poets of wordpress

I think a lot about my
own divisiness and the ways to get
more or away or someone.
how I mask it.
what I can do.
what I’m doing.
how what I thought I about
yesterday compares meekly
to the euphoric way the sun
hit my shoulders just today
and no other day will compare to
this feeling so I mold it into
tangibility, twisting a straw,
photographing the figures of me
opening the door for someone
on way to get my second load
and thinking, so happy
to witness.

also
I love probability
like
what’s the likelihood I’ll see your
friend again, seeing him three times
already and you never there cuz
I don’t set foot on your lawn,
your territory, not mine
to fight for and
what is it going to take to hypnotize
a small crowd and at what cost to my
well being and I was practical so
how much money will I make
if I devote myself entirely
to one thing vs. side things
and how honestly bad I
crave the hustle
but also I would like to crave stability
and statistically speaking,
we have to look at patterns,
not just equations but
trends so then here comes
more of the past.
I’m real used to it:
being three places at once
if I’m any less than nine.

II. (uranus in sagittarius in fifth house)

January 17, 2021 0

I repeat the question in my head.

yes, he was my only brother.
it is much easier to disappear
but the house moved with
me; from freeze to open
like an unattended mortuary
moved to resurrect itself
after years of
neglect and

did you know,
the bones given a soft lick
will sparkle white
like fresh-caught ivory
and once it feels the brush of
mouth
will file any joint to tip
with tooth
and gore the things that touches
it, that holds it
near to chest or
safely in its palm?

as it shreds the flesh from
crown to feet,
someone says to me,
with sincerest sympathy
and I fall into a fog.
was he your only brother?

as I pass a trashcan,
I fumble a little,
make room in my bag
for lipstick.

“the sympathy card”

January 17, 2021 1

I just have to make rent.

I read a note out loud to myself,
something I had written in an urgency,
a mania and with its own
staggering precocity these little
messages keep me crawling
on the ledge:
everything that is really hard
is going to save your life

and a blackbird landed on the branch
outside my living room
window.
still, their eyes small and
sharp, waiting to dive,
waiting for the buzz of cicadas
to start again.
that reminds me,

I say in my head
i’m emaciating.
I take a sip of water.
starved, looking
without touching and
I want too much
has many meanings.
I read the words aloud again
and pour myself a thimble
of almonds.

it is first that I craft the story,
not out of revenge but
of general idleness and
devilment, the two things
slated to go hand in hand.
I begin to charm him.
do you believe everything I say?

and then you become the
braced masochist
and I become
the looming hit.

“maelstrom”

January 17, 2021 0

I am thinking of culpability
as it relates to
feelings towards me.
I am thinking
you’re thinking
what’s the probability
I still hold grudges and
what’s the likelihood
I save a thing that any
man has given or said to
me, but we also have to examine
formula so you
reverse and see the way

I move at night first.
foremost, you have to
ask yourself whether my stasis
is truth or lie, and if all
perpetrators love getting
caught what does that mean for
us? and starting to feel myself
dissolve into the walls,
I become
first so large I cannot be unseen,
and then with a snap of
my fingers, a panel
blending in like camouflage
with the cracks along my walks.
I could not stop myself
from seeking; even in
chill, I could go from one
end of town
to the other.
like a slow exhale.

when the city closed the
streets for the pope,
I walked from Frankford and
Allegheny to 30th and Market,
having also biked it first.
even though we lacked the
snow capped hills,
something about spending an
entire two months
watching for black ice and cars
even at red lights,
hearing them skid,
thrilled like the slipping
over jagged rocks.
and being watched daily
by a nemesis and every man in this
town really made it feel much
more weighted
and at such a shifting
ponderance. there were
glades of icicles
to wade through,
my hamstrings so strong
towards the end of
February, my fingers
like wrinkled rulers
measuring the space
between neighbors,
the circumference of
baseball sized holes in
windows, the sting of
locked knobs,
and

crippled by the straws
I clutched ungloved.

“February/February/July”

January 16, 2021 0

I know I’ll always be ok.
by purpose, my name
will be forgotten. my real name.
I am thinking back.
if you can’t keep up,
this is winter 2014. but it is also
winter 2017.
it is also spring and
summer 2020.

the day I arrived in the hotel
in the financial district of New York
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.
spread more, all the
way.
I thought that was
cute.

he gave me a fishnet
black onesie I ripped a hole
in but wear on dates
to remember us by.
and even though
he took advantage of me
and you felt betrayed
by some unshaved labial
part of me,
I made my half of rent
for once.
in the car from the bus
stop on my smile
spread and the bickering
couldn’t dissuade
the new confidence.
the way cash feels
sizeable in an envelope.
ok, chill.
fuck,

I got rent, right?

