Tag: read women

all day long
I vacillate between intention
and immediate withdrawal;
my habits, my beloved

hermeticism and the double meaning of
everything and I’m
ambivalent about every choice
I’ve given myself over to–
even in completion,
I shrug.
let the wind take me.

now I am in blindfold,
a preparation and I am forced to
declare it.
    your arms are free
someone drew two swords and
showed me and I am superstitious,
lining wrists with crystal rosary and
jasmine smoke and tea and
smashing my fists into a
mirrored wall to feel the way
(across)
it might when I finally
say something,

when I finally stand still enough
to embrace the thing that’s
said.

7.

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things I like:
symmetry and
the act of naming things,
the synthesis of dream and
disorderly thinking,  and my bout
of many hidden rituals
like a drunk blossom,
full and suddenly
noticed

“Leo”

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I was so broke
and depressed.   sometimes I forget
that. it was the depression that was pinning me
to my apartment after you left;
keeping me locked there
keeping me imprisoned.
I let someone use my old Access card to pick their
lock so it did come in handy
after all.

I’ve put on no weight but I’m
satiated and all security is an illusion.
numbness had me
making more terminable plans
with bathtubs
bu some small joy always carried me:
my cat 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 the 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 start
to come about.

6.

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well, they always start
 the same way:
in winter, it always starts in
winter 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 but  I am reaching
for anything that reaches
back.

in truth, I am a nihilist and
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.

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 and mired in my
 constructed reality I now feel
a thirty year repression
birthing from a well,
from a heavy pour
and it carries eels like
lightning, the nose of sharks,
their discarded carcasses like
past betrayals coming 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
as the engine fails.
and you say
well, anything can be
contained in a cloud.

to which I reply,
catastrophe as well

“the well”

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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,
various certifications,
everything a lover gave you,
hand me downs, or cute owl
 pajama sets that were xmas gifts
callously discarded in the great
 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, the letter from
your dad,

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,
alone.
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 someone grabs  
my arm.

“how to forget everything day 67”

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It started in the city, or at least, it felt like it started in the city. I had marched for a long time to get to this party and all along I was whistling. Nothing brazen and loud, but quietly. I guess it was more like a hum with the occasional whisper in the wind as I pursed my lips together in an effort to make noise. I wasn’t making much noise, in fact, it felt like a long creep to your place.  Letting my arms dangle, I moved my hands in a mild gestural manner: an old habit of mine. I have a nervous disposition, I told him once over Thai. My fingers stretched against my tights so I could feel the nylon. It was more dense than nylon but my shins were lined in goosebumps. My legs were wrapped in a thicker fabric like leggings, but sheer so the wind cut through. I don’t remember carrying anything like a book-bag or purse. Room floated around me and it was past dusk, it was dark. It was night when I arrived. I had marched a long time through the city to get to this party; this specific party in which I was going to confront a few of them at once. There was a guest list and I was on it. I was dressed appropriately although I did not look at my face in a mirror so I cannot tell you what I looked like only what I felt like: like vapor rising past an edge. I was shifty.

 

The last thing I remember before turning the corner to get on your block was that I had no idea if I had driven or not. It was strange. I had the sensation of getting out of a car earlier but truly I didn’t have any recollection of it. It felt like I had walked for miles. I dissociate. When I opened the door to your place, it felt familiar; not the place but the way I entered. It was as if I always open the door on my own. There was a gathering in the center and you turned to greet me with a chilling apathy and I smiled with every tooth. I embraced you which was out of my character. Perhaps to soothe a beast in you. You said:

 

You look taller.

That’s when I looked down to see my boots and my knees, a little shaky and wrapped in black, and then I felt the sweater as you turned to put your arm around my waist and I held it there. There was one moment in time in synthesis and I held it there. This is what I am wearing. Even though you delivered a tepid reception, you grabbed me like I was yours. You brought me closer to the kitchen but a dark swarm took over my body. I looked sideways to follow it. My friend Reagan approached me from the other side. I’m being flanked.  I was distracted long enough to ignore the person skulking out the back door.

 

“Hi!” she embraced me like we were sisters and pulled me to the couch.

