poets of wordpress

grace is the way your bones reset themselves
inside of your chest on the way home from
the police station
and the bail provided by your ex.

“My phone is shattered,” I said aloud to him.

what was more concerning is the way I flinched
when the seatbelt touched me.
the bruise was black and thick
and formed.
it was a little hard to breathe.

“I can’t believe they didn’t take you to the emergency room,”
he shook his head like this was
the first time injustice ever
materialized in my own body in front of him.

I held my broken phone in my lap
and the bag of my belongings,
including my wig..
I had taken it off to show them I had no weapons.
(Tuck it in your cheek.)

“I didn’t want to take the blood test. The German guy said if I refuse the blood test,
I don’t go to the hospital,” I had a very fuzzy idea of the episode.
“I refused to blow in the breathalyzer.
Told them my breath wasn’t strong enough.”

They didn’t take me to the hospital.
I vomited in a metal toilet.
They put me in a special cell alone because I was a suicide risk.
I had muttered something I shouldn’t have as they
let me have a puff of a cigarette
before entering the jail.
(Suicide risk, I wrote on my hand later that night).
They charged me with a hit and run, second dui and
refusing the breathalyzer which is its own crime.
I thought attempted suicide was a crime
but they let me pass out on the toilet’s edge with
broken bones and a head injury smelling my own vomit all night
so I guess justice was served.

And I lived through that.

“How to forget everything day 3”

July 3, 2019 0

truthfully,
I had a dollar to my name and
that was it.
I had even lost my bob:
begged my friend to

shave it in a blackout
I want this thing gone
so I had to scour the store for about
three cheap wigs that could
possibly be real hair,
a couple pairs of jeans,
some thrift store shirts that said nothing about style or quality or even
weathering seasons but the joy was the
low thread count
, the way she said “only fifty cents” and
you had that in your back pocket. a big puffy
brown jacket that someone had donated
to me when I was probably shivering
in my seven year hoodie and
I know how to take a handout if you phrase it right.

I was what you called the
“life of the party” and no matter how
many bedspreads I ruined, I was always invited back and
honestly, lucky timing that year
hipsters were cool so I showed them my
pall malls and dirty nails and asked if they knew
what it felt like to empty your guts about anything real
or if their record collection was more about posturing,
fell head first down the metal fire escape as I asked him
but got right up like I hadn’t concussed several times that night
and told him I listen to more music than he’s ever heard of,
said to him
I’m schizophrenic or at least
hallucinating mildly
generally at baseline
and then I threw up a little on the carpet
before I skulked out onto Hampton,
(turn the headphones up),
going nowhere,
sort of cackling.

brown combat
boots—those were second hand too even
though everyone agrees shoes are something
a person needs brand new and
a compulsion
to spend my days sipping
those 7-11 brand 1.5 liters of
red wine.
the kind that are hard to carry with one hand
or finish by yourself but here I am
the next day, unslept, squinty eyed and crawling in the grass
in the public square dragging it behind me.
lips cracked and red,
phone probably dead
no water..
I don’t remember crying but they said
I did it all the time.

a place on my friends couch.
place on my mom’s couch.
no bedroom.
a breathalyzer on my car steering wheel
that only started with one clean breath which
was becoming more rare so sometimes I asked for help
(Blow here, I’d point)
no real place to live.
about a dollar in my pocket
and a negative bank statement with
matching credit card debt but no
shortage of men and you know

(Call your wolves)

I fucking lived through that.
so I know grace personally,
like I wear it and absorb it and
I do pray with fervor.
I never forget where I’ve been.
and you think clutching a rosary makes me
a saint or insane but either way
you have never seen what asbestos can do to a structure,
the way mold just kind of grows on walls like that so you
don’t really think about it and
I build altar.
I answered all of your questions like that
after awhile: long form
in poetry and short stories
and anecdotes and all over the place so your drawing a map
to connect my life and her life and you’re seeing
there’s no difference in your bedroom but waiting
to see how I write you at night
when no one is around wishing you had courage
to bang on doors too.
wishing you had the courage to one day
drive your car headfirst
into a parked cement mixer too.
wishing your innocuous superstitions grew pulses, became
a poltergeist you leash to your bed.
wishing you had the courage to spit on a man’s face
for touching your leg
or learning how to tuck a razor inside of your cheek.
(Pull it out and graze his face)
wishing you had the courage to tell
true stories too.

