Tag: spilled ink

I first named myself
Sada Black.
this was years ago,
January 2017.
actually I first named myself
Sarah Recusant, sometime
spring of 2012.
I used to meet strange men
in strange places or in my studio
apartment, linoleum flooring
covered in dust and let them
photograph me naked,
legs closed and grit
when they asked for more.
I have never been nice.
I have always been a nihilist.
I’ve always been ethnically
and age ambiguous.
I’ve always had
a propensity for lies,
or as my family
 cutely named them,
jokes.
secrets.

I do better solo.
shoplift solo.
grift solo.
wander solo.
walk.
when I began to walk the night
in heels, I began to emit
a low growl to evoke
the corner walls to talk.
when I began to tell the jokes,
 I began to show them
my letter opener first.
when I began to crack a smile,
they felt the first pinch of skin
opening.
I give an inch, you
take a mile?
when they cried out,
I began to review the rules:

1. Do not make a single sound.

 

and I lifted my skirt to
show them the right leg
with the right one to cut.

 

“Sada Black”

0

sarah,
 we are begging you
to run away from this.
throughout my life,
I’ve heard this little voice:
run.
that’s all it would say
run
and I used to think it was asking me to run
specifically
from a feeling or person
or there was a danger in my mind,
as it always happened when I daydreamed.
entombed in that kind of fanciful wave.
the intrusive thought happened
so frequently and  didn’t align
with my natural healing
which was to stare at a mirror
that’s also a lie.
my natural inclination is
to freeze, fight
then flee.

I was told that when it started
a voice that sounded like
mine would start to repeat things to
me but not to be alarmed
and
try not to repeat them out loud
as she says them.
that was the trick.
keep walking calmly and wait until you
hear run.
run.
always sounding like mine
but less scratchy from the daily
inhalation
so I can’t discern between
thoughts, preternatural omens
or the fantastic bubble I keep
my life immured inside like
quiet coffin, or

orchestra.
don’t touch that.

 

I stand up in six inch platforms
my name is Catarina Kacyrek.
jaw shut, stern, no feeling behind
his eyes. me? I’m chilling,
fresh stamped cattle on
cattle ranch.
you polish? he says in
a thick Russian accent.
third generation,
I say without tremble
may I come in?
I have to be invited.
but not only that,
I’m surrounded by two
large men  with two fillets
in mind so I am a bit
stalling.  understanding
suddenly when I hear the
meek
run and also
most men roll in packs,
and a gift:
he who stands at the place,
goes back.

but my first inclination is to
freeze,
then fight.

 

“the aliases” or “the woman who saw her own death”

0

“your end game is establishing psychic stability
 with extreme ordeals as part of your
 metamorphosis.”

my need for superfluous
fluctuations in behavior,
lifestyle and mood.
I am  God-drawn,
celibate,
obsessively
testing myself and
binding myself to
new conviction,

I am wrapping myself
in my insistent
unhinging,
and my lovers’ brides
for the way they scream your
name into the pillow.
but I am distant.
I am giant.
I am waving my hands
in the air and calling it
time.

the solution to all things
is to wait. oh, I am far,
far away and
 quiet in my cave,
becoming whatever I say
am..
becoming whatever I say.

be careful what you say.


“the magician”

0

what does the word emotionally available mean to you?
my therapist asks me. 

 

it’s nonsense, I think,
no one is ready.
 I know my problems.
have taken inventory.
taken a fourth step.
haven’t taken a drink in years.
seen this woman every two weeks
for four of them.
t’s amazing how mired in
a cloud you can be while constantly
checking yourself.
this is the cloud I live in:
of close but never ready.

“I have that effect on people,”
I accidentally say out loud.
what effect?
she asks scrupulously.

 

sometimes I just stop in the middle of things,
realize I am murmuring or gesturing
or five miles past where I need to be.
it’s happened.
my knees are weak.
i’m outside in front of a brick townhouse
with a white bunny on the window and in
light yellow letters it says
“Happy Easter!”
I have no idea what day it is and
I want to take the mask off.
no keep the mask on.
it’s dirty outside.
 I used to stick my hands
 squarely in mud and
pull up clumps to catch worms.
nothing is ever coming back.
 I have that effect on people.
“I can’t believe im gonna fucking live
through this,”I say out loud and a woman
with a chihuahua
walks the other way.
of what?
I hear her say.
what effect?