 

Funny how recollection tricks you. There was someone else in the kitchen who slipped out the back door as I sat down but I would tell you then on the couch that never happened. I would embrace Reagan like a friend even though I barely knew her. I would tell you it was comfortable even though I felt set up.  I looked down at my dress. A dress. I’m wearing a dress.

 

“How are you?” she smiled brightly in my face, her dark hair hanging over her cheeks.

 

There was nothing memorable about her except her green eyes. They were beautiful to look at in my moment of rising panic.  I swallowed like I was swallowing an apple core and I held her hand like we knew each other forever. Turning to look for him, she squeezed it.

“Let’s catch up, hon.”

 

I kept turning my head to understand the new layout. There were candles lining the floor to the stairs but the staircase was on the opposite side. When I turned back it also appeared that the stairs were in the right place even though there were none near the front door. It was like the room was cut with mirrors and drapes. It felt like a stage. I don’t think there is an upstairs.

 

“ I want to see my reflection,” I suddenly said.

 

“Hahaha omg,” she patted my leg. “Listen, I don’t know why you would trust him. He’s an alcoholic and manipulative.”

 

I swallowed again and stood up.  I should confront him. Where did he go? I walked away from her and realized the entire party had cleared. It was just the three of us. He greeted me without his shirt and I saw a tattoo. There were two. The bigger one, I couldn’t read it though.

 

“Are you staying or leaving?” he said.

 

His eyes were blue and that was normal. Blue like a fresh paved lake of ice.

 

“I’m leaving,” and I shuffled past Reagan without acknowledging her again.

 

I headed towards the door that was on the right side even though the kitchen and stairs were misplaced. I stepped out before I could change my mind, before I could stop and pause and demand my reflection. Let me use the bathroom. There were no cars anymore. No streetlights or streets. I held the hem of my dress, once feeling thick like a sweater felt thinner, lighter, more spring but still black.  I had come to the party in all black and now I was shivering. It had dropped a few degrees in the forest. I was staring at a forest. I was staring at a row of trees and yellow eyes were popping out of them. They were slow, methodical and walking towards me. My hands were gripping the handles of a bicycle. I can’t bike through this. Turning around to plead with him, he was already closing the door. My eyes narrowed at his side as he leaned against the frame.

 

“Can I just stay here a while until the wolves go away?”

 

He shut the door without a word. I turned to face the forest I had just somehow safely walked through and pretended it was a street. I pretended the people were people. The people were hungry. The entire pack settled at the entrance and watched me. Gripping the bike, I turned back to make sure, yes, he shut the door and yes, he wasn’t coming back. A giant red oak square with a brass knocker stared me in my face and the man I had been chasing vanished inside. I looked down.

 

I become so enlightened at the turn of it

I start writing with a desperation.

 

That’s what the note on my arm said.

 

And what did the note on his ribs say?

 

I interrupt myself. I am scrambling to remember the whole thing before it fades. It is 5:30 in the morning and I am in pain; not from separation but from untended rhythm. Maybe I never noticed my dreams had cadence or style or meaning, yet, I have pages full of them. I begin again.  I have to begin again. I stopped myself from compulsively flipping through last year’s journal. Sitting is my weakness. The morning overcomes me and dawn is nice. I am too tired to move so I stay. It was a tattoo on his chest, not his ribs. He had two and I could only read one. They were connected over his body like a map.

 

I tapped my head with my pen and sat. Sometimes the morning is foggy and I just need a second to breathe. Coffee is too stimulating and I just need a quiet moment to breathe. One was so giant I couldn’t read it like it cascaded across his whole body,  I reread my note from earlier and I put the pen back on the paper. Mania is a curse of the unrested and dutiful investigator. Jaw clenched already, my migraine set in but I continued. It said:

 

One was so giant I couldn’t read it like it cascaded across his whole body, and the other said love exists with or without hope.

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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.
becoming whatever you say.

be careful what you say.