And I lived through that.

“How do forget everything day 1”

July 3, 2019 0

all day long I do mathematical equations
they say I’m calculating.

in my head.
as I walk to the laundromat
shifting the hamper beneath me,
I think,

that’s an understatement.

I think a lot.

I think.
I think.
I love probability
like
what’s the likelihood I’ll see you again
believing I both convinced myself in this reality
and believe I convinced you it was true
so imbued in my delusion
but then God came to my defense,
I watched some things begin
to sprout like little poison flowers
growing out of the cracks
like refuge?
or the analysis like

what is it going to take to hypnotize
a small crowd and at what cost to my
well being and I was practical so
how much money will I make?
and statistically speaking,
we have to look at patterns,
not just equations but
trends so then here comes
the past.

I turn the headphones up.

you gave me a bouquet of
weeds as I was drinking
my third cup of coffee.
you had picked them from
our backyard when I wasn’t
looking.

you were smiling with teeth;
big, and I thought I loved
you.
I had gone upstairs to
change into a sundress
and tore something near my spine,
suddenly, like a rip inside.
I mustered up enough breath
to walk down the stairs,
back to you,
where you had been standing with the weeds,
where you had been telling jokes,
where you had been laughing and I said:
it feels like I pinched a nerve
and am having trouble breathing.
what should I do?

you looked up the staircase
on your way out
the front door and tossed a
I don’t believe you
as you were rushing.
someone else drove me to
the doctor and that doctor
confirmed it,
prescribed me Flexeril
for the pain and wrote me
a note explaining to my internship
why I wouldn’t be in that day.
I laid in bed, waiting for the
drugs to subside.

you came home
and attempted to justify
why you always felt
deceived by me.
I lay numb,
relieved of feeling anything as you recited
everything I’d ever done
that bothered you.
you weren’t sorry,
it’s Thursday and I feel
nothing for you
now.

I drop a pair of panties
on the sidewalk
on the way out and
someone calls me from
the corner.
I turn my headphones up

I feel nothing for you now.

“Thursday”

June 24, 2019 0

here is what I wrote down:

I had spent an hour walking one direction
without purpose or intent
only feeling the sun beat down on me,
me without water or
something to suck on
or a blanket to hold
and I was so thirsty.

without noticing, I was suddenly
surrounded by people at some outdoor
art show and I averted all the eyes
and tugged at my sundress;
the bottom always slipped up and
i could tell that they wanted to eat
my upper thighs,
see my tan lines.
you are cold and dry
my tongue was dry but I was hot that day
so men were everywhere,
my lips were open to keep
my jaw from shutting
and I don’t know how I got to the
park that day but let me tell you
that when my jaw started to shut,
I said nothing to anyone in that crowd.
I took my hand,
cavalier about it,
gave a quick eye over my shoulder
and opened my mouth with force
and continued not a break in saunter,
me terrified and looking for water
scared to shut my jaw.

you asked what living in perpetual fear
feels like and it is this.

“how guys save me in their phone #9”

June 24, 2019 0

Ive watched my nervousness

eat me daily,
clutch me with its
indecision I am robed in
rosary, nodding, chanting throughout
the day but really I am
fickle
is the first thing I write about myself
and I am always
holding something somewhere in
my body.
like a claw lives inside
my jaw line and now
I have TMJ

what’s that? sometimes
they wait.

a psychosomatic disorder where your
jaw locks when you’re chewing
and you slowly start to choke.

well not everyone chokes.
I just started to choke
when it closed the first time.

“the drowning”

June 19, 2019 0

carried with her
a weapon: her keys in hand,
a disarming speech pattern
and no reason to suspect
her about anything.