“doors (#7)”

January 10, 2021 0

carried little pieces of God
everywhere;
got a pint sized celestite
I broke off and now
twirled in my fingers.

I am surrounded by men
who are wolfish in detonation
but repenting for a lifetime
of substance abuse
so we nod when they say
things that are aptly
reflected instances in which
they felt a guilt greater
than themselves.
they usually begin with things
like
I took advantage of her
and 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
and I am mostly plain.
I wear light blush, mascara and
chapstick but I don’t spend all
day about it.
it is important as a woman
to catalogue what you were wearing
and how you generally look
in any moment.
also I had gained some weight
first, before I discovered that
counting beans will gain you
phone bill money.
when you tell the audience the story
they can gauge reaction better.
were you homely, girl?

I was neither homely nor
exceptional,
merely watching the blue chips
of nail polish flake onto
the floor as he spoke
about his trespasses
against women,
finding my hands to be urgent
suddenly.

“doors #6”

January 10, 2021 0

the art piece was
grotesque in its
simple presentation;
an ostentatious gift to
yourself as I fumbled
openly with indecision,
one foot pointed west,
one stuck supplicating
beneath yours
and we moved right next to
a bar that was closed the
day I planned my relapse.
I wanted the burn of rum
mixed with lukewarm Coke
and the oblivion to follow
me home.

it was a dark copper albatross
that hovered at the top of
the stairs.
I think I was also under
a deep dehydration.
I needed limits and
boundaries but I also needed to
tear the art piece off the wall
and file each side into a lithe
pocket knife that I could
wear around my neck
as a signal of my
emerging masculinity.
have one taped to each arm
and to each thigh
and to each ankle
which is the joke about masculinity:
it’s supposed to contain
a dark wild feminine
but abhors any force,
needs appendage to stop it.

the fourth wave is
more insidious.
I didn’t notice the change
at first but I did gaze up
at the top and wonder
what it’d be like to
leap to the bottom step
and if you’d notice that first
or that a piece of
the sculpture was missing,
hidden somewhere.

“the black book”

January 8, 2021 0

later
you can tell has been rehearsed.
i’d be remiss if I didn’t reveal
a five feet of light bruising.
it’s heavy;
my tongue large with
little darted lullabies,
my endless provocation
and beg for hands
on me like
paddles or crops.
or just the way hands do
when hot, they
harm.

January 8, 2021 0

at three pm,
I show up to the church
just my tourmaline in
hand, hair wrapped
and I begin.
God, I renounce all
evil in me.
my hands twisted
like roots, the white string
of my cuff ties
between my knuckles,
nervous
and he says
daughter,
take your time.

beads of sweat
ride my back, pull my
camisole tight to skin and
I can feel the pleather
stuck to the bottom of
my thighs so that if I moved,
the flesh would have to be
ripped from bench.
I’m obsessed with time,
and that’s not the issue
but how I count it
in riddles.
he cannot see the way
I move my leg;
the natural tremble
it’s developed.
it’s what I say in
blackouts, or even now,
the way it has to be correct.
the way it spills out of me.
I’ve twisted the tie til the circulation
is cut, tightly around my
ring finger.
and that I need to be subsequently
scourged, promptly.
begin unraveling it when I feel the
pins start up my knuckles.

I’m nodding
my head in some sort
of agreement with something
internal, with the
rush I feel from purge,
the glow of sun
through pink stained glass
across my cheek,
the bend of legs
on pews,
the comfort of
the ailing, the
rhymes,
to ailment.
the comfort of beads
in hands, or
anything, the
alms.

I am here and
practicing throwing
my arms
open
when people
first
walk into the room
but also
remembering what
I
scream
at doors
in panic.

“the recitations”

January 8, 2021 0

I start taking wagers on who
shows back up first
knowing it’s wrong to bet
on anything that talks
and quite frankly,
you can’t,
Mrs. Shepherd told me in the 12th grade
during AP stats, still proud I aced that
class but you can’t stop
a sociopath
from never feeling again,
can you?
I say to him.

I have a Smith and Wesson.

“the coup”

January 7, 2021 0