Tag: read women

I value freedom most.
I wander
in both eyes and body
always collecting
but devoted to the last,
even fixated on the last,
even clutching the last
but also loose with most
acquaintances stressing
compromise, meaning
yielding to my rule
and enjoying breaks,
enjoying reaching,
enjoying screaming.

favoring opportunity over floor,
I become an opportunist.
favoring power over doormat,
I become a tyrant.
I value the sky and
currents more than houses.
 the ephemeral in
our lives while also walking
three inches higher than I am,
on tiptoe,
touching things,
making threats in the air
when angered and
you say I am

 for-mi-da-ble
and slow like that.
a bit virulent
is how you say it and
before we seek the advantageousness
of everything, it’s Friday
 and we are
 processing hard truths.
the way silence hits
and my hand opening,
 the spontaneity
of losing things.
tell me,
where do you keep your pocketknife?

 life is rushing and swamps
with its shades of
blue; azure
  (you name things)
sky, or cobalt fluid
or nightmare
like a wall of nail polish
you’re reading every
dressed up inch of you.
your rehearsed malignance.
your wry contribution
with your cocked smile
to hide your jealous
sulk.

the moon moves
from womb to waste
to task those unsewn wounds
 and you embrace things now
with reticence
but you’re open to the epitaph
scrawled across the rock hard
eyelid
       temperance
(that means patience)
my Venus in Leo
is running.
you made him carve something else
across  your eyes
that night on Jupiter:
          I remember everything.

but you didn’t want to be
so right and you didn’t really
ask
 for things:
you just opened a door
and walked in.
you made it clear
as you rummaged through
 the closet smelling him,
you are always only someone’s
secret. you are
unconditional when furtive
but otherwise,
rigid and passing
like a northern mist.

that means when kept.
when kept,
you’re just a blur,
vanishing,
just a sprint.

“venus in 12th house”

1

at least I give you transparency.

even when I’m moping,
I’m dancing
in songs of satin,
rippling with sob
and shimmering
deep    bright,
stretched for miles
like the sky and with the
same opacity.
I am combusting
publicly, usually:
a flood of recourse and
you are
drowning,

immersed
in capillaries bursting with
crisis
and then immediate clarity.
my hands let go of the
flood I’m cradling.
you watch me move
like a snake across your
ceiling draped in shifting
constellations
you have no choice but to
memorize and I’m wearing
the crescent as a crown and
your ears like a gown
and full of crypted
warnings.    me,
I’m a dream

cat
stalking rabbits
in the garden, or
waiting for the night
by the river for the
muskrat, leashed a black
gator to my belt for extra
guard, and then
later on your doormat
pushing the heads of mice
all around.
each night I go to God and ask
for favor.
I hand them back their most
prized possession as the only
way to get it:
a page,

one line;
one at a time
wrapped in
flakes of
shrimp like little treats.
my barbarity, I desperately
want to play psychopath
and you told me you were
starving for affection.
you also told me
I am the coldest
woman you’ve ever
met; catching your
goldfish, frying them up,
using your
own tank like
that. when they said I get one
favor, I asked for dreams.
I always ask for dreams.
not mine, I make clear.
let me walk through walls.

let me see.

“the aquarium”

0

sometimes I do ceremony.

I stick only to a daily morning
ritual and then the day falls apart.
 try to strengthen some resolve
 without consumption.
I feed the cats, clean their
litter box, then stretch
and write my dreams down.
then I walk the neighborhood
to soak up sun letting
hours devolve like time
has no meaning at all.

sometimes I just
 let things pass
like cravings or
weather.
I don’t need to ingest
everything I think but
my stomach growls and
my jaw clicks and I
begin to devour hours
well into the night.
like time has no meaning.
sometimes I do and say
nothing at all to
anyone for days.
we do that for others;
carry our grief quietly.
bury things deep
within ourselves.

but I feel the root rot and darken
without altar, water
or speech.
you walk in and
I’m here now
growing into a black stem.
you walk in and look
right at me
 and I don’t know
 where to begin.
but I found the
aperture.
you walk in and
look right at me and
my shiny white teeth
forge a new smile.

I begin to grow,
unfurl, hum
softly.

