Tag: poets of wordpress

I ignored his question,
showed him the
callous on my palm,
referencing my need
to grip.
sometime I have rough sleep,
that’s all, I shrug the bruise
off.
he licks my hand  with his tongue
without questioning my need to
hold everything so tightly
I’ve succumb to carpal tunnel,
arthritis, delusions of
grandeur and infancy.

“has anyone ever talked to you about splitting?”
the doctor asks.
where am I?
I was twisting the straw
in my fingers, contorting my
face and confessing things,
sometimes i like to shoplift.
“Who is Catarina?”
the doctor asks.
numb.
“splitting is a phenomenon in which you sort of leave your body
to allow another persona
to take over.”
the doctor says.
sometimes I like to squeeze worms in my fingers
until they pop.

          “like possession?”

my posture is severe,
having been found hunched over I am
upright, hands crossed and
waiting.
sometimes I peek at Christmas presents.
“no, more like split personality.”
the doctor is taking notes and
eyeing me so intensely, I almost
laugh. don’t tell him my name
is Arachne. not
yet.

sometimes I watch the mirror dance in candlelight
            and wait for her to come in
              I break men
 like the swell that rises over bridges
engulfing islands with her mouth,
we break men with turns of
tides.

“Sarah, have you ever felt like  you were standing outside
of yourself?”

we break men with
dulcet metronomy,
or the way words do:
harm.

“Poltergeist”

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”

0

it’s midnight.
i’m with you
in a ball
on a quarter of my side.


you’re taking up a quarter of
my half of the bed with your engulfing
speculation and a partially harbored
rage marking pages you skimmed
to later find your place where you felt,
at the time,
some things are better left theorized
than openly enslaved.

I’m investigating an inner stillness
that dissolves when exposed
  and counting
                               to ten, my sponsor said
contusions around my throat.
you’re learning about economics
this week:
hyperbole & statistics;
which way my freckles move
depending on my
frown,
the likelihood of a temper tantrum over soap scum
on anything I scrubbed,
unloved refrigerator pictures circa 1991,
premature forgiveness when I’ve still got to
fuck the bitter out but
someone gave me two weeks of yoga passes
so I’m suppressing it in down dog and polite nods
on a borrowed mat
on the other side
of town.
I’m crooked but
I’m hiding my scoliosis 
in poses.

the amount of times my palms moved from open to
across your cheek and at what velocity,
how much of my useless back will face you tonight,
how long before one half of the bookshelf is strewn about
the floor,
how long before it’s all cleared out.
                    you’re a poor investment, Sarah
simply put,
how not to trust
anything that has to do with
us.
(count the marks on my throat)

you already know
about sharpness.
my Christmas tree is in a dumpster
in another state and most other things
shouldn’t be brought here or
shouldn’t be touched.
I’m in child’s pose
hiding in the closet
and tonight
you are learning

to never bet on
anything
that talks.

“the economist”

0

you are only as sick as your
secrets the old man says
and I nod emphatically
like I found them and
am going to unabashedly
review my inventory
right here but
well

 I have just
applied a fire engine red
gloss to my lips before
walking in and
I didn’t know this was just
for men, readjusted myself
in the middle of five.
I’m all black
monochrome
and partially velvet,
hostile,
internal,
set out for departure
since arrival.
my friends say I have a
clever  way of falling up
and the ones I fucked
said anything
but easy
but taste like strawberry
which gets me in the door.

I start by confessing
that I shoplifted the kombucha
that I am drinking
cuz I honestly
just have to start.

“doors #2”

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”

 

0

I have three cuts through
the devil on my leg
and a small bruis
 to the right of it,
a large bruise on
my left thigh and
when we met,
you had a large mark on your
right arm that looked
like someone had grabbed you
and I don’t know where
I got it.

you are careful.
I am unsure what to say.
I don’t either.
I gesture to myself,
I mean to mine.

I begin to tell her a dream.
he begins to tell me a dream.
I am in the middle of a forest
and she is in front a fire
and all she says is
wait, be careful
what you say
and holds her hands up.
she kind of walks towards me.
she is young but
but like also like her child.
like she is her daughter.
she is walking up,
she is wearing a long white
pj gown and has long hair,
hands out saying
be careful what you say.
and then I just wake up.

and then wake him up.

“datura moon” or “the story of us”

0

 

“We have, I think, great terror of pain, and consequent resistance to what it can teach.”

–Louise Gluck

freedom is a cage
 of smudged windows,
or it is a knot
in my stomach,
wriggling.


