I have a piece of paper and
a dozen dead things;
red and wilting in
their vase
to remind me
life is fluid
so I
better keep moving
but it doesn’t really
help
anything.
“with sympathy”
what is it that harms you most and is insidious?
my persistent altruism
cloaked in gold,
I am
walked on like a golden
road.
I was so broke
and depressed. sometimes I forget
that. it was the depression that was pinning me
to my apartment, keeping me locked there
keeping me imprisoned.
not my insecurity but a numbness that had me
making more terminable plans
with bathtubs
bu some small joy always carried me:
Alize,
always and
a used and discarded turquoise shelf
I found when I was out.
I hung it loosely on the wall,
without commitment and the wood
became immediately blackened by my incense cones.
the corners splintered and were
dripping rosary,
rarely dusted and topped with pictures
of my deceased:
Nana, Papa, Anselm Hollo,
other clients, friends I knew
in childhood and
unknown cousins,
guinea pigs,
first dog Pepper,
my first dead brother
or third dead uncle.
always drink or suicide,
something tragic when it comes
to my family but
I’m still here and
brave, I think.
in a few different ways
but I want cleansing
so I tear it from wall,
I’m stripping the floral siding
with my fingernails,
peeling the paint back to white
to present to you
a dusted start.
I wear black skirts with lace
lining for the cats,
rain boots when I go out,
drawn shades with a smirk,
and nothing when you come
about.
6.
I am a nihilist,
nobody had to teach me
that and no men
held that void quite like
I can hold that void.
they mocked me and I let
them; I
have a constructed reality
that surrounds me but I feel
a thirty year repression
birthing from a well
and it carries eels like
lightning, the nose of sharks;
past betrayals come next.
you like rain:
a little deluge for your
flight, I feel no obligation
to anything:
my rectitude,
our plans,
or my penciled tips
on how to revitalize
warehouse row,
I’m tired and
my want for self grows and
ends in impatient provocation,
your spiral notebook,
the bottom of the ocean.
“storm”
well, they always start
the same way:
in winter, it always starts in
winter, that’s when I am my weakest.
I am usually unsettled,
raving at the window,
the frost,
the cracks in my joints announcing
themselves in arthritic temper.
you’re so young
I’m so young at this.
inexplicably manic
during the darkest months,
at times I know I should
be sleeping so I am reaching
for anything that reaches
to help me get through the
night.
in truth, I am a nihilist.
men didn’t teach me that
nothing ever matters and
nothing is ever coming back.
I watch my days get dragged away by tides
that become encroaching swells
and think to myself,
well, it always starts
with a storm.
“well”
i’ve been out to lunch since we got here.
it’s another change in seasons;
spring and everyone is out to
brunch celebrating
maternal lessons,
begotten lies, or if they’re more
triumphant; forgotten spite.
spring hats,
spring sandals,
spring grief,
sometimes things just go away
like missing pieces:
backs of earrings in the hotel room
at your youngest cousin’s wedding,
origami florets you sprinkled at your mother’s ankles
when you were just learning how to fix
the pancakes to give appreciation;
diplomas, expired passports, birth certificates,
reiki and doula certifications,
everything a lover gave you,
hand me downs, or cute owl
pajama sets that were xmas gifts
callously discarded in the great
“I saw a bed bug” throw
everything the fuck away fest.
I have nothing left.
anything that reminds you of your
lineage: scrapbooks and family
heirlooms, voicemails from your dead
brother pleading for you to
come back, the ashes swinging from
your neck,
they don’t really mean much.
you’re here and you can prove it if they ask
with this giant gaping hole in the center of
everything
that you at last had the guts to crack;
the diamond she stole,
all winter blooms,
the time you had left,
grand ideas slipping out of your ears like ripples of
eureka!
plopping on your floor for the ants to devour
before they ever land.
you should have tried harder.
because love is boundless I can’t possess it;
it consumes me with its humility,
strangles like history,
swallows like tidal waves of
unyielding southern humidity,
and I can’t escape it.
feelings for the flesh that steal me are so
palpable, like ghosts, I’m moaning
exorcism! and synonyms for
hurry up.
the climax is the body’s clever parapraxis,
and love?
I want this thing gone
so I can be empty with my tea
and good ideas
shopping with the other women.
I’ll slice open those ants and rip my
thoughts back out,
write down our fused imaginings,
send you the book stuffed with their dead little toes
and threatening locks of my dead ashy hair.
I’m vanishing inside of myself again.
I knit a sweater full of verses I’ve never heard,
wrap it tightly for the winter.
wear the world like vapor,
my fortune cookie says
and something adds:
my dear girl, you are so lonely
you have created all of this
(the world just falls from my shoulders)
you are mourning events,
people, places & things that never existed
(cut it open, pull it out)
wipe those ruby red eyes
and take a look around
(before it disintegrates)
but my house is a burning building
so I better bounce.
I had one fawn over me
but he fell in the giant yawn
I stomped in the yard
and like my bright wishes,
he’s also passing me by
carrying something I don’t get
because it’s real and it’s found
he is holding it and I am
eyes shut tight catarina
thinking about it
again when something grabs
my arm.
“how to forget everything day 67”
but to you there’s no difference between
decimation and the resolve so you’re
palms out begging for it
and here comes the reaper
wearing your blood.
you are God-drawn,
celibate,
obsessively
testing yourself and
binded by conviction.
you are wrapping yourself
in your lovers’
unhinging,
your lovers’ veins,
your lovers’ disdain
for the way they scream your
name into the pillow
and you’ll be around
come never.
you are distant.
you are giant.
you are waving your hands
in the air and calling it
time magic.
oh, you are quiet in your cave,
becoming whatever you say
you are.
“the magician”
we are sharing visions.
during our forced intermission,
I became a lantern and
my own crucifixion was
paused to grow my
sparkling spine sharp like
sudden beams of light shining
on your morning sex and
I walked forward slaughtering
everything hidden with a
wave of my hand, focused
eyes incantation, scribe
and text I having been reborn with bone
like wand, am luring rooks
for guns and ;
turning mice to men
with a flash of tongue
and then turning men to wolves
to find him.
the queen is fat now
gorging herself with army;
the war you begged for
and are bound to get
is here on time.
I gather every friend I know
and share my plans
for combat enticing each one
with a different reward.
this is the queen you
asked for:
acerbic communist,
generous with her
violence, but you are
Persephone’s
final futile hours
picking berries in the
garden,
sniffing tulips absentmindedly,
(nevermind the sunset)
plucking lilies from the water,
watching the ripples form circles
around your fingertips
and then you’re
screaming at your flowers
being swallowed by the ground
switch places
an earthworm bit her and said
as Pallas emerged with reminders,
a sello from the water,
floral crown and
speaking in her native tongue:
ways to blow direction,
ways to conjure storms.
oh, here it is again,
that little lie about choice
she goes with her knees
falling through the earth,
prayer hands.
but she goes and keeps
her head above that dirt,
what’s a curse to those who
know the power
of reverse?
well, we are sharing visions.
“the magician reversed”
spend too much time in scrutiny
and you find knives
in your hands.
11.
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