poets of wordpress

im a stifled violence
unleashing the knife of my spine
inch by bloody inch
and im walking towards you.

my name is Circe.

I am God-drawn
and celibate
and obsessively
testing myself.
I look good
all smothered in your blood,
you look better
hanging from my bookshelf.

I am
scratching at your chest
and other places to let
the mice know
what I own
in case they forget
what I did,
who I am to you,
and come back
hungry for a hole
in that
home.

they cut across the black cat
lying surreptitiously
under porch rail
licking the flecks of skin
from her paw,
mistaking her for shadow.
they don’t cut
far.

they are mice
lying down
that are ripped
like the line of your
spine,
neck to base
in shreds.

you too are mine.

“the welcome mat”

May 13, 2019 0

the edges of your skin
snap at your acerbic joints
as your bones break the flesh
and you take a few steps back
to collect yourself;
picture days with your family
in green and laughter and now,
the interminable quiet
that spans highways,
urns like
ashtrays,
everyone’s in.

you see my lips in the
rearview:
red as fresh hell,
soft like fresh pain,
your new lover is plain
and you are scared of
the ice in my veins,
the way I change shape
from arctic to comet
and rock splits your
face and the bone breaks
the flesh and you
are taking a few steps back
and

I am scared that
you once said
my name.

“Circe”

May 13, 2019 0

fables of how we met and
false expressions.
i keep replaying “no” over
and over in my head.
my heart is a jungle:
vitriolic and slaughtering herself.
I’m a cage and my grief
always turns to rage
like acid turns to rain and
rushes through my spinal fluid
so I stand up straight.

I walk proud and tall and
wear your veneers like a mask.
I sneer at the creeks of
red beneath me.
all my men in pieces at my feet,
bowing.

“Hecate”

May 13, 2019 0

Because we all go back and forth between the things we want,
the things we need,
the things we are right to own,
things we renege or
can’t ever have;
the now,
our future,
the garbled past
re-written to include more details;
each other’s intemperate tics,
each other’s suns and angry Saturns,
each other’s wasted fortunes and
last dead pets.
Each other’s turn ons,
buried talent.
Each other’s conversation starters.
Each other’s boredom and
perpetual hard ons
for longing.

Conversations with yourself
where your self aggrandizement is honored
in your head;
where your victories take lovers,
where you are the empire fist with the
tight grip on slipping sand
and I’m still an apparition
stroking your cheek,
reading the lines on your hands.

I chose a fruit tree over you because
I was starving.
I had an intention.
I believe in nourishment,
self preservation,
monastic devotion.
I sit with my bellyache.
You believe in pulp cages
taking the shape of
flesh and you can just
eat yourself out.
You sit with my face
in your lap.
The sun is shining.

I keep thinking we can meet somewhere
else.

“the orchard”

May 13, 2019 0

I used to be an empty room.
Now, I’m filled with things,
stored with things,
other people’s things and
so many things
to dust.

I spent the winter
dusting,
rearranging.
I spent the winter
lost in a learned childhood drawl
where I mumbled yeah,
uh huh, where I hid my hair and
pants behind my dollhouse,
where I was on all fours in a daybed,
where I was stuck inside a moment
like a picture
except it all moves past you and
you stand,
captured

watching him; his
excerebration process,
mine,
without anesthesia or
any explanation.
don’t touch me anymore
what becomes of disorder
when ignored,
when resolved?
unhinged.
remembered hair behind the dollhouse,
remembered yeast infections,
temper tantrums “without provocation”
they said.
remember you never learned to trust.

I started roaming giant sandboxes
underground
following the Atlantic’s soporific
siren voice
to find something that called to me
long ago.
Something vague.
Something warm.
I’m unwrapping the resin layer,
I’m coughing up the heads of dolls,
I’m moistening the cipher.
I’m coming back, I’m coming
back, bandages
off.
I’m walking forward.
This is how they’d rather have it.

I once was a space of
bright, blue lakes,
but now I’m
bursting with black magic.

