Tag: witchcraft

when you find me
I am sitting on the dirt
twisting  a mask
in my fingers
and you could not catch
what I said only that it
was muttered,
repeated and there is something
not quite vapid about me,
but lost and then
filled with something
else. the first thing I say to you
is it’s torrential.
I expect you to know what to say
back. 

are my hands changing colors?
 I examine them myself,
fingers spread, string
around index, mouth cover
dangling.
I expect you to know what
to say back. 

“Carey”

0

A neighbor once caught me staring at the license plates on my block.  I was five years old.  We lived in a court and I was allowed to play in the court by myself so long as I didn’t wander off too far anywhere else which I did often but I had grown used to crouching, hopping fences and often could slip in and out to Lea’s house undetected. I don’t know the circumstances of why I was outside but I do remember it was overcast. I do remember I had a light jacket on, probably a shade of pink. I am sure my hair was uncombed. I am sure my bangs felt too long. I am sure that I was trying to rid myself of this hindrance even so young, tossing it away with my hand constantly or tying it back in a ponytail, patting the back of my head when it was sopping from the heat wishing I could peel it off. When it was cooler, I left it alone. Left it down and I am sure I was wearing pink corduroy pants with brown spots in the center of the knees and they were permanent. I was sure I had been tucking my chin to my neck and twisting the pine needle with both hands and crouching, my knees strong then. My white sneakers scuffed. The tips of my shoelaces drawn brown with mud and I am sure I didn’t hear her approach me from behind. I am sure she heard me muttering. 

I had been going up the driveway of each neighbor’s house and sitting behind the car, in front of the license plate. She had seen me from her window.  I was looking closely at the license plate, that is all she could see. I was looking at each piece of information. VA for state tags. To be clear it was VA, like VAH. Like the sound it made. Vah. I would say it.  The letters in front of the numbers. Some would be doubled. Some in doubles. That felt special, like they were chosen to be doubles. Like some plates required scrutiny. This one had a green tag in the top left corner which was usual but also did not have repeating numbers. XGH-2879. It would have sounded better, I am saying out loud, XGH-2873 when I hear her.

“Honey?”

 

I was five and soft and supple and ingenue and so much deeper than I am now. She said what are you doing? from behind me which scared me. I was tiny and crouched there with my most favorite one to hold; the withered needle. I am sure she heard me. 

 I said I’m trying to read the code.

 

0

my paranoia is up
which helps me to
instruct myself better,
instructing them but
what I tell you is inconsequential.
merely I am pressure of depth
and that I believe it so,
having told you first
with conviction, I begin
to frame it.

legs crossed on the carpet,
hands out in imposition.
the wood mantle lit
and rearranged, objects
of sentimentality removed
so any backhand can’t
sweep it.
it’s important that my personal items
are kept away from the circle,
and maybe once I didn’t believe
but falling victim to your
own enchantment, you begin
to care about which stones
are set and things like that.
hands out:

first, you will be looking
up to notice
the sky dark but glittering
with stars
so the whole place
around you is lit up
and there are friends nearby. 

I say this directly to the
picture jasper draped in the
thread of my necklace,
the glyph of Lilith.
and hopefully,
as in with a little
upward inflection.

1.

0

I can go forever:
have been, have gone
without, truly starved.
no period of separation
or isolation
has scurried me along.
 suffering long episodes of
 devotion, then a swift
disaffiliation
from the practice,
whatever bondage I wear,
I wear loosely.
even the devil’s arms
don’t fit me
and I was molded intricately
and set to last,
a stone sarcophagus to contain her.
a product of thinking too much
 is obsession. 

 it is best if
 you have a moving target
or several
 so you don’t fixate on one tree
 for too long;
 inevitably,
 the squirrel running up
or the dog running beside
 will shake you.
today it is two robins
dancing in a pool of dust.
my eyes are adjusting to the
brightness of the bush behind
them, and the basketball hoop glinting
past that to the grass as they
kick up dirt.
 I think of all the signs I missed
in life. how many times I thought
the word God then a robin
would meet me,
or to be so uncertain of something
to have an opposum walk out
and stop you in your tracks.
it’s the perseverative ring
it is pertinent,
I am both feared
and adored.

i’m sitting on a park bench
 trying to prove I can do this
 having done this before.
 sitting for as long as I can
and I am also
watching the construction
men in front of my house.
from this angle, I can see them.
not wanting to walk by the  hole
or the giant crane. or exchange a
hello,
not wanting to be around them,
move past them again.
see how long I can do this.
watch them.
sit. I get up to move to a different
bench.
see how long I can wait for.
I am doing this for practice.
even if I have to get up and move
to another bench.
sit and move to another bench.
how long can I do it.