 

“datura moon”

0

you were given a choice.
you chose this road
first, then the
present.
become an alcoholic to
find a higher power.
meditate occasionally

to see how well it suits you.
fill the emptiness with Oreos,
coffee,
a smoking habit you detest
but gives your fingers something to
do when you’re speaking anxiously
in public,
when the caffeine is rearranging your
tongue into metaphors and you
need a moment of pause,
clarifying to the audience
with a descriptor you
previously forgot
and the story: winding,
inexplicably always
out of order.

run a 5K every three weeks
to give yourself a mission:
get back in shape,
hone your vision of
yourself.
bathe everyday.
tell the cat you love her
and pet her for an extra few minutes
before you walk for hours
to lose those new found vowels
completely.
pluck out your dead ends
 hiding in a stealth spot.
begin a practice of voyeurism.
sit comfortably and
file your nails into sharp points.
lean into them.

write everything down.
start ordering your steak rare:
inhale the lost veal,
the lost zeal of an entire feedlot;
the scent of plasma and cud.
devour a a squealing colony
without remorse.
      give cannibalism a chance.
you’re talking to yourself in public again.
the looks from the other patrons
don’t bother you.
you remember them with skinned knees on
bathroom tile;  your stomach in
velvet knots,
your obsessive purge.
you remember them peering at you
in courtrooms,
you remember them in handcuffs,
in shackles,
side eyes as you make a scene
 at the open bar, or get someone’s date to
carry it all:
               vodka soda,
          you lick his ear
             like your boyfriend isn’t even there.
it’s not the groom you want
or ceremony you despise,
it’s the bride.
the way you’ve stolen and
groveled afterwards.
 the way they held
onto those wrongs and their
condescending pats on the back
withdrawn.
how you’ve managed to
survive it all with gratitude,
without much impact,
you’ve suddenly risen
 to their ranks.

get your wisdom teeth removed
and then
cut them into daggers.
check out Home Depot,
ask for “industrial size”
ignore all the
 are you ok ?
you’re muttering again.
read the directions.
this stuff is toxic.
don’t get it on your eyelids.
press the bone back into your sockets,
flick the canines,
gotta be solid.
smile:
you’re still celibate.
you’re still hungry;
avaricious,

less slovenly from
all the exercise,
less addled than before
and armored like the night.
go back to the diner.
lick your plate.
click your tongue.
you showed them how
 starvation’s done.
you showed them how to roam.
you put your money where your
mouth is glued into
 your gums.
ring the alarm.

your mouth is lined with
homemade knives, and you’re
wafting noxious with each
breath    you begin to teach
them how to
move again.
you begin to chew more
loudly.
               Miss?
now that your dysphagia’s
done, you’re gonna smile
wide.
show them your veneers,
Ms. Salt and tell them
what you want.
I want it now.

“Veruca Salt”

0

this is fresh.
the way I put on blush
and got my bangs cut,
properly at a place just
to show up once,
just to take my scarf back
and without a hug.


like the last word
someone said
          I was hoping we could talk about this
or me finishing packing up
anything belonging to my
ex; an entire bookshelf he left
which leads me to a shoebox
to stuff the card my new
ex-thing sent.

find old photographs
of myself unsure in blue hoodie
set to the mountains
at sunset like I couldn’t
imagine not being there.
it was such a casual stance
to permanence I carried.
the last time I look at a place.
the impassable space between
 states, abysmal and
the plane ride to my
brother’s coma.
it all comes back.
this is fresh.


this is the last time I’ve ever
seen or heard from someone.
my intrepid cool affect
pushing edges further back
to margin;
my rehearsed gait.
the way I asked how are you
three times with a nervous gesture,
without listening or waiting
for response and then
a sudden turn away.

I spent all my time at the beach
as a child
watching waves take things away.
I’d throw sticks in there,
seaweed, sometimes bottle caps.
draw lines in the sand with my toes.
throw hermit crabs back.
the day the sky was black
 and cut with
lightning, swollen
with compulsion,
a tropical storm touched the
ocean and on instinct,
 it swallowed itself.
I was there at the edge.
watching waves curl up to
my chest and
my aunt screamed,
came to grab me as I touched the
shore with my hands and
carried me up to the house.
Sarah, why did you do that?
the whole way up,
I was crying, screaming
bout a flip flop
drifting in the current,
begging her to go back.
I remember it to this day.
it had white soles and  yellow and vinyl
ribbon tied into a bow
at the toe.
I was trying to go back
into the water to get it.
you can’t tell anything
about a statue
except it’s resting form:
cool

but if you ever saw the contents of
my purse: the twisted straws,
the clutter, lists of
things to get or hold,
the collections,
you would see
 that peevish child
taunting the ocean’s
grip and dashing,
longing for her
endless swaddle,
but also longing for
everything that ever
existed too.

 invincible in
execution only if
carried everywhere.
people don’t change,
I think, and having second thoughts
throw the dinosaur
you mailed me away.

the birthday card he gave me.
the set of text exchanges.
people don’t change.
I empty the bin,
make space for lipstick.

