes I just stop in the middle of things,
realize I am murmuring or gesturing
or five miles past where I need to be.
it’s happened.
my knees are weak.
i’m outside in front of a brick townhouse
with a white bunny on the window and in
light yellow letters it says
“Happy Easter!”
I have no idea what day it is and
I want to take the mask off.
no keep the mask on.
it’s dirty outside.
I used to stick my hands
squarely in mud and
pull up clumps to catch worms.
nothing is ever coming back.
I have that effect on people.
“I can’t believe im gonna fucking live
through this,”I say out loud and a woman
with a chihuahua
walks the other way.
of what?
I hear her say.
what effect?

I really shouldn’t lie this much
I think to myself but I keep going,
keeping appointments,
keeping arrangements.
my thighs burn.
I don’t drink enough water.
I meet him at the corner of 12th and locust.
I keep my mask on.
I don’t extend my hand
but I turn on: a bright
bulb of sanguine excitement.

Hi!
I’m Ava Allinger,
the one who emailed you.
I am a nurse at Jefferson
looking for some extra disposable
scalpels.

I feel like I should tell my therapist
about the aliases,
and the lies but instead
I just say,

I dont know what I mean
and shrug.

“the aliases”

April 7, 2020 0

this was years ago.
the first time I told them about it.

sitting on the edge of the bay
on a borrowed blanket,
I was vomiting up
an Everclear Slurpee
and peeling back the bottom
of your parent’s quilt realizing
I had covered the entrance of the
ghost crab’s home.
I was embroiled in my own
deafening philosophy
about the closing of the day;
the way it moved–
death,
like an itinerant wave
that followed me
and only me,
everywhere.
I coughed that up second,
and finally to tell you
the rituals were there to
keep me safe.

the tide crept back
and I heard you light a cigarette,
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)

but I’m
witnessing plane crashes
and matching the numbers to the proper
order, reorganizing mantles
and bleaching my teeth and
every inch of my house.
first, you have to feel safe.
I begin to build the glass
around me
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.
I never said I didn’t
deserve it
just that I could outrun it
if they gave it.

“warnings”

April 7, 2020 0

I value freedom most.
I wander
in both eyes and body
always collecting
but devoted to the last,
even fixated on the last,
even clutching the last
but also loose with most
acquaintances stressing
compromise, meaning
yielding to my rule
and enjoying breaks,
enjoying reaching,
enjoying screaming.

favoring opportunity over floor,
I become an opportunist.
favoring power over doormat,
I become a tyrant.
I value the sky and
currents more than houses.
the ephemeral in
our lives while also walking
three inches higher than I am,
on tiptoe,
touching things,
making threats in the air
when angered and
you say I am

for-mi-da-ble
and slow like that.
a bit virulent
is how you say it and
before we seek the advantageousness
of everything, it’s Friday
and we are
processing hard truths.
the way silence hits
and my hand opening,
the spontaneity
of losing things.
tell me,
where do you keep your pocketknife?

life is rushing and swamps
with its shades of
blue; azure
(you name things)
sky, or cobalt fluid
or nightmare
like a wall of nail polish
you’re reading every
dressed up inch of you.
your rehearsed malignance.
your wry contribution
with your cocked smile
to hide your jealous
sulk.

the moon moves
from womb to waste
to task those unsewn wounds
and you embrace things now
with reticence
but you’re open to the epitaph
scrawled across the rock hard
eyelid
temperance
(that means patience)
my Venus in Leo
is running.
you made him carve something else
across your eyes
that night on Jupiter:
I remember everything.

but you didn’t want to be
so right and you didn’t really
ask
for things:
you just opened a door
and walked in.
you made it clear
as you rummaged through
the closet smelling him,
you are always only someone’s
secret. you are
unconditional when furtive
but otherwise,
rigid and passing
like a northern mist.

that means when kept.
when kept,
you’re just a blur,
vanishing,
just a sprint.

“venus in 12th house”

April 7, 2020 1

at least I give you transparency.

even when I’m moping,
I’m dancing
in songs of satin,
rippling with sob
and shimmering
deep bright,
stretched for miles
like the sky and with the
same opacity.
I am combusting
publicly, usually:
a flood of recourse and
you are
drowning,

immersed
in capillaries bursting with
crisis
and then immediate clarity.
my hands let go of the
flood I’m cradling.
you watch me move
like a snake across your
ceiling draped in shifting
constellations
you have no choice but to
memorize and I’m wearing
the crescent as a crown and
your ears like a gown
and full of crypted
warnings. me,
I’m a dream

cat
stalking rabbits
in the garden, or
waiting for the night
by the river for the
muskrat, leashed a black
gator to my belt for extra
guard, and then
later on your doormat
pushing the heads of mice
all around.
each night I go to God and ask
for favor.
I hand them back their most
prized possession as the only
way to get it:
a page,

one line;
one at a time
wrapped in
flakes of
shrimp like little treats.
my barbarity, I desperately
want to play psychopath
and you told me you were
starving for affection.
you also told me
I am the coldest
woman you’ve ever
met; catching your
goldfish, frying them up,
using your
own tank like
that. when they said I get one
favor, I asked for dreams.
I always ask for dreams.
not mine, I make clear.
let me walk through walls.

let me see.