I am doing this for practice.
a park outside of my house
this whole
time.
grass,
unmuzzled terriers,
the nods and my inquisition
face wrapped in mask
so my mouth can rest a more
natural slack-jawed state
as I watch the two labradors
lick each other and give
the owner a wave.
I’ve always tucked my neck in
turtlenecks and coats.

I turn and look at the trucks
pulling forward. two large
open-bed ones for the concrete they
are ripping up. my entire
street unearthed
to relay pipes and
they are lining the inside with wooden
planks and I know they are
working through lunch
because I saw one
 grab their cooler and walk towards
my place and yesterday
they worked through lunch too.
not leaving. from seven am,
the chainsaw woke me,
to three when they bid their
toodle–oos to each other
and quite bellowing.
one even singing on and off
all day. 
I said on Tuesday
to the new moon and my altar,
an ace:
 I want this done as fast
as possible.

It is thursday.
they have not taken a lunch
since and
I’m gonna sit here and watch
them.

“the bench”

0

your house was yellow.

my house was blue and
a ten by ten box;
a cage and me trapped,
torn between watching them
pack up their stuff
from their own pact to self
and me, dripping virulence,
pushing them out.
we needed a spark,
I pounced and

shortly after,
 the railing tumbled on my
sprinting ankles,
the basement rattled and the
floorboards dropped
filling the place with the kind of emptiness
that is so dense
 it smothers.
smoke smells a lot like
 ticking minutes
if we scented time the way we
spray each other.
I hear a bark.
hope the turtle remembers how to
duck and cover.
the cat’s sure got it.

remember me as a black-winged fury
hovering over your bed at night because
 there will be nothing left by dawn
except some burning blue
cedar wood and a cheap comb
that found its way buried in the dirt.
the photo albums gone,
dusty cookbooks charred,
vanished remote controls stay hidden
and the asbestos and fiberglass ceilings
imploded despite our fear that was the
thing that would kill us.
I am left with a cancer
that gnaws through the joints
like packs of rats chewing through cables
to take the attic back.
and I need this.

I really miss your hands on me
and the convivial cluster of caterpillars
that swallowed the bark
the day in the orchard
when you held me in sullen incubation
before the devastation of the forest,
before I made way for us,
the start,
the parting and somewhere
an empty crib stays unfurnished.
someone starts an engine.
the varnish is melting and so am I.
         God gave you a chance and
              an unfinished smile.
a smoke alarm malfunctions
mocking your reluctance
to just grin and bear it,
to just open up your arms
and catch me when I jump;

                but first here comes the fish tank

catch me with all the fit I threw.
we all look like burnt books
blowing in the breeze
 and now, I too,
am wafting with the exhumed memories.
before my legs even hit the dew,
you watch me dwindle to a million floating pieces
in the cradle of tar black trees.

 

you see the contract ascertained a certain
ephemeral appeal
and I’m too thirsty to complain
about anything but the heat.
hold your breath and wait
for some other current to take me.

                    baby

there are no exits.

 

“chrysalis”

1

you can shake your fist at any
foaming coast but her
break remains unscathed,
her scorn in
waves,
her calm in
 tides,
wet snarls pacified in
moon-swept stages
depending on the time of month,
the climate or the
stage.

you are barefoot:
some pedestrian gesture of
 worship.
shrine.
avoiding the shells and
ghost crabs that litter the beach
at gloaming.
you’re wild and roaming
 again seeking to slice wrists
with guilt and urgency,
pretension,
steal the scissors from his girlfriend’s
pocket.
                    what’s it like to be a hypnotist?
take a seat.
notice your veins rock,
glisten with munition.

life’s a seething blade
and you wear yours deep in your lungs.
the ways you have learned to assuage
are more permanent in placement
if you face it when you
say it.
write it on the page.
have them sing it with
vexation.
have them say it out loud and
curse themselves.
you watched your hands become tributes
to iniquity so you ask your feet
to become your fingers
now,
nothing from your mouth
going forward.

watch your toes curl in the sand
before you start wading.
you are practicing the dying art of
self-restraint.
you are practicing
prayer, overdo
amends.
you are seeking a quiet rest
inside of  yourself.
you are seeking the
 sudden wreck
that laid you.