“the magician”

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With a natural lethargy, she put her makeup on slowly elongating the whole process by several minutes. She wasn’t used to wearing it. Moving her neck like a snake upward from left to right, like she was wrapping it around a trunk or leg, she admired the stretch first, then the movement itself; hypnotic and quiet and binding. She stopped applying the powder to stare. Motionless, she admired herself head on. The blush she chose was dark; a shimmering burgundy that ran across her face and cheekbones in the shape of a bruise. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear examining the soft waves falling over her shoulders first as they moved, and then again as they settled. She wanted to see what she looked like as she approached; in stillness and in motion.


 “That took too much time,” she said out loud.


 Moving her head back and forth in a slow no gesture to see what she looked like disagreeing, she could feel and see the skin of her lips cracking. She eyed the chapstick on the shelf.  She wet her lips with her tongue. We must move on. There was nothing she did for anyone without motive and no one was around to touch them yet. Setting the bamboo brush on the sink, she ignored her dry mouth and her thirst, and picked up the mascara. Carefully, she applied the wand to the eyelashes of her left lid and then immediately stopped to examine herself again. Unbundled and free, her thoughts had been leaping ahead of her. It was distracting. They were being seized by something else; something distant, either imaginary or future she could never tell, but something tugging at her sleeve. Look behind you. She reached for the twisted, plastic straw from the sink’s ledge and began twirling it in her fingers on instinct.  Letting herself be overtaken by the fake memory; the fake way he held her, the fake way he smiled, the fake way it felt, she felt the rush in her chest.

“Stop it,” she barked at herself.


 Staring at the mirror once more, she held her own gaze in trance.


“My name is Catarina Kacurek,” she practiced again.


She said it a couple more times until she was satisfied with the way it felt rolling off her tongue. Naturally. Nodding, she put the straw back on the ledge and began to apply the mascara to the right lid’s eyelashes. It’s always like this. She couldn’t see the clock in the bedroom and was thankful. I’m late, she knew. Taking her time anyway, she could still feel the electric bubble running up her spine to announce its arrival, announce its bones were growing over her bones into a grove of wands. I have things to do. She set the mascara neatly back in her makeup bag and pulled out the eyeliner. Dragging the skinny black pencil across the top of her left lid first, she felt a breeze, a draft from a hidden place to the left of her. What the fuck is this all for?


 As she fawned herself, praising the way her eyes grew from small and doting to big and black and full of infirmity, she heard a car backfire somewhere in the distance. She placed the pencil on the sink and waited. Goosebumps trickled up both arms. In her spine, her bone grove of smoke and scream and sudden life, she felt it.


“My name is Catarina Kacurek. May I come in?” she practiced again, feeling the backfire of other every other thing.

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Part 4: The Act Of Chasing Things

“Jung ponders, “How can evil be integrated? There is only one possibility: to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness.”

 

You couldn’t hear them move over the forest floor.  The snow was fresh and soft like powder. Each step left an imprint but no resounding echo. You could only hear their breathing. You could not hear their steps.

Compared to the surrounding stark silence, their breath was bleating. Each huff was pained and loud. Since the two women had ceased speaking, it was all you could hear as they walked. All reserves were focused on completing the hike and returning home. The snow was at a halt. It was a windless day and they were making use of the eye of the storm. Within the eye, everything was hiding.  Every once in a while a tree shook when a bird perched and a big clump fell and startled them but hardly any birds circled. Hardly anything moved at all. A crow called out to them hours ago.
“It must be noon,” Catarina said when she heard it.

Behind her, her friend said nothing but she heard her sniffle and knew she was wiping the snot from the nose on the sleeve of her coat. Her friend said nothing but Catarina knew she was resentful. Catarina had promised her peace. I have given you a gift, she kept to herself. She had heard that sniffle now for hours. She had glanced back enough times to know her black parka was glistening with snot. She heard her cough. She could hear the rustle of the sleeve in the air as it made her way to her nose and did she feel sorry? They were trapped in the infinite stillness of the woods and each other’s brutal wordlessness surrounded by barren trees and an imposing gray sky. Once blue, now darkening, the woods were once dull, inviting and now growing toothed and sharpening. It was the beginning of January, seventeen degrees and Catarina felt it.

