what is it that harms you most and is insidious?
my persistent altruism
cloaked in gold,
I am
walked on like a golden
road.
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they’ll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she’ll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it’s a poultice.
You have an eye, it’s an image.
My boy, it’s your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
–The applicant, Sylvia plath
“What is in your heart? You glow.”
–May Sarton
“To live in this world you must be able to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones
knowing your own life depends on it;
and when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”
–Mary Oliver
but to you there’s no difference between
decimation and the resolve so you’re
palms out begging for it
and here comes the reaper
wearing your blood.
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.
“the magician”
“Consider your own setting foot
in the heart’s desire:
you might not be this happy again.
Look at it this way,
as if it were real,
as if you were singing to the household saint
who grew tired of waiting and sang to himself
til the whole house was certain
and singing again.”
From The Inspector of Miracles in a “Life Without Speaking” by Mary Reufle
rafters lit with strobe lights,
smoke lines,
broken paneled reflections of
thirty years of bottled insights,
throttled insides.
the air is laced with metallic smiles,
a camaraderie that’s uninviting
and sporadic flickers
of someone else’s lighter.
I rock in the center absentmindedly.
I have no business stopping by.
you watch me with
staggered silence and
constantly,
smile wide and big and
sudden.
I’m impacted in seconds,
sides of me are split,
flowing as I stand
idle.
your smirk some
blunted rifle.
you watch me mask my panic
with ten plus years of
a bawling inner child,
unmanageable reflexes
that end in stifled violence,
milky looks and a muted
predatory hunger.
I am wearing
my best calf impression:
slow,
doe-eyed and anxious.
blue tights, black heeled boots that
scuff the floor as I
wander as I daydream in public;
rub a soft elbow,
sip a virgin seltzer tonic with
cherries and some other
light garnish.
stay as close to God as possible
watch you with marrow armor and
calculated patience and I am a spinning
blue black swirl of approachable
sainthood.
twirl somewhere nearby and deign to give you
open eyes for at least
twenty seconds at a time.
you crack a joke and
my laugh is deep,
loud,
brays right through you
like a swaying knife.
you asked for it.
“first dances”
The train was fifteen minutes
late and I was
one month
and counting.
“the accident”
you tell me your preferences
with a bit of a clenched fist
and I know you are fighting
some primal scream that turns you into
the thing that beats the submission
into me, licks me clean
and that is
fine;
I’ve been around.
I’ve dated men
plenty of times:
saved their leftovers,
moved their crossword puzzles, watch,
socks from the floor,
ignored their predacious attacks on my
girlfriends.
ignored their violation of
contract re: respect and space
and “I’m too drunk to sleep
with you.”
ignored their wandering eyes,
wandering hands,
wandering notions of pre
consent when I am now too drunk
to stand.
I’m proud to say I’ve adjusted
to many morose habits before.
in fact,
my newest craze is
self-cannibalism:
find the trauma and puncture it,
bleed onto my palms and
taste it; the way it felt
to be used like that and years later
the aftertaste swallow
another old neg or two,
a curse word, a punch directed at the wall,
a public critique of an outfit or body part
or everything at once.
a light strangle, a light
choke in the sheets;
a little sexual coercion to get me roped and
in heat.
(I’m ready for this)
that means you were tired but wanted it
sometimes the body is replete
with blockages and I just
feast on past rapes
until I’m plump,
obese with past places
that rocked me gently to sleep
I was tired but wanted it
like a noose,
but worn tastefully.
that means privately and quiet
ass swamped with little taps
at crowded parties,
“honey, smile!” and “where you going, whore?”
hips full with sudden caresses on
the subway, at the office, at the party,
after school, and other places too;
my fingers bursting with strangers’ hands
that grabbed mine in the bathroom
when I was sick and he
assumed a slumped girl over a toilet
wanted to touch him, wanted to
prove something could rise
from her grip.
lungs heavy with little moans at the
wrong time, little “nos” they just can’t
hear over their own gasps,
over the bed creak,
over me slowly falling asleep
underneath them.
(that means I wanted it)
my sacral remembers every single score
of every man that touched me while I was
peacefully sleeping in my inebriation,
that means deserved
and every man that grabbed me on the subway car
and every thirteen year old boy that rubbed me
as a five year old girl
and every man that watched me hang myself
first
before he would either remove his dick to get
the law involved
baby, here are my words, they are the law
or believe me at all.
I’ve dined on my own tongue;
loyal and quaking
flush with recollection and
shaking prologues for
so long,
even a yawn at the wrong time
causes her to shrink
in ignominious retreat.
honestly, it might be fun to have a little help
disappearing completely
no, no, you sit, I’ll stand, I’ve taken up too much space anyhow
and
if we both get started
there may be nothing left of me
by dawn to hold onto
or photograph or
fuck,
follow with your car,
tell me what you think about my style:
my gritted smile,
ass, boobs, hips, and face.
put me in my place:
print those pictures and
exploit me,
deny my needs,
deny my history.
whistle slap gaslight,
intimidate in alleyways when I’m trying to
get home and you’re trying to feel
giant, or when it gets going–
mind the rope there
ignore.
with all the kinks possible,
wouldn’t that still be something
kind of new for you,
boy?
“you up?”
kitten ears and painted whiskers
tumble down my block in rows
rehearsed
in leotards and black lace gloves.
precocious those high pitched
y o w l s floats through open porches.
TV taught them how to meow
for Kit Kats Snickers Almond Joys
male applause.
one bends over to tie her shoe
and seduce the nearest father;
he eyes the crevice peeking through her
black tights.
she wants attention from her own father:
a photograph or upward twirl,
burning torch,
purr in his lap while he strokes her hair
without fetish
or just acknowledgment that she is the prettiest
girl dressed up as space cat,
those others are unoriginal, just regular
cats, he says I love yours best
and pats her on her head
and there is no offense taken.
she will grow up to be even smaller
than she supposed:
silent enduring still,
not awake in her own power,
her own body
like a stillborn tiger:
expelled with a tear
coated in the blood of her mother’s
screams as no one prepared her for the
slow cooked torture, ecstasy
that followed expelling something
parasitic and omniscient,
a future rival.
she lands on the floor
in a sealed protective pod,
fetal for always and
wrapped in excretion,
the thing no one wanted
like sewage water
without even a congratulations! bouquet
or a lotus to symbolize completion.
we aren’t worthy of those feline endowments
thrust upon us when we are playing
mole carcass on the doormat
aborted from our burrowed holes
for something more vociferous
to grab onto and finish,
our kinship, the lions.
we are nothing like our ancestors.
our virile mothers–
who know nothing of preening,
who care nothing for tail feathers,
they take what they want,
they don’t grovel at their fathers’ feet.
they honor the slaughter,
the one they started
before the harvest and pay homage
to the sky for the water provided
before they stuff themselves
with vision.
we lack vision.
we just paint our nails black,
and dress like witches,
talk shit;
start shit for derision.
and we keep turning to our men
for forgiveness when we are wayward
or won’t marry them
or stand up when they
crush our necks and they
say the rope is coming next.
we should be
stuffing our faces with the meat they provided,
learning fillet knives,
learning to skin hides,
smiling like shovels and
burying them.
“Halloween”
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