for some of us,
freedom was a legend;
a cage of smudged windows
a foiled pine for everything.
crippled twirl,
pace around the apartment
with a wand in hand,
repetitive crescendo in head,
tennis elbow from the instinctual
bend.

or the sudden broken glass
on the porch, the
knot of fervent caterpillars
sliding through my guts and
prematurely spilling
out onto the floor,
dissolving into pools of blood
like little girls ripped in pieces
in the midst of a tornado’s whirl
when they should have hid in the cellar,
waited patiently.

incubated until  the day is finally warm
and facing them,
tear through the tether
unbridled in exodus, unimpeded
and ready to transform into grand ideas,
take off without interruption
like the little girl’s
nascent scorn; 

now grown,
an envoy of acrimony
and the blue-black tones of
home, I pause here to ask myself
before I commit to the
flight,: what does metamorphosis
really feel like? 
there is a visceral reply:
  my skin
tearing at the thread of
each inside, each wound
and stretching wide
for me to see,    wide
enough to case the sky
and black inside turned
outside;  now
black each wing of
bone and vine,
black my eyes and
black the sea I shoot
from; everything I touch is black
like me,

and I can see for miles.

“transition (pt. 2)”

my hands are currently stinging,
ungloved and pallid and I do
this daily, these walks with my hands out.
I never wear gloves and I never put them in my pockets.

often times I blink,
realizing I’m not somewhere I thought I was.
sometimes feeling I’m back on a street
in Virginia.
kids always watch me. 


they’re the only ones that see me muttering
under my breath,
fingers curved then moving
like I’m counting
my thoughts as they digest
they smile.
they don’t think the same as adults
and can see secrets. I’m crazy. I change my route mid route passing them,
deciding suddenly to get coffee from a different place.
I  had been to the other place three times this week
and I don’t want anyone to know me.

to seek me meant
pleasure in ineffability,
a loss for words perhaps
out of fear of my retaliation
and to remain hidden
from some parts of the depth
of me and from the world with
me. I prefer the furtive
curl against another.
the unutterable and silent
worship
drives this depth
and the others and
you and me
like rifts adrift
like that, the moment
I turn my head.
I like to live,
eat, sleep alone
and move the country
this way; solo,
home
a solitary war
between
picking up impulse
and
deep, deep reflection
upon impulse
control.

I’m so sensitive
though
that if I settle into
think and spread
the cards like a fan,
I’d feel it out
in five seconds
eyes closed.
show me,
she said.
show me one year
show me two years
show me three years.
flip it and
it’s the King of Cups,
again.

plus I’d pick the right
song to match.
get the numbers to flash 3:13,
my lucky bet. “duplicity”

of course i would never kill
a child.
I continued with her,
but the question was
how do we make something like
the death penalty less of
a moral argument?
and the only way to take morality
out of law is to write clauses that
outline exactly what will happen
and under what circumstances and
then without reneging, go and
enforce it every single time.

these are authoritarian things.

but I didn’t agree with any of it
so I felt like battling me
was moot but I enjoyed the spectacle
and had, for no reason, invited
a male friend to join me in
class that day.
I too was interested in
motive but we cannot prove
intent truly without
absolute confession.
and even then, we may
doubt what we hear
if it doesn’t align with
what we want.


“events #2”

she was pandering to my 
emotion, calling this episode
a real child.

she said you said kill everyone.
I never said kill everyone, I said
if the law is  x=x then it’s x.
I could see her reaching for
the feminine in me
whichas far as I could see
was straddled and leaning back.
confident enough to be the first one
to volunteer for the exercise,
which I remind her, is not
examining the morality of the law
itself but to remove debate around it
so that it may be better enforced,
without outcry and fairly.


when I finished nine hands
went up. we were a class of eighteen.
unsure of why
I volunteered for the exercise
first, and given the freedom to begin
with any declaration, why I chose to
examine how mass assassinations

could really kick things off to accept
blindly that some people are
executed. and some people ought
to be.

the argument was not over
until all counter points had been examined,
the professor said.
she was tall and smiling when
I spoke and I felt thankful for her
defense of me any time she reiterated,
I was correct in re-summarizing the
exercise for each of the
nine hands that went up,
consuming the bell with a
theoretical society that arbited
punishment blindly as the statue
alluded to also,
the society we have tried to
have now is composed of
criterion like that. 