“the aquarium”

April 7, 2020 0

you were given a choice.
you chose this road
first, then the
present.
become an alcoholic to
find a higher power.
meditate occasionally

to see how well it suits you.
fill the emptiness with Oreos,
coffee,
a smoking habit you detest
but gives your fingers something to
do when you’re speaking anxiously
in public,
when the caffeine is rearranging your
tongue into metaphors and you
need a moment of pause,
clarifying to the audience
with a descriptor you
previously forgot
and the story: winding,
inexplicably always
out of order.

run a 5K every three weeks
to give yourself a mission:
get back in shape,
hone your vision of
yourself.
bathe everyday.
tell the cat you love her
and pet her for an extra few minutes
before you walk for hours
to lose those new found vowels
completely.
pluck out your dead ends
hiding in a stealth spot.
begin a practice of voyeurism.
sit comfortably and
file your nails into sharp points.
lean into them.

write everything down.
start ordering your steak rare:
inhale the lost veal,
the lost zeal of an entire feedlot;
the scent of plasma and cud.
devour a a squealing colony
without remorse.
give cannibalism a chance.
you’re talking to yourself in public again.
the looks from the other patrons
don’t bother you.
you remember them with skinned knees on
bathroom tile; your stomach in
velvet knots,
your obsessive purge.
you remember them peering at you
in courtrooms,
you remember them in handcuffs,
in shackles,
side eyes as you make a scene
at the open bar, or get someone’s date to
carry it all:
vodka soda,
you lick his ear
like your boyfriend isn’t even there.
it’s not the groom you want
or ceremony you despise,
it’s the bride.
the way you’ve stolen and
groveled afterwards.
the way they held
onto those wrongs and their
condescending pats on the back
withdrawn.
how you’ve managed to
survive it all with gratitude,
without much impact,
you’ve suddenly risen
to their ranks.

get your wisdom teeth removed
and then
cut them into daggers.
check out Home Depot,
ask for “industrial size”
ignore all the
are you ok ?
you’re muttering again.
read the directions.
this stuff is toxic.
don’t get it on your eyelids.
press the bone back into your sockets,
flick the canines,
gotta be solid.
smile:
you’re still celibate.
you’re still hungry;
avaricious,

less slovenly from
all the exercise,
less addled than before
and armored like the night.
go back to the diner.
lick your plate.
click your tongue.
you showed them how
starvation’s done.
you showed them how to roam.
you put your money where your
mouth is glued into
your gums.
ring the alarm.

your mouth is lined with
homemade knives, and you’re
wafting noxious with each
breath you begin to teach
them how to
move again.
you begin to chew more
loudly.
Miss?
now that your dysphagia’s
done, you’re gonna smile
wide.
show them your veneers,
Ms. Salt and tell them
what you want.
I want it now.

“Veruca Salt”

April 7, 2020 0

I’m obsessed with transition.
the form it takes
in movement and
thrown against a wall;
stalled in its pounce;
sudden landing
without intent.
the motion to freeze,
liquefy.
reabsorbed and to
precipitate or the moment
before, to reform.

and after all that patience
and miles of crouch
through the city,
admiring the syringe tops
and mortar and filling
the jacket lining
with bills and your ardor
growing big and bright
and pulling things towards you
like the moon
to be suddenly seized
by your habits again.

when I walked into the room
I saw you again.
you offered to show me upstairs
right away, ushering me with
your hand on my lower back
and I heard your voice
behind me, concerned:
watch your step

it’s just one breath,
that’s all it takes.

