poets of wordpress

there you are.

Saturdays and the 1 pm alarm clock
on snooze,
the bare-faced evenings
in throw blankets;
languid, but there is still
a rabid tongue
between fits of sudden inspiration,
moved
from sheets to
cushions to sheets
to type it down,
to shower
once a week
if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth
graze your chin, scalp,
untouched thighs.
open your chapped lips to the sky,
feel the water rush your neck and
trickle down your navel
to soak your unseen toenails.
do not question anything
for those three whole seconds;
it is the closest thing to orgasm
you can manage.

it has been a tough change in seasons:
tights and boots and an expansive
blankness that still drives your body around
after work to get soy milk,
make polenta for lunch,
take out the compost,
take out the trash,
finish something you once started
when it was
skirts and cherry blossoms,
some organic laughter and a patient optimism
that seems unvisited but should be
worked out by now.
sometimes it is actually raining.

it is harder than that too:
cold and cramps and no tissues
or pads and an anniversary coming
that stings
and does not let go.
and you do hear from them
but with expectations.
you have wrapped yourself tightly
in some binding perseverations
so you constrict yourself,
restrict your errands, and bleed openly
on the carpet.
and sure, there is hunger,
but it’s quick and
you succeed in a relatively
docile surrender.
so what is there outside?
sometimes it is a blizzard.

then it’s flowers and unexpected showers
but it is day longer, sun higher,
you are not mired in the date of departure
anymore, and you forgive the monsoons.
your sensualizing emotions present themselves:
the gloss and black tips,
hips in sheer nylon,
a gentle sway.
sometimes it is unseasonably warm
and you have to hold your cardigan in your hand
but you have managed a smile
and some sense of buoyancy
and dragged someone along
with the sleeves of
your unworn sweater.
you get lucky:
they want to take the
long way and you have a tendency to
suddenly rush things.

you are both broken
doe and the trap laid
for their arrival.

“ambush” or “8th house”

August 29, 2018 0

i’m draped in wide fluorescent lighting,
slightly mollifying.

I come to myself
and collapse
on top of the thing playing
footstool
before he stretches out his back like a
bored house cat
and licks the cream from an inner thigh.
my unpolished toes curl
in revulsion.

chairs squeak;
someone coughs and adjusts the lights,
I blot my mouth and cheeks with an
embroidered handkerchief that’s initials
aren’t mine.
find my heels.
pull my blouse over my tender chest,
try not to look in any mirrors
on the way out
and notice the exit sign

shimmering,
more red
than usual.

“how we meet”

August 29, 2018 0

I should walk out
big as Venus,
arms uncrossed,
if I was ever honest.

my arms are wrapped
in a purple peacoat and
my hair is curled with an iron to
add ebullience to errands.
suddenly gather every strand with
self importance in
tiny felt bundles.
that week I had even painted my nails a
bright color; a conversation starter,
but I’m
truly as vapid as possible.
remain as sunny as possible.
insipid and careful,
rip it all out later
privately
as if beauty even matters
when I’m on the floor in tangles
trying to untangle
words I can’t commit to;
making the motions of crying stopping
to cough politely
to no one in the room.

I listen to AM radio today.
grasp the magnitude of crooners’ legacies,
of death reverberating against each window,
understand how most lives are wasted shirking
the embarrassment of a simple
I love you
when we could have said nothing,
just hugged more or looked at
each other. .
but I put distance between myself
and those I run to.

i’ve been dying drying to drown
myself again
in three consecutive hours of
smuggled moonshine and
a quick spin around the block,
no seatbelt,
knees up and the airbag on
climbing that ladder to the sun,
project my inner warmth all over pedestrians
in middling dust
and they’ll say

oo I feel like I was gently touched.

or locked in a necklace that bruises my clavicle when
I’m not careful
and I suddenly have to
run from it all.
I want to be fetal in silver and sapphire
grabbing his charred pinky to hold on,
hugging his hard heart and I still can’t call home
with any urgency and there are
people always seeking me.

storm clouds form on the side-view,
settle and condense.
the glass is dotted with a thousand tiny reflections
of survivor’s guilt
anthropomorphized.
this decade feels like elastic chaos,
one overwrought vignette that stretches
continentally and I can’t
get a break and the light rain
from a gray cloud
can’t flood this whole thing.
did God intend to rip this from my insides
this way? I hurdle myself
headfirst into a mirror
in an effort to memorialize
fresh heart all over the closest floor
without a towel or a
polite giggle
or a posed frown.
no monologue or saccharine coat
or any real motive
except it was true:
i wanted teeth too.

lit a cigarette and choked.
take another drag,
i’m composed.
watch the smoke cut designs into the ceiling.
you liked this don’t forget the feeling
of the first inhale;
the first time you rolled the stick
between your fingers
your thumb smelled like
the kitchen window.

the first time you saw your brother
smoke behind the garage
and he sneered;
you had spray painted your name into it first.
before you learned to paint the worms,
he taught you how to shake the can.
he taught you how to tag the shed.
he taught you how to lie to dad
about the missing colors.
he taught you how to
curl up into a ball and drift
back into your insides
whenever you hear the rattle
like baby’s teeth
being tossed left to right
inside the
bottle.