0

I just have to make rent.

 

this is how thoughts start
and then ten years go by
and you’re still spiraling
like you hadn’t found the answer
but really I just
had to make rent.
that was my first priority
and I think I may be a masochist
which could wait just
keep everything in some sort of order.
focus on the task.
the one thought as I open
the door to the mid-August heat,
89 degrees which is nothing compared to
the south that can swallow you whole
in one boiling breeze and I’m out of
my now near empty row home
that you cleaned almost all the way
out before you left
except the dirty armchair, old couch–
all the furniture found.
all the dishes donated.
everything I left come back,
everything kind of circuitous
like my anfractuous spine
 that stood straight once but
fractured under the weight
of this constant need to materialize
public ovation and actual groceries and
the ability to discern between a happy
thought and an actual hand to hold,
I become the reed reaching deep
but bent,
 sinuous,
cracked,
become the way the wind moves
when it’s surging.

i’m counting tokens in a
donated tank top and barely fitting
jean shorts, everything about me
awkward and also sort of heavy in
the impassable space between states
 I learned to love,
between beds I’ve been thrown on
and various seasons of us;
theorized or touched
whether it’s real or not,
irrelevant to the curve that’s forming
in my back as I hunch over the weight
of things I stuff in my bookbag
that I find on my walks out:
China set, forks, two new mini
skirts, pot holders neatly placed in
cardboard boxes on people’s
front porches and  I am,
crammed with charity,
stretched to my limit
and timorous.
I’m two miles to the El
with enough tokens to get me there
and back and enough money to pay
exactly
one phone bill,
one internet bill,
power and gas but we are still
working the rest out and
I feel drops forming at
the base of my
sweaty and salt-lined,
un-licked neck.
thatss what I miss most.
the way a man curls behind you.
the way his curtness catches you.
it’s just one breath.

you never ask about my mornings
or daydreams; just
twirl the edge of your Merit
 between your thumb
and pointer and
years of pleasurable
silence,    it’s just one breath
look at me with such
masked inconsequence,
cold front and
lick whatever sugar is stuck to
my teeth,
go back to your lighter.
go back to your preoccupations.
go back to your opinion
that my anarchy is the danger of the
couple, not your ability
to wrap your fist around a throat
without a safety word.

it’s rent I have to worry about.

I put my headphones in.
began to spin the happy thought
into years; of us.
your brusqueness
   it’s just one breath
syncopated with whatever song
I assign it like I walked
into a film set, replay a scene
of you coming back and
behind me, your mouth
hot with acrimony.
your hands rough in
both touch from the ungloved carpentry,
spackled with white paint
 and the way
you take my waist.
I hum out loud.
the loop is what I have to
worry about.
the way you press your teeth
to me.
        it’s just one breath.

“the men”

1

before I moved to Boulder,
I developed a very good working
relationship with the Harris Teeter
in Ghent. I would do my local grocery shopping there,
pretty regularly, dividing my cart into half:
stealing that half and paying for the rest.
this is how people who have fifteen dollars
and a drinking problem live.
they neatly divide what is worth
paying for and what is worth ignoring,
letting go, stealing or conning.
when I moved to Boulder,
I developed a good working
relationship with the Whole Foods
but I cut my teeth stealing bike lights from
Target so that my partner and I
could go places at night.


I showed him how to pocket
toothpaste as mine was homemade
of bentonite clay and I am doting,
if not simply peacocking
about my bold chase of everything.
I showed him how to pocket the
Kombucha and show up to
meetings with it in hand like
it had no alcohol,
like I didn’t pocket the lip
gloss either.
when I moved to Philly,
I developed a good working
relationship with every Whole Foods
in the area.

I want to be remembered for the
ways I never died,
not for the ways my mouth
looked shut in meetings
every time an old white man
repeated an aphorism I have yet
to swallow: you are only as
sick as your secrets.

I want to be remembered as a
passing silhouette in your
night or the arms that
held you finally
so long as you know
my pockets are heavy
like chests.
so long as you
like little gifts
now and then.