“the unwrapping”

May 13, 2019 0

you’re wild eyed and
doleful and
absolutely beautiful;
an encumbrance to my chastity.

you mention my smile
is bright and sharp,
threatening to steal the star’s
twinkling thunder.
rocks come unraveling but I’m focused
on the way your
mouth talks about me.
you move closer and I
move behind something.
three billion comets crash the sky
but I’m focused on my knees,
how they feel and how they
look in moonlight.
my mouth is a river of whispers;
body deep blue and
impenetrable.
your crystal eyes flare when you
talk.

Look up!

the moon has caught fire.
your hand retreats from my lower back
and I glare at the adversary
that has stolen a second of my night,
a second of attention away from me.
today is special for two reasons so
I stay crouched and
the sky flares like jaundice and I
retreat to a past life.

I look like a year ago Sunday,
like a shadow of a hugless child,
a big, bawling bowl of acerbic bone ash,
like a forest fire fixed in a flicker
caught in a speck of my dead brother’s eye.
I look like a mirror of someone
watching her own upsurge
of implacable sorrow.
sorry, I let go of his hand.
I’m always so sorry.
so hurriedly racing memories against my
own borrowed time;
so sharp and sore and
mostly unheard,
so tangled in pieces of us.
so now what?

so now you play mortar:
you keep it together
so I can finally come undone.
I’ve always got running shoes
and an idea
and one rolling tear I’ve got to get
away from.
so very torn,
so splintered and hefty,
so tempted to hold this
just as it was that
final Christmas
but I’m too
slippery palms and
soft-eyed and strident and
sidelong gazing and first uncontrolled movement
of the century that renders
me suddenly
I have to tell you something.

absolutely
inconsolable.

“lyrids”

May 13, 2019 1

the way he held her
persisting,
somewhere close.
sliced himself some days;

let her out to roam free in my bedroom
some mornings
so I’m wrapped in wet sheets,
dissuading gaze,
I’m always waiting and
instead of sweat, praise in primal moans;
it was the way I held on,
foreboding
to the last bit of his scent,
to the worn corners,
to the post for stability,
to the both of them.
red,
painted blood red and in heat,
weak

amends of self preservation lost
in the latest incision he made
with his teeth
and I am left with bite marks
lining the inside of my thigh
in the shape of a smiley face.
and he is calling her right
now.

“Venus in Leo in 12th house”

May 13, 2019 0

restraint is an art
I intend
to master

but my jealousy is erupting
into fits of flowers:
yellow roses for the look,
it means friendship
jasmine for the scent I wore,
one vine of honeysuckle to
to bind you to summer where I was
wet and still and your personal
swimming pool you could
wade through,
catch some respite,
use.
I’m sending her a bunch
with no clear note
attached:

(forget||forgive||forget
them)

the scent is drifting through your
bedroom and the bouquet is
sitting there, getting sun
at noon and
much like the way I sit:
cool,
carefully arranged
and full of
tiny thorns waiting
to be grazed with cheek
or thumb.
waiting to be praised.
waiting to be
buried.
waiting for the stems
to be cut carefully
and braided
through your lover’s
hair so when you lay
down in the park
and hold her hand
and kiss her neck
and let your face rest
on her shoulder,
you are reminded:

you can smell me
everywhere.

(the red book)

May 13, 2019 0

miseries I keep:

seasonal allergies,
pictures of me thin
and tan and
glowing
at seventeen.
dormant addiction.
overwatered plants that are never
bringing buds to blossom–
never springing back.
shards of broken glass
in the carpet
somewhere missed ;
then in heel,
then too late in trash.

insatiable sugar cravings and
the cavities they take,
insomnia and the
quakes of sobs
repressed but twisted
into nightmare at the
first minute of rest.
the first taste of irreversible loss
(my brothers ashes swinging
from my neck),
a hex in teeth and
ideas of you glancing towards me,
towards us,
just that once.

me,
back turned
at the time.
me, always clouded
in black.
me,
opening my mouth
and releasing it.

“memory”

May 12, 2019 0

perhaps I will live like this forever,
insatiable, never satisfied,
a bit Veruca Salt.

I am not my habits
although they are intrusive,
pernicious and aiding me
through letting go of something
larger: the need to be seen in every instant,
pet and validated,
but left long alone
also
and to be cleansed
unremittingly.

if there is a safe space,
it is here, in writing.
if there is a true amends,
it is change
but my lion is indebted.

when they ask what you are,
tell them humbled.

“Venus in Leo”

May 12, 2019 0