“the men” or “the loop”

April 7, 2020 0

I just have to make rent.

this is how thoughts start
and then ten years go by
and you’re still spiraling
like you hadn’t found the answer
but really I just
had to make rent.
that was my first priority
and I think I may be a masochist
which could wait just
keep everything in some sort of order.
focus on the task.
the one thought as I open
the door to the mid-August heat,
89 degrees which is nothing compared to
the south that can swallow you whole
in one boiling breeze and I’m out of
my now near empty row home
that you cleaned almost all the way
out before you left
except the dirty armchair, old couch–
all the furniture found.
all the dishes donated.
everything I left come back,
everything kind of circuitous
like my anfractuous spine
that stood straight once but
fractured under the weight
of this constant need to materialize
public ovation and actual groceries and
the ability to discern between a happy
thought and an actual hand to hold,
I become the reed reaching deep
but bent,
sinuous,
cracked,
become the way the wind moves
when it’s surging.

i’m counting tokens in a
donated tank top and barely fitting
jean shorts, everything about me
awkward and also sort of heavy in
the impassable space between states
I learned to love,
between beds I’ve been thrown on
and various seasons of us;
theorized or touched
whether it’s real or not,
irrelevant to the curve that’s forming
in my back as I hunch over the weight
of things I stuff in my bookbag
that I find on my walks out:
China set, forks, two new mini
skirts, pot holders neatly placed in
cardboard boxes on people’s
front porches and I am,
crammed with charity,
stretched to my limit
and timorous.
I’m two miles to the El
with enough tokens to get me there
and back and enough money to pay
exactly
one phone bill,
one internet bill,
power and gas but we are still
working the rest out and
I feel drops forming at
the base of my
sweaty and salt-lined,
un-licked neck.
thatss what I miss most.
the way a man curls behind you.
the way his curtness catches you.
it’s just one breath.

you never ask about my mornings
or daydreams; just
twirl the edge of your Merit
between your thumb
and pointer and
years of pleasurable
silence, it’s just one breath
look at me with such
masked inconsequence,
cold front and
lick whatever sugar is stuck to
my teeth,
go back to your lighter.
go back to your preoccupations.
go back to your opinion
that my anarchy is the danger of the
couple, not your ability
to wrap your fist around a throat
without a safety word.

it’s rent I have to worry about.

I put my headphones in.
began 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”

April 7, 2020 1

I can smell you
everywhere.

one block,
no headphones and
susurration of crickets somewhere
in a distance.

my stomach rushes.
it’s night,
in shorts and halter.
i’m nowhere near to
getting there
but it’s August
and I’m alone.
that’s a step,
I think.
being alone and
dropping the quarter
without notice
cuz I have a pocket full.

I think,
you have a pocket full
of quarters and you’re alone.
that’s really something
to have kept the townhome
also.

it’s August, 8:42 pm
and eighty one degrees
but dropping.

“August”

March 7, 2020 0

I learned to drift
young and
listened to my Papa’s
stories, my aunt’s stories,
the whole family telling stories
and I learned to joke
too. it’s about knowing
what people respond to
but also a dauntlessness.
everyone in my family
laughed big and loud,
smoking cigarettes sitting around
the picnic table,
a pretty red wood covered
with some tawdry pear-slathered
yellow and cream plastic cloth
made to absorb ketchup
and beer cans everywhere.
the empty ones there for butts.
and bottles of Coke in giant
two liters their tan slender fingers
and the confidence of lighting up.
I perfected the flick of an ash
off the end of a burning cigarette
long before I held one.

it’s ninety percent the way
your neck looks when you’re listening
and ten percent what you say
when you finally move to
enter the game.
I learned to grift too.
there were many ways.
more about fun then–
just how to sneak out
at night to grab cigarettes
from the bowling alley cigarette
machine; a preposterous
thing but came in handy.
I would sometimes crawl out of
my bedroom window,
my bed right beneath it and
able to slide the screen right open
without breaking it,
it was easier then the back door.
I had to tiptoe.
we had thin walls.
I slept with my door shut,
pitch black and covered with
pillows scared of my closet.

sometimes we took beer from my friend’s
parents cooler,
or candy pocketed from 7-11
or lip gloss from Eckerd’s
or something from a man’s house,
anything really.
I liked to take photographs of them
and items of clothing to smell
before they leave me.
sometimes I would stare at the pictures
he left out on his dresser
suddenly. not sure if they were planted
or just forgotten as he
offered me a shot of tequila on
his barracks colored carpet;
that off-white every sailor had;
stained with Friday nights
and teenage vomit.
movie ticket stubs falling
out of my coat pocket.
I always took my shoes off
out of politeness even though
I could see the scrape of dirt
from welcome mat to
cot and today:

a picture of him and his wife
on the rocks on the coast
of San Diego,
a card she left him,
something in spanish.
I would listen to the CDs he played
on repeat to get over her, later
alone, more holding the sting
and the shattering way
it felt forced to be fucked
to music like that.
fascinated that grief can transcend
between two people, same song,
two different ways.
two different meanings.

where are you running to now?

I’m at Lehigh and 2nd
giving a man directions
to the 15 stop and he is asking
me where I am going.
I have no job or friends,.
but tons of antique wood
furniture and I kind of nod
to myself without answering him,
just keeping that buoyancy of
knowing that
acquiring objects is half the battle.
the other half is unearthing.

“walls #1”

February 16, 2020 1