I dream of white frogs
at night in pools
covered in tea lights
and women swimming ahead
to cavern and I
feel caterpillars
washed in symbol,
 incubated, sliding through
my gut, inching
 their way from corporeal
packages when the day is
 warm and facing them,
unbridled.
when the wind is favorable

my unimpeded exodus
through speech
prevails;
from chrysalis to
window, cracking
pane and tracing spit
like slug on glass
to mark the gust
that carries.
from gut to
chest to
windpipe:
carved.  how screams are
rushed when pushed,
or just when they finally
meet the Earth
as voluble flutter
that maims itself
to form.



“Arachne”

0

I took myself
to the welfare office,
not even getting lost as
I’m prone to do.
          why can’t you just figure it out?
I live right down the street.
it took fifteen minutes.
my shorts are stuck to my thighs,
and my neck is drenched.
I wipe my forehead with my hand
to her disgust.
“It’s unseasonably warm for June”
I begin and elucidate the drawl,
smile to beg for my Access card back
 but here comes the recalcitrance;
she asks me for something
I don’t have and I
smacked my lips the wrong way
so I snacked on my servility
 inch by inch as I
inched my way
 back to our place.

months later,
I lose a diamond necklace there.
there is nothing more satisfying
than losing things or
shaving my head or
throwing away the clunky pepper
 spray that women wraithed into chains
and hung from their hips
as if fear and trepidation
 and weaponry have
ever kept me safe.
someone told me failure is perspective
but all I see are cops
 pinching women with latex gloves
and all the little shrubs
 that line the block look like
workers shaking their heads at me
      leave
or,

get on with then.
I am  throwing coffee grounds
into a leaky cardboard box,
our first CD is scratched  and
on top.
I’m on a bed that lifts
with one giant sigh
and no top sheet and
no frame.
they said risk meant courage
and I say you fucking
left me here
into your voicemail.

I’m eating sprinkles with a spoon
in a freshly inherited
two story townhouse.
It’s the sixth of June
so I got weeks.

“grace”

0

remember how you ranked
yourself: not top
but low and lowly,
seething. beguiling
with your rueful moan
 repeating
your endless epoch of dystopian
psychosis that started the minute
someone said hello
you swear; this
tale you would
tell them as you were tied
down or arrested, and
habits don’t change just
 because we do.
there is an insidious nature
to mechanism. it has worked,
it simply cannot fail,
that’s what you told yourself
(I want the daydream gone)
and 


remember how cold
February can be?
you in a staid state
of assessment that lacks
any empathy; you’re
in nine places if you’re any less
than three and recalcitrant,
 turned inward so you
bark at the shades,
slice at the lines of your
hands when dusk hits.
mistake things for sirens,
police yourself scourging,
marks on your legs, your
forearms.

 but when you sink,
you can feel the tongues of
nearby dogs,
your fingers half
in fur before your mind
has even greeted the owner,
feel the pup’s skin
and smile; broken
by the thing.
you were just  contemplating
the ways in which
water-boarding is
so necessary if you
actually have to force someone
to purge and
you can imagine places you could
use to get there having
felt so close to there before
and then
standing and
smiling to the man–
big and broad and sunny,
like you’ve never
thought a thing.

just rocking there,
picking daisies
in a raincoat.
It’s May and
you’re alone. 

“February/February/May”

0

 

we left with our hands
 uncurling
in separate pockets, fingers
strained against the denim.
I left a place where I found
 God and
a studio apartment
 with no utility bill,


foothills with no rain and
zero percent humidity,
sun 300 days a year and
a rose blanket that smelled
 like my parent’s room.
I left my
first incantation,
       my brother is dead
in the margin and
you left me with this
townhouse.

an abrasive echo
 that scratched marks
 in the walls,
 no budget for paint.
one half of the utensils,
a couple of wicker baskets
and no end table.
you gesture to the antique armoire,
remind me it’s yours
even though it’s not your
taste, you see the value
in heavy wood.

you took the bigger bottle of
 toothpaste.
five chairs,
all the curtains, the area rugs,
 the broom and your
glare lingered on me
counting dollars
in a borrowed sundress,
feel my clavicle
jut out the skin
as I rationed meals.

you took the kitten and
the lighters,
every last card
(left the armoire)
and  so abruptly like when
you took my waist that
one breathy night,
pulled me into the crook
of your body. said
you were going to
      squeeze me in this bad neighborhood
rolled out of that soft spot,
grabbed a litter box,
took clean off.

“doors #13”

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