I was eighteen and glowing
and enjoying the attention
with zero conviction about
the death penalty.
and when it came back to
her, and she presented it again
after many others had spoke,
I am sure I said,
to be perfectly frank,
we would HAVE to
kill the child in order
to make the law work.

and then I just kind of laughed
because the exercise itself asked you to
first pick a side and fight for it;
not to defend the death penalty
but to remove morality from law
having the freedom to remove all
structures of law around murder,
I could have created a punishless state
in which murderers walked free
or a Hammurabi and it is with the
same amount of callousness that I
have begun to plant
nightshade around your house.

probability being like

you probably like to touch

things like me

and thinking it

to be Queen Anne’s Lace

giving it to your girl

for Valentine’s Day.

“Valentine’s Day part #1”

my interest was
social experimentation.
it’s why I went to college.
to be educated on the ways
to manipulate small crowds
and because of my naivete,
I did not realize at first
that my interest in sociopaths
was reflection.
but I find serial killers
to be undeniably weak
in their compulsion.

they are artless megalomaniacs.
you could just as easily garden
with the same amount of torrid wonder.
learn to grow nightshade and then
plant it all over town
in places where people smell
flowers and pick weeds for each
other.
but these are men. and
they have to be known.
I’ve always had to cross my
legs.


Mrs. Shepherd said you
cannot bet on things that talk,
Ava,
when I interjected to
share my observation that
the same formulas can be applied to people
when presenting with the same patterns over time.
they would be seen as a fixed event
because they have not wavered in
reliability yet.

another time I stated calmly to
my ethics class that the best way to enforce
a law to ensure it gets a message across
is to enforce it blindly.
if you believe in the death penalty
make a black and a white clause;
no matter what the circumstances,
calculated homicide will put you
in the electric chair and then they
wouldn’t quibble with the details.

the first girl to shoot her hand up
was the most riled by my
eyebrow lift and when
she presented to me a Law and Order episode
where the murderer was a child,
I dropped the brow and lifted
the mouth and I said
then kill the child,
bitch.

“events #1” or “effect of varying events”

first, he showed me the block.
waved his hands over black ice,
concrete, gritted
      you know how to make things work

he walked several feet ahead as
we did a loop between two identical
intersections and stopped in a booth so
he could pay for the affection:
a vegan milkshake to soften
the contrast between two
nearly identical snow-lit
worlds; two winters in two
time zones but one was green and blue
and foothill-lined
and  one was bleak.
this one hung in the air:
gelid, tense, a dense and
mutable gray that changed from
partially cloudy to
biting fang
but what is more concerning is the
space between us.


I slurped the vanilla coconut cream
from the plastic straw without making
eye contact or anything known
and he laughed at the things
that just rolled off my tongue
in these little allayed fits. it was January fifth,
the middle of a
polar vortex and I hadn’t seen
the center of the city yet,
or west or anything but
Kensington.
I kept mumbling about the
loose trash  and he smiled.
my nose was running so
I spent the evening
in silence wiping it.
trembling, 
cradled in his iron abdomen.

all day long
I vacillate.  I set intention—
maybe I move a couple steps forward
or skirt one craving
and I applaud myself for days.
my knees get some desperate rest
or my body gets water
but it’s followed by immediate
withdrawal.
indulgence,  glutton
three walks:
four coffees, twelve cookies
and picking a fight.


cherished: my leisure,
my habits,beloved
hermeticism and my ability to make believe–
find  double meaning
of everything. I’m really just walking,
compulsive ambivalence.
I shrug.
sip the coffee

let the wind take me.

