poets of wordpress

I learned to say this phrase most often
to God in prayer:
give them all the light and love
and whatever they may need. if what they
want and need are the same thing,
please, don’t hold back:
give them everything.”

the phrase
abracadabra literally translates to mean
“I create as I speak”
and with patience,
even an active fault line will
root new trees.

I drape myself in effulgence:
white bulb,
blue black shade covering my eyes.
a walking half moon.
plucked my eyes out
to avoid seeing what spell can
do to the meek,
what weak blood
hex can squeeze
from a stone.
I am no saint,
I tell you.
I’ve collected
beryl droplets of text
from the back of
your throat.
abracadabra.
I am santa claus
shimmying down the chimney
each night.
I am a knife in a dark room
following another knife
to his prize.
I am delivering it.
you know who I am
inside but I’m changing
shape, becoming spectral,
coalescing
into coffins.

the litter isn’t enough to change
so I’m buying house plants
to welcome fresh life into this house.
cacti look like your middle fingers
in the morning.
the cat eats the tulips but
she leaves the sunflowers be.
I host orchids when I am feeling
extra ambitious,
watch them die
with a soft, sad
browning.
mostly I have surrounded myself
with roses. in my garden
of goddesses,
I make offering.
there’s too much oxygen in here,
I think.
it’s mostly coalescing
into coffins.

I’m choking on particles of
corn soaked cat piss,
the expensive kind of litter that can be
thrown right into the toilet,
and clusters of thorns in
my bare feet,
a little sprinkle
of pollen on my nose.
my floor is covered in stem
decay and this bed
is just a graveyard
doused in dead
blossoms.

I say it’s over
loudly and I hear the
drag of a
chain.
it’s Monday and I
am asking you to leave,
and you are learning what
truth can do.
what spell means.
abracadabra.
you’ve been watching me bow to
altar, you’ve been watching me
pray.
you’ve been asking for
something too.
It’s Monday, I wake up
and all the songs are about you.

I never write about blossoming but
i’m seeing inflorescence in
dejection,
in the form of wormwood
creeping up my throat,
taking hold of nearest hopes
and igniting.
“Monday, and all the songs
are still about you.”

May 7, 2019 0

(Stop and bow to silence.)

You hold me the way the soil
holds the bones
of those we’ve learned to mourn
in private:
eternally & quiet
with an airy tightness:
the way the heavens hold the pious,
the mob holds the riot,
the way the ocean holds all that falls below
that deep blue surge of
sea.

I drag you under to show
you what I’m made of.

“squall”

May 7, 2019 0

shredded letters I tried using
as fertilizer,
grow something from our
sudden valediction:
calendula,

jasmine to lighten the darker parts
of my libations;
the ones that tease my hair and
take me pull me under the bath
water gently
as I kick and try not to
scream.
violets, honeywort, scent of honeysuckle wafting
from the roach holes,
mugwort to get my blood moving again.
Easter lilies the cats shouldn’t touch so I
hang them from the rafters
and let the leaves fall brown
one by one;
let the paws scatter the ashes of that,
mice, my previous
laurels.

cheery dandelions burst from
the cracks in the linoleum and
I keep a bromeliad at the doorway
to protect me with her spikes;
self-effacing, straight and strong unlike the
hard, twisted ways I grow to be.
orchids to wilt in too much sunlight when I’m
doting myself to death,
a bouquet of roses to give my daughter
when she becomes moss
in someone else’s garden,
feral evocation an arboretum
started at the ankle. or
a whole cherry tree,

rooted and I can chop
it down to gorge.
something sweet to chomp
while I’m choking down
the acidic no,
extra pillow space.
my place: curtains drawn,
devoid of moons.
my place:
curtains open,
enveloped in
the new full sun.
my place,
giant cobweb stuck with
stem and black succor.

I prepare the dried lemon balm
in the mason jar,
two cups of hot water,
watch the window blanket itself in white flakes
of anesthesia,
embrace the change in seasons
openly without any phone calls,
any text, any hexed
postcard,or really,
much incident at all
considering our history

“perennial”

May 7, 2019 0

lightly doused
in cramped atmosphere,
I am cradled by my
gnawing contrition.
I am a well of sadness
contained by anger.
your hand is in mine.
you are stroking a painted thumb,
this nail polish is called kerosene
smiling openly.
I return the gesture:
show my unkempt life in off white teeth,
sore tongue,
gums as red as love.
someone gently rubbed glitter on my
forearm to make me
*pop* a little more and I
meant to respond.
my heart is a brass bell,
frozen, staid,
caught between two
hungers
my hair is up and partially mussed,
dark auburn when there’s sun.
I don’t wear my brother’s ashes
around my throat
anymore.
I think that’s more telling
than I let on.