Their breathing was labored. Their cheeks were bright pink and dotted with tiny drops of ice and both women’s skin was an alarming shade of pallid, blue like ice or crystal lake. Each woman trudged in black gear and bitterness and Cat’s endurance was waning so she knew L’s was too. Both their breath came out in synchronized huffs one after the other. In front of them lay endless groves of brown trunks dotted with sparse patches of evergreens in the horizon; a brightening to the dense forest and an indicator of distance. Green meant car. Green meant escape. Green meant salvation but they still had an interminable white crystal blanket to cross. All conversation had ceased between the two friends. You could only hear breathing. You could not hear their steps.

Catarina guessed it was about four pm. They had gotten lost, separated from the trail and if they were not out when the sun finally went down, there was no way they were going to survive. They had no food or water. They had no phones. The park was abandoned. They had only a light layer of fleece underneath their clothing and they did not dress for longevity, but comfort. They were both catching cold which would breed pneumonia. There was no shelter nearby and the two women were growing angry and confused. Nightfall would complicate their emotions which would compromise their sense of direction further. She could see it in the distance: the veiled sun, the yellow halo obscured by boundless gray. It barely shone through the clouds. They were heavy and pregnant with blizzard. It was an unforgiving winter. It had been and remained unforgiving now. The sunset they faced would turn to black without portrait. We will survive, she had lied.  She knew her friend would die. She knew that soon she would hear the twig snap and that she would run. She didn’t know what her friend do but she did know she would hear her scream. She would dart across the forest as fast as she could while her friend was ripped to pieces. She would sprint. She would sprint the whole way without looking back or without time to reflect on her reflex. She would have no time to wonder what L’’s blood attracts.

She had decided to wear a blindfold and forget the whole thing. It was agony to know and it didn’t seem fair. None of this was fair. None of this is fair.  But she did get to see the wolf. It was not a promise but a possibility, and she was grateful in that moment. Six hearts in permanent marker  underneath her black glove on her hand, she reached for her pocket to draw the other one: the seventh.

“You know, L, I keep time with my metronomic heart,” she sneered at her friend hours earlier, drawing hte second around the wrist bone in black felt tipped pen. “It’s ten am.”

  1. smiled, “Catarina…look at me”

“Yes,” she turned around to  show L all of her teeth.
 “Your full of shit.”

He was gray and white with yellow eyes. He was hiding behind a larger tree with roots that twisted into several X’s like carved figure eights bursting from the ground. Low and keen, he held a silent snarl between his teeth. A wolf restraining herself from howl is a terrifying wolf indeed and Catarina had been spotted peeking. Without making a sound, she turned her head slightly to the left. From her periphery, she saw the wolf’s friend skulking carefully and quietly on the other side of them. He was also low and snaking through the branches. Walking this clearing for the past five or six miles exposed them. It will be faster, she said. She already knew.

At least one branch had fallen and the wolf wouldn’t see it. He would step on it just as he was getting ready to pounce and she would be afforded an extra second that would propel her. She kept her eyes and head down, hand at her side still, frozen in movement, stopped from grabbing the pen. She wanted to laugh. It’s four pm, she thought. I have a metronomic heart, she thought. I’m full of shit, she thought. She inhaled and felt her pulse begin to thrum and warm her body in anticipation. She began to lift the balls of her feet. She began to clench her palms into fists with determination, her jaw with anxious habit and from her left she heard the snap. From the right, she felt the hesitation. She knew there were only two of them. She began to run.

From behind, she heard her friend yell “Where…” before she heard her scream. Before she heard two dozen wings beating above her from the nesting sparrows awoken by fright and taking off from their hidden holes, she heard the lone screech. Before she heard the victory howl, she heard the sudden scream. Before her right foot hit the Earth again, she heard the sound of two wolves colliding at a throat just missing Catarina. You are lucky. Before she heard her breath quickening keeping pace with her racing feet, her racing chest, she heard the beginning of a cry for help ripped in half by a hungry team and a voice far away repeating a story: you are lucky.  She was sprinting through the forest headed towards the green. It was 4 pm, 16 degrees and she felt it.

 

“The Woman Who Saw Her Own Death”

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