1

in Colorado,
his name was (redacted).
I am passing 3rd street unaware
of my hands withering,
clutching my phone.
another bad habit of mine,
not wearing gloves and never
placing my hands in
my jeans or coat pocket
or any warmth.
I’m always fiddling or
adjusting the volume.


he was very young and
wide eyed and used to doodle
through meetings,
watching the layers of people
shift in their seats, gathering
outlines with his pencil.
I would try to peek
to see how he made them and
who he most favored
knowing my cheekbones were perfect
but some things are more discreet and I
said hi to him only if I passed
him but mostly enjoyed the thrill
of picking a home group full
of freshman in college,
the perversion of me
unfolding like that,
so uninhibited in my quest
for sobriety and undivided
attention

spreading my
legs in the chair
in my turtleneck dress and
brown tights betting they could
smell my fever from here.
three children catch me muttering
and smile.      they watch
my fingers curve around an object,
then divide as I tap each tip
with my thumb like
I’m counting.
 they are thinking
I have secrets,
not that I am crazy
because children see parallel
lines.

one time,
he kept his eyes closed as everyone
in the circle shared.
when it was my turn, he popped
them back open and stared
the length of my story
like he had come here for this.
I was too confused to make
direct contact with him;
this being so flagrant
and sudden, I fluster
with bold advances
preferring to be the aggressor
not the pursued;
not the doe in the reticle
but the bear from behind.
I spent one whole year fantasizing
about him.

not lured by his youth
which makes him easy to command
but the way he was clearly taken
by me, his obvious insouciance,
and his right to be that way,
being only eighteen and
forced here to survive
among such alphas.
such witches with prowess
and skill and eight years
of drowning, emerging.

the children notice my
mouth moving as I walk down the
street, reviewing.
they all think I am writing about
them. I am writing about a cloud
I passed once.
cry cry cry and then
just start fucking laughing,
I say out loud
so the ten year old widens
her eyes
as she passes
not alarmed at the way
I keep touching things,
but the way I say fuck
in front of them so
unabashedly and in the
middle of the story like
we’d been talking this
whole time.

“xxx #1”

0

I learned to drift
young and
listened to my Papa’s
stories, my aunt’s stories,
the whole family telling stories
and I learned to joke
too. it’s about knowing
what people respond to
but also a dauntlessness.
everyone in my family
laughed big and loud,
smoking cigarettes sitting around
the picnic table,
a pretty red wood covered
with some tawdry pear-slathered
yellow and cream plastic cloth
made to absorb ketchup
and beer cans everywhere.
the empty ones there for butts.
and bottles of Coke in giant
two liters   their tan slender fingers
and the confidence of lighting up.
I perfected the flick of an ash
off the end of a burning cigarette
long before I held one.

it’s ninety percent the way
your neck looks when you’re listening
and ten percent what you say
when you finally move to
enter the game.
I learned to grift too.
there were many ways.
more about fun then–
just how to sneak out
at night to grab cigarettes
from the bowling alley cigarette
machine; a preposterous
thing but came in handy.
I would sometimes crawl out of
my bedroom window,
my bed right beneath it and
able to slide the screen right open
without breaking it,
it was easier then the back door.
I had to tiptoe.
we had thin walls.
I slept with my door shut,
pitch black and covered with
pillows scared of my closet.

sometimes we took beer from my friend’s
parents cooler,
or candy pocketed from 7-11
or lip gloss from Eckerd’s
or something from a man’s house,
anything really.
I liked to take photographs of them
and items of clothing to smell
before they leave me.
sometimes I would stare at the pictures
he left out on his dresser
suddenly. not sure if they were planted
or just forgotten as he
offered me a shot of tequila on
his barracks colored carpet;
that off-white every sailor had;
stained with Friday nights
and teenage vomit.
movie ticket stubs falling
out of my coat pocket.
I always took my shoes off
out of politeness even though
I could see the scrape of dirt
from welcome mat to
cot and today:


a picture of him and his wife
on the rocks on the coast
of San Diego,
a card she left him,
something in spanish.
I would listen to the CDs he played
on repeat to get over her, later
alone, more holding the sting
 and the shattering way
it felt forced to be fucked
to music like that.
fascinated that grief can transcend
between two people, same song,
two different ways.
two different meanings.

where are you running to now?

I’m at Lehigh and 2nd
giving a man directions
to the 15 stop and he is asking
me where I am going.
I have no job or friends,.
but tons of antique wood
furniture and I kind of nod
to myself without answering him,
just keeping that buoyancy of
knowing that
acquiring objects is half the battle.
the other half is unearthing.


“walls #1”

1

what will you hold
in your old age?
me in the dark, feeling
the railing as I crawl
up the steps to my
king-sized bed
and the dogs that lie
there peacefully.

and feeling lucky:
the memory of a
southern thunderstorm;
it’s bristles of electricity
that made the hair stand up on
my forearms.

listen to the rain.
this house has no trinkets
but there are journals buried under
the floorboards and one
framed picture on the wall:
the four of us,
young  and laughing
like we had
promise.

“dementia #1”

0

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