“anniversary”

August 29, 2018 5

the day I arrived in the hotel
in the financial district
to meet a Russian photographer
who promised me a night in an expensive
suite and a binding contract
that has been violated over time
without my awareness,
my nails were painted
blue to match my
bruised knees.

I thought that was
cute.

“how I made rent”

August 28, 2018 0

I wore black every day
just in case.
the train was fifteen minutes
late and I was
one month
and counting.

“the accident”

August 28, 2018 0

the kind that takes whole
neighborhoods
hostage and

leaves the dismayed
picking through the remains
to find their charred family albums
while their babies are off
staring at ash clouds
that block the sun
holding an empty leash
and at such a
young age

finally understanding
accidents, permanence,
their environment’s
severity and no exits.
you always remind them
there are no exits.

“grief”

August 28, 2018 0

you seem like you have a developed a
patient practice
memorizing our delicate contours;

first your fingers,
then your eyes,
trace gummy worm spines taste it
women’s arched backs
soft wet flesh,
mouthful of yes
near the bed frame
as they fall into you,
as they open knees
as they open attachment,
as they open
gash and you

stiffen you watch
with now closed lesions
using us like drinking fountains
and we bleed irresponsibly
but remember
some mouth full of
indifference,
an old word or two
you threw like a heavy blanket ,
a band-aid
no
at their scapula and
they straighten back.
they stay in bed as you
are (finished) a leashed laceration,
tied to some place we can’t guess
with sleeves and scripts and
ambivalent attachment, chin tilted
towards street, and
a swallow that was almost a word but
you’re on one bad laconic streak
so you just sniff the air and
don’t offer them water.

they are holding space
on the floor,
Indian style,
in case you need warmth.
you have a coat so you
politely decline,
hand them their hat,
put on your shirt,
call them a ride.
bare feet, gather their socks,
tilted backs to check for rogue earrings,
grab the scarf from the doorknob
near the door frame,
remembering the gentle no
moving backs,
wrapped in sweaters, pea coat shields
as they walk
quickly, quietly
(forgive the boot heel)
a clacking no
away from you
that isn’t felt
yet.

years have gone by and
what lovely new spines:
unbending,
unending bone,
untended memories of
cool depredation,
once spread like legs
now inflexible.
once swaying effortlessly
like reeds in your lake,
now planted firmly in the dry
not yet.
spines that are walking,
sauntering,
coming back for an earring they forgot.
machete sacrums.
nerves like fighters
marinating in indignity,
blood lust,
no.
so many years have gone
by and these spines are

razor sharp from your
diamond stone tongue,
growing and
ready to write
you.

“backbones”

August 27, 2018 0

you gave me a bouquet of
weeds once 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 loved
you.
following that the day was not as
pristine or worthy of
photographic memory,
but I don’t
always choose what stays,
what goes, what lingers
in between the building of
new thoughts, the removal
of the old, the magic it
all makes.

I had changed into a sundress
and walked down the stairs
slowly because I had bent over
in a way that tore something
inside of me:
a nerve or muscle.
I mustered up enough breath
to say it feels like I pinched a nerve
and am having trouble breathing.
what should I do?

you had to be somewhere
soon, I knew.
you looked up the staircase
on your way out
the front door and
simply said: I don’t believe you.
someone else drove me to
the doctor and that doctor
confirmed I strained my back,
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.

“Thursday”

August 27, 2018 0

I was giving her a shower.
I’m there for two hours to help with
personal care:

make sure she brushes her teeth,
settles down with a word search,
remind her it’s Tuesday.
after towel drying her so they could put on the
hemorrhoid cream,
I handed her a comb
and began rubbing lotion over her legs;
smooth like a child’s
the veins were still tucked behind flesh:
invisible with a firm,
earned elasticity.

you must have taken good care of yourself.

I enjoyed rubbing them.
years of tall glasses of water
running through those hidden blue streams
electrifying her cells,
tightening the gaps that so many of us
have she chose
crackers with avocado instead of Nutella,
early retirement on fluffy pillows,
watching the dawn cut the sky,
flossing,
deadlines and
filing nails.
she was just so full of tranquility,
days worth spending,
assets,
responsible parables,
a mother who taught her how to bake bread ,
crack eggs and iron hems.
she contemplated and said:

I like your dark eyes.

pacing the harbor with a flask
and a plan to really “do it this time,”
a hoard of sycophantic worker bees
who show me what their insides look like,
sleepy evenings that end in the bottom of
everyone, mislaid plays written in
spilled finger paint,
sprinkles of tobacco on the seat,
thirsty kidneys,
a camouflaged abuse that taught me how to
cower at words, a man’s
love and
bedroom hair that screams,
cries that freeze beneath my cheeks
before they learn to creak
turn to moans
melt on tongues
when touched in heat.

my eyelashes hurt.
my wrists feel like stone.
my spine is crooked like
the broken flute they cracked
out of temper when I wouldn’t
play the right way but
my legs are tall, ancient
and rough like
sequoias; uprooting and
walking forward.
it’s day and I’m awake
but my head is full
of horror.
I face her,
southern and
polite and
touch her shoulder

thank you.

still so full of
nights.

“eyes”

August 27, 2018 0

as if I am even hurting anything;
some embittered tremulous
thing shaking her fist at the
moon and praying for a tidal
wave.

you notice the notch in my veins
before you even notice
the rain.

“flood”

August 26, 2018 0