today is partly drizzle and partly
made up in my head.
you stand taller than God and I
shrink; gothic in a mixed
drink and someone else’s
dress wrapped around my hips,
daydream of someone else’s
rough lips picking at my thin skin,
someone else’s orgasm
propping up my knees,
someone’s meek kiss carving diamonds
on a weak spine
that is atrophying
rapidly.
on a bleak night,
I almost turn thirty
like this.
someone taps me,
asks me for a light.

my hair is half down and
covering my eyes.
my feet are bare,
rooted in mud somewhere near
a soggy paper plate
that has a dot of frosting on the rim
scraped from a cake
that probably read
congrats on breaking indigent!
but we devoured it without skimming
as if ten plus years of
bohemian arrogance is anything to celebrate.
I should be dead.
I should be erupting by now.
I feel disproportionately large
for my soul but growing smaller
by the sip.
you are muffled laughter and
showing another woman the view from the balcony,
holding space for her pain in a way
that romanticizes internalized rage.
I am watching.
I am the dark breaking sky
who forgot how to storm
so she just lightly pours
another flask full.
my chest is broken and brass and
coughing politely.
“Ahem.”

I point to the moon
and start running.

May 7, 2019 0

i’m turning another year and
I’m looking for checks,
counting my reasons for staying
or for running the other way.
I have overdue things.

recycling and wrinkles
and Kombucha bottles
pile up
and the hairballs on the floor
I avoid without cleaning sometimes.
make a zig zag to the door
where I cast spell:
the fits of importunity,
little raps at my neighbors door
sugar, that’s all
that make me wish I had chosen the life of a mendicant
but my knees always hurt.
I have unchecked messages everywhere:
voicemail reminders and
grandma’s leukemia is pretty bad and
I’m rotten and everywhere like her snaking
liver spots.
Mom bought me a new chain to carry him on.
i’m allergic to anything that looks like silver
but doesn’t hold its weight,
including nickel-painted gold
so I’ve gotten good at tearing things apart
to see what they are
made of.

and the red spots line my throat,
white dabs of cream and my
strapless dress taking out my earrings to dance
with the new one who laughs with
stormy intention,
and I’m obsessed with the way men
strangle anything dear to them,
the way I run right into their butcher shop
and ask if they can
I want to hear the way I plead from inside of you
finish me.

I got a new mural and icing lips
and white teeth.
no mercury caps unless you include
my orbiting lips.
dream of Christmas, cinnamon buns and
him choking out an
“I love you”
with my color by numbers.
I’m remembering hugging an unnamed kitten and
trying to hold onto
this feeling.
I didn’t get impermanence,
just a new bike every year
to run away from home.
and suddenly my phone chokes out a reminder
that the living are
hunting me.
i’m hunting something else.

my heels in the dirt, his hand in mine,
smile
I say for no one.
nail polish named kerosene and
gums as red as love.
my hair is auburn in the sun
and today is partly drizzle and partly
made up in my head
congratulations, baby, you made it.

wet cheeks and leftover streamers
and trick candles
and weak knees when I’m
bobbing to the rhythm.
polaroids on the table and
girls that try to
tell me secrets.
I tell the sky all the things.
I’ll show you all the films I like

we barely talk.
we watch films.
he finishes
on top of his fingers
and my wrapping paper.
i’m half asleep
butull of sugar
and thoughts like a
wadded piece of past
shaped like rope
tightening
and

I wake up in his forearm
biting through his moles
to get to you.

“happy birthday”

May 7, 2019 0

one day I had a dream
you bit the head off of a blue jay
and spit it back into her nest.
when I asked why you said:
To prove you will never leave me.

here I am,
on command about to run
across the canyon and I
laugh real loud in my
skin tight
dress:

the one cut real low in the back
in the shape
of an obtuse
triangle;
jarring contrast to my
scared-straight spine
but I still
slouch.
I twist the straw into crooked pieces
and tell myself things:
make sure they know
you are having
a real good time,
show your teeth,
hearty laugh
with belly and mouth and your
lips are stretched to the limits like your
social apathy.
show your full moon eyes
and hide.
hold your tonic like a wand;
fall asleep
inside of yourself
in the middle of
everything.

later, he will show
you photographs
to prove you were
there.
if you are lucky,
he notices the story
dripping from your
eyes, the door
opening, the splash
of scarlet on your tights
as you replace each page,
as you become the
walking lake flooding
the wake that held
you, and he becomes
the witness that love
is a quivering knife.