 

I.

0

 

I read a note out loud to myself:
everything that is really hard
is going to save your life
and a blackbird landed on the branch
outside my living room
window.
still, their eyes small and
sharp
waiting to dive,
waiting for the buzz of cicadas
to start again.

that reminds me,
I say in my head,
i’m emaciating.
I take a sip of water.
starved from the looking
without touching and
I want too much
has many meanings.
I read the words aloud again
and pour myself a thimble
of almonds.

i begin to charm him,
untie a ribbon from her
rib cage and kneel,
tie his wrists together
and lick his inner thigh.
someone asks
and then?

and then you become the
braced masochist
and I become
the looming hit.

“maelstrom”

0

my notepad is open
and my hand is smudged
with ink, the lists.
the things I’m naming:

ways to feel unsettled in transition,
states, or,
I mean the way they wave
as you drive,
and the way the birds landed
on the trees outside my stained-
glass window.
all the while thinking people
should just understand
like they had your history
with them and
feelings.

my mom once hung a “feelings’ chart
on my door
so I could circle the face that
most resembled mine.
was it envy driving this
appetite? me,
always shaking in some corner,
full bladder,
crumbs on my lips,
dictating, taking,
moving everyone to room
to game.

 

I don’t talk much
sometimes.
actually sometimes I
let my mind molder
like an untended peach,
just growing brown and soft,
unused, inedible,
 unexamined any further.
put everything I own in trashbags
and toss it out.
   it’s called a cleanse.
I do this every year.

but in malice, the brambles
that i’m tied to,
dauntlessness prevails,
action, cardinal,
bitter.
they always say i’m bitter.
give me coffee,
watch me run in circles,
flash my tongue.
what it’s like to rule like queen:
favors coming at you and people
trembling in their seats,
the gluttony, the theft,
the power
What do I want?
and at your leisure.

my leisure:
the growth between getting
and having,
if there is truth that people never
change, I guess I am stuck
 somewhere on a trail
walking.

“the long walk”

0

I come over wearing
 everything I own:

a pack that stalks
and stays together in lunge,
a freshly oil-stoned
suit of knives and
the bled-dry opaline
home that I nest in,
my cozy coronation robe:
my clanking vest that
announces my arrival to
your home.

it is me
wreathed in
all my men’s
bones.

“Hecate”

0

under my therapist’s guidance,
I switch chairs to talk
to my inner predator.
 now, now,
   listen to the guilt,
   it’s talking,
I want to find out more about
her; what to call her,
where she hides sometimes
before I feel her seep into
each step.

I decided to have some boundaries
with the universe;
lined the edges of my bed with
geranium and lilac threads,
lined the sills with limonium,
wove my weave with daisy.    
my tub dripped nightly:
 an altar of salt and
lavender sage.
watched my toes glide to the surface
 by a dozen votives.
tease the cat
with little splashes at her nose.
forget everything.
my entire winter
was littered with
shards of celestite
and low violin.
 I could see the sky when I wanted
from my dining room table
or on a brisk walk
to pick up oranges and Earl Gray
for the morning.
rediscovered medicine in prayer
 and herb and
 open mourning for my karmic retribution,
suddenly rectified,
suddenly deserved.
           (do you deserve the good?)

amethyst in my sock drawer and jasper
near the lamp, I held
one shout in my throat

in an effort to continue to
subjugate myself.

protect myself from myself.
protect myself from herself.

but it’s so tiring;
that anorexic
bloodlust,
insatiable mouth,
the doe eyes and
planned outfits,
the scent so close
you begin to change shape
without notice.

you begin to grow a
mandible heart.

you begin to drool.
you begin to chomp
a little at their
wrists as they hand you
something.
 I decided to get rid of my light
and aventurine,
I calmly tell her
the following week.
I tell her:

I plan to spend the year
fat; replete in web
and feast.

“gestalt”

1

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