now I am
in Philadelphia,
with an Access card to
buy toilet paper. .
I am dog sitting; house sitting for
money in Queen Village,
and I spend the days
drinking their hazelnut flavored
Keurigs,
sneaking their chocolates.
using their washer for my own
heavy blankets,
and walking the pit bull
without the choke chain
she gave me.
I observe the doors of people
in Society Hill:
clean black or mahogany
with the numbers painted on
them or in brass next to their
outdoor lanterns, their empty
flower boxes soon to be leaking
zinnias, petunias, geraniums.
soon to be fingered,
picked by me.
I am obsessed with the material
possessions of others
and knowing I’m no good
marked this place for
later:

we should rob them.

begin to circle the area
with the pit bull
understanding clemency only
gifted to the few who
have smiles like
little sunshines
and white skin;
tanned but porcelain
otherwise.

“doors #1”

I carried little pieces of God
everywhere;
whittled pine needle,
robin feathers,
a baby garnet for luck.
besides the
straws, I liked
natural things; Earth

to touch during
sedentary moments
quell the fidget inside.
today, a pint-sized celestite
entertained my skittish fingers.
it was a part of a larger cluster,
but I liked the cyan sparkle
so I broke off a piece.

I am surrounded by repentance,
men with wolfish outlines.
“allies.”

I nod when they say
they feel a guilt greater
than their desire. I relate
having consumed an entire
night’s portion .before walking here.
when they want my approval,
they usually begin with things
like
I took advantage of her.

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.
I am mostly plain.
save light blush, mascara and
chapstick..
it is important as a woman
to catalog what you were wearing
and how you generally look
in any moment.
also I had gained some weight.

 when you tell the audience the story
they can gauge their reaction better.
were you homely, girl?

I was neither homely nor
exceptional, a frozen
brown blob blending
into the cream walls
and watching the blue chips
of nail polish flake onto
the floor. as he spoke
of his life of
trespassing,
I found my hands
to be urgent.

and remembering the whisper
of the woman who shushed
the last girl who shared her rape
in a room just like this,
I watched a speck of light blue
crystal join the floor.
saw the red swell and trickle
into a dot capping my finger:
blood     and   watched
the tiny celestite break.

“fury”

the way I held on
to five seconds of
an arm embracing me
near a cold window,
one stare;
red and in heat
all winter.
more

this demand grew
winding up my body
as I began to move furniture
in rave.
placed framed sentences
on every ledge.
all my items on sills,
every little thing I own,
to gaze at them
with gaped mouth,
blinds open under moon
if not hooded
and walking the three mile
perimeter outside.
rocks piled up on the table.
their effect on me terrifying
when glinting, silhouetted
or under influence of tincture.
at dusk, I was normally under
the influence;
large
and in loom.

every night,
the den was lit with 7 to
13  candles.
the place was pointy with
obelisks and shadow and
me, walking through
them, chanting.
repeating phrases.
burning pages
from a journal.

no recollection of what I
said or wrote
or asked for.
caged in my uncoerced
circle, tracing my finger over
cursive symbols
under the influence of
everything I touched
and everyone I once knew.
surrounded by 7 to
13 candles.

shackled
to an inky,
rising rage.

“the candles”

you just have to begin.
you hold my hand
when I speak.
I am nervous inexplicably.

just existence is a trial.
count the candles.
set the rocks.
sip the Angelica root and
begin to drool an acid fire
into the bubbles.
I feel your chest behind me,
moist, throbbing.
in my waking hours,
I practice walking across a lake
with black boots.
it’s an icy sidewalk on
a ledge but I pretend
that it’s a long pond.

when he first comes around,
I notice my wrist,
then my jaw,
surrender.
I have an urge to burn the
house down first
but in a long quaver,
forget the nonsense:
the counting of the pulse,
the spotty mason jars,
my blood dripping on a red
throw blanket, laundry,
my childhood–effete,
mold speckled shingles,
my sullen dead father
and his one last breath
alone–we think–
sometime after midnight,
right before Christmas.

“the bath series”

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