“tributaries”

May 7, 2019 0

I unzip my hoodie
slowly
letting my finger trail
from the end of the zipper
to the front of my pants.
let my index lull
somewhere near the heat.
(some guy puts down his phone)

with the other hand,
I remove my hat
carefully,
wipe a stray hair from
my shaded eye.
reapply my chapstick,
then lipgloss,
then fire engine red
and I stick a finger
(some guy removes his earbuds)
very slowly in my mouth and pout
before a loud
SUCK
pops at them
and then
slowly pull it out.
check for the ring around my finger.
(there’s one shifting in his skin)

cross one ankle over the other
delicately before lifting
a pruned eyebrow in the direction of the one
that resembles you the most,
smirk at my reflection in the window.
(a clearing of the throat in the distance)
drunk on memory and the
cessation of feelings about it,
let one side of my hood fall
revealing a velvet bra strap,
a bone white shoulder
crowning through a sheer black sweater
like the heavily saluted moon-break
on a murky night in late December,
i’m worshipped for an instant.
(all mouths open now)

wrap my thrumming fingers around the pole
assuredly and
(the way i never was with you)
squeeze,
(they’re all watching now),
bite my lip and rub the palm first down,
then up
but with stifled fervor
(do you like that?)
like it’s alive and pumping and
I want to enjoy
the ride for awhile before I
(retreat inside my gut)
grit my teeth and grab it harder and
go a little faster,
little harder, little wilder,
little wolf girl caught in moons,
chafes my life lines
the one where the money should be,
or the love or the way I was
before I keep trying and
(some guy is walking over)
I can’t even
(do you even hear me?)
I can’t stop
(this train is full of breathing)
and I can’t even
(“Miss?”)
(finish them)
finish them.

I can’t even finish
them completely.

“the aviary”

May 4, 2019 0

it hurt
but not as much
as memory

“death (reversed)”

May 4, 2019 0

before I lived in the pink room,
I made you lug every piece
of oak antique two-piece
furniture up my winding third story
walk up and set it exactly where
I wanted it before you
were done.
I only like things with value
I gestured to someone else
and everything I owned was wooden.

when we got to the room with
the stained glass windows,
the room cut in half,
cut with four windows and
we both eyed the pale yellow
stilted glass cabinet
that looked like it came from a carnival;
one of those old machines where you put
a coin in and a fortune comes out.
double mirrors, two legs and all that
was missing was the teller inside.
you looked at me as if you knew
I would ask but
it stays.

it came with the place and
years later, I made another man
rip it to pieces,
plank by plank,
and carry it back down the stairs.
I want the mirror
I said without looking at him,
looking only at my reflection
as it glinted at me from the living
room and I carried it back to
its place while also
ignoring his pleas for warmth,
his servitude to only benefit himself,
his displays of courtship
on his knees where I never
asked him to fall.
just clean this up.

I was focused on my legs.
I was focused on my thighs.
I was focused on my torso,
my serpentine twist of a spine.
I have yet to see either of you again.
and here’s a free scroll:
like the algid vortex that
blows from the north
and coats the town in
freeze and forces those to skate
across,
I break men.

I live in a pink room
with a rectangular mirror
propped against the wall on
the floor surrounded by
cards and flowers
and at night,
she comes to me
like the riding crop
that sharpens as they gallop,
I break men.

“the mirror”

May 4, 2019 0

I derive so much from one word.
The license plate that careened into the pole
instead of me that night read
“ prisons” and
I knew instinctively how he felt and
tonight I’ll do:

a spring equinox meditation.
brush my teeth.
cut grapefruit for the morning
and ride the waiting out
pay homage to my Pluto;
my twelfth house of self undoing.
i’m becoming a panacea of my own:
memory, tincture, flowers everywhere,
the fuss of first love never leading anywhere but
here in another meditation
on the river walk
and

draw my poems out of the older sutures:
undo, redress, pamper the wounds .
think about it.
send you a letter.
remember the way grief sits,
unsettled, right after dusk,
right under your chest,
right under your breath:
a blue river from your fingers.
send you that letter
with my wounds
pasted
in the margins.

reminding you to
think about it

pay homage to your Venus.
she is out,
casting cars into ditches
while you cautiously watch the lights
change.
you are holding selenite in your pocket,
standing where they
are now sitting and wilting
in screams, the way you asked:
one more chance please

you snap and they lose their
breath just like that.

“prisons” or “Venus in the 12th House”

May 1, 2019 2