 

I  really shouldn’t lie this much
 I think to myself but I keep going,
keeping appointments,
keeping arrangements.
my thighs burn.
I don’t drink enough water.
I meet him at the corner of 12th and locust.
I keep my mask on.
I don’t extend my hand
but I turn on: a bright
bulb of sanguine excitement.

 

Hi!
I’m Ava Allinger,
the one who emailed you.
I am a nurse at Jefferson
looking for some extra disposable
scalpels.

 

I feel like I should tell my therapist
about the aliases,
and the lies but instead
I just say,

 

I dont know what I mean
and shrug.

 


“the aliases”

0

this was years ago.
the first time I told them about it.

sitting on the edge of the bay
 on a borrowed blanket,
I was vomiting up
 an Everclear Slurpee
and peeling back the bottom
of your parent’s quilt realizing
I had covered the entrance of the
ghost crab’s home.
I was embroiled in my own
deafening philosophy
about the closing of the day;
 the way it moved–
death,
like an itinerant wave
that followed me
and only me,
everywhere.
I coughed that up second,
and finally to tell you
the rituals were there to
keep me safe.

the tide crept back
and I heard you light a cigarette,
felt myself starting to drown again
and then your hand on my thigh
and then nothing at all.
pain subsides in very
miniscule amounts
of time
if  you don’t
repeat the
 story. 

(do not repeat the story)

but I’m
witnessing plane crashes
and matching the numbers to the proper
order, reorganizing mantles
and bleaching my teeth and
every inch of my house.
first, you have to feel safe.
I begin to build the glass
around me
and turning to you again, I
implore you to pick a title and
stick with it.   for me, I say:
do you like warnings or do you
like to drown?

I think at some point
you have earned the right to say
I know already because you lived it
without acquiescing to
authority so I asked
to see it first:
the river’s mouth,
even though they said
I’d never make it.
I never said I didn’t
 deserve it
just that I could outrun it
if they gave it.

“warnings”

0

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

I remind you over text
and apropos NOTHING
you make sure to emphasize
to someone that my style is
abruptly
and in all caps
that I enjoy the slam of
doors, interjections,
a hand tight around my forearm
 and learning the local
culture before intercepting about
the fine print of the law,
 how to skirt
a shadow, what a savior
secret arsenals
I present the trunk machete,
then the painted switch blade.
 I mean no harm
simply seething as I walk about
tracing panes, cracks in
paint and you hold me anyway
and in a way that I oblige;
loosely.

if I’m anything stasis
it’s anxious so
I at some point,
I have to be blindfolded,
only feeling
the way the soil holds the bones
of those we’ve learned to mourn
in private:
eternally and quiet
with an airy tightness and security
like the rosary barbs the
knuckles when it’s altar
or when its storm and I’m all fist.
the way the heavens hold the pious,
the mob holds the riot,
or the torch of arrival and
the way the ocean holds all that
falls below that deep blue
surge of sea.
a gentle immensity
lifts me in my
fits and that’s the way you
see me still;
intense and poignant,
pointed in her comments
but rather distressed about it
all so generally forgiven
for her onslaught.

 

squall hits and I
 drag you under to show
what made me.
you’re surprised by my
physicality and stature,
my apt command
of rooms
 so far
only seeing me flit
and not sticking around
to see me pull out
the skewer and demonstrating
all the ways in which a weapon
works.
and in front of
everyone like I feel most
comfortable in combat,
agitating and leading
 regimes before.
like I’ve never once
had an apprehensive
 thought.
and tall.

 

“furor”

0

the skulk,
scent,
need for slow chase.
salivation with a .
wide open stance,
arms spread,
lips like decanter,
trickling:
it is with love that I do this.
oh, you always say that.

*snaps* to wake
up.   tips a holy red,
I begin to grow inches and
 let my naturally long nails
trail the arms of strange
wool peacoats on my way to
the El or nowhere.
just circling Girard for fun.

It’s the beginning of December.
and I made rent.
I sort of grimace as
I sway the town, head to
toe in unbought clothes,
heeled boots,
hips flexed and
recently fucked.

let my hand hit the elbow
of an unsuspecting man,
unfucked, soon to
be turning around and
catching a flash of my
back, purple mock wool
and  hear the clack
of my shoes walk
away.
it is with love
they say.

“the honey trap”

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