I never tell a lie,
she said
leading me to
someone else’s house.

(how do you get away with that?)

I just never finish the story,
she said and I
hung there like a
Christmas ornament
glistening in her iris.

“How guys save me in their phone #6”

June 15, 2019 0

the first thing you notice about me is
the way I saunter when I walk anywhere,
even to grab a ginger ale from the cooler
“it’s my favorite.”
but then linger near the
exit the rest of the night with the crumpled straw
in my hand
and the temper on my tongue
contained,
but I’m waiting for a siren
to let this thing out.
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 smile spread
across my face 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 like you were the funniest man in
the whole world.
and I’ll always remember
the first time I was invited anywhere.
my name is Catarina Kocurek
may I come in?

you said yes.
no, it’s not that you said yes.
you said “ok”
as I walked across the welcome mat
throwing matches as you swept.

“how guys save me in their phone #4”

June 7, 2019 0

rainstorm.

unscheduled and I had been
comfortable in shifting drought.
avoiding the wasps
hidden in the grass
with my clumsy, calloused toes
seasoned from walking too far
and too hard in unpadded sandals
when the first sign of spring hits,
and my sky blue sundress seems a
sudden hindrance:

flimsy, strap always falling down and
blows up in breezes
so I have to keep watching the way I
carry myself around men.
I crouch and the hem crawls to
expose my left thigh and the
garter you gave me:
not the daisies I wanted,
a ring of bruises
in the shape of your open mouth
still fresh with conquest;
lasting impact of
your parting breath that
said nothing and now
just hangs there and hurts
when I shower.
wait

I’m counting cicada shells
under the picnic table;
a gesture of presence.
someone told me to stop everything
and I needed a year to pass.
I scrubbed away the last of your fingernail
but I have to ride those
bite marks out.
blinked once and a ripple in the sky
burst; liberated and aimless,
she shows just one day’s worth
of self-containment uncondensed,
without tension, falling naked
she’s black and soft and
seamless surfeit with mild
violence, crackling and
completely cageless.

my feet are covered in mud
before I even notice the shadow
wash over my bangs.
wait.
drenched in flood my head
is dark red because you liked
“subtlety”
and I liked demonstrative movement;
a hint of auburn wasn’t enough to show
blood with just a little bush
so I adorn myself with ritual:
hair dye and cleanses,
little thorns,
little kills to draw your
attention. my knees hurt and
all those cicadas are dead
so I stand to lift my face to the thunder;
a small gesture of inflorescence.
Wait.

open my arms purposefully
like petals of a rose exhaling
in relief for the drink
her master brings.
parched from the work my dry words had done
undoing
as they roamed free all over
your front yard.
God makes pacts with penitents
and you barely have a face that isn’t
my reflection so I’m itching to be clean and
fresh and start
again.
stretch my neck with pride to
to catch her drops on my tongue,
bold with repentance
and ready to wash away
the phantom jaws that bait me.
but suddenly charged,
the gray sky remembered
she held lightning.
and suddenly illuminated,
I remembered

I am
the dark thing
inside of me.

“prayer”

June 6, 2019 0

preoccupied with two men
but not against my trespasses.

my name is Hecate.

came with two friends but ignored
the male.

my name is Hecate.

intently staring straight
but hawk-like periphery,
I know because she brushed my arm
when I waltzed past and cut in between them
but with precision.
like she was waiting.

my name is Hecate.

had a dream about her.
had a dream about her every night
this year?
she slinked into the party
dressed like a rubber cat,
snapped her fingers and said:

my name is Hecate,
repeat after me.

“3.”

June 2, 2019 0

I used to move once a year,
no matter where I lived,
I felt the urge to change apartments annually,
I begin for him and

he says “that’s a lot”
while falling asleep before
turning me over in the bed,
unzipping my jeans,
entering without verbal contract.
but another time I told him I felt
like I was merging the two pieces of myself
as I rested on top of his elbow.

like two pieces coming together as one.
he is falling asleep.

I mean me and your friend,
I whisper.

“2.”

June 2, 2019 0