Tag: women who write

there you are.

Saturdays and the 1 pm alarm clock
on snooze,
the bare-faced evenings
in throw blankets;
languid, but there is still
a rabid tongue
between fits of sudden inspiration,
moved
from sheets to
cushions to sheets
to type it down,
to shower
once a week
if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth
graze your chin, scalp,
untouched thighs.
open your chapped lips to the sky,
feel the water rush your neck and
trickle down your navel
to soak your unseen toenails.
do not question anything
for those three whole seconds;
it is the closest thing to orgasm
you can manage.

it has been a tough change in seasons:
tights and boots and an expansive
blankness that still drives your body around
after work to get soy milk,
make polenta for lunch,
take out the compost,
take out the trash,
finish something you once started
when it was
skirts and cherry blossoms,
some organic laughter and a patient optimism
that seems unvisited but should be
worked out by now.
sometimes it is actually raining.
it is harder than that too:
cold and cramps and no tissues
or pads and an anniversary coming
that stings
and does not let go.
and you do hear from them
but with expectations.
you have wrapped yourself tightly
in some binding perseverations
so you constrict yourself,
restrict your errands, and bleed openly
on the carpet.
and sure, there is hunger,
but it’s quick and
you succeed in a relatively
docile surrender.
so what is there outside?
sometimes it is a blizzard.

then it’s flowers and unexpected showers
but it is day longer, sun higher,
you are not mired in the date of departure
anymore, and you forgive the monsoons.
your sensualizing emotions present themselves:
the gloss and black tips,
hips in sheer nylon,
a gentle sway.
sometimes it is unseasonably warm
and you have to hold your cardigan in your hand\
but you have managed a smile
and some sense of buoyancy
and dragged someone along
with the sleeves of
your unworn sweater.
you get lucky:
they want to take the
long way and you have a tendency to
suddenly rush things.

you are both broken
doe and the trap laid
for their arrival.

“ambush” or “8th house”

0

all day long I do mathematical equations
       they say I’m calculating.
in my head.
as I walk to the laundromat
shifting the hamper beneath me,
I think,
 that’s an understatement.

I think.

I think.
I think.
I love probability
like
what’s the likelihood I’ll see you again
believing I both convinced myself in this reality
and believe I convinced you it was true
so imbued in my delusion
but then God came to my defense
and I knew that as I watched
some things begin to sprout?
or the analysis like
how much money will I  make
if I do this appt and at what cost
to me?
and statistically speaking,
we have to look at patterns,
not just equations but
trends so then here comes
the past.

I turn the headphones up.

you gave me a bouquet of
weeds as I was drinking
my third cup of coffee.
you had picked them from
our backyard when I wasn’t
looking.
you were smiling with teeth;
big, and I thought I loved
 you.

I had gone upstairs to
change into a sundress
and tore something near my spine,
suddenly, like a rip inside.
I mustered up enough breath
to walk down the stairs,
back to you,
where you had been standing with the weeds,
where you had been telling jokes,
where you had been laughing and I said:
 it feels like I pinched a nerve
and am having trouble breathing.
what should I do?

you had to be somewhere
soon, I knew.
you looked up the staircase
 on your way out
the front door and tossed a
I don’t believe you
over the living room floor.
someone else drove me to
the doctor and that doctor
confirmed it,
 prescribed me Flexeril
 for the pain and wrote me
a note explaining to my internship
why I wouldn’t be in that day.
I laid in bed, waiting for the
drugs to subside.

you came home
and attempted to justify
why you always felt
deceived by me.
I lay numb,
relieved of feeling anything as you recited
everything I’d ever done
that bothered you.
you weren’t sorry,
it’s Thursday and I feel
nothing for you
now.

I drop a pair of panties
on the sidewalk
on the way out and
someone calls me from
the corner.
I turn my headphones up

I feel nothing for you now
but history repeats itself.

“Thursday”

0

She put her makeup on slowly. She wanted it to be correct. Never quite flawless, she was more adept at wearing graceful missteps to humanize herself in public. Tonight, she moved slowly. She paid attention to the brow bone, the jaw line, her full lips, all of her best features.  She stopped applying the powder to stare. The blush she chose was dark; a shimmering burgundy that ran across her face and cheekbones in the shape of a bruise– untidy but organic. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear examining the soft, honey waves falling over her shoulders first as they moved with her fingers, with the light twist of her neck, and then again as they settled over her clavicle. 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 but wet her lips with her tongue instead. 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 unyielding thirst to pick 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. They were constant, persistent  and biting. Sometimes they were mean. You will never make it. It was distracting. They were being seized by something else (you will never make it); something distant, either imaginary or future she could never tell, but something tugging at her sleeve. Look behind you. She stopped applying the mascara to reach 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 out loud 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 underneath 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. As she fawned over herself inside, pretending he was next to her complimenting her as she coyly licked the cherry gloss from her lips, she let him praise the way her eyes grew from small and doting to big and black and full of infirmity. She let him kiss her cheek and she closed her eyes to feel it, his light kiss that held no real urgency. She felt his lips part near the corner of her mouth. She could feel his tongue poke out a little as she turned to meet him before she heard a car backfire a few blocks over. Goosebumps trickled up both arms. He was gone and she was gone too.  She opened her eyes to see the pencil was now in the drain in a pool of tiny drops of water. In her spine, her bone grove of smoke and scream and sudden life, she felt it. She stared at the pencil, now damp, not ruined but damaged like everything she owned. He was not with her in the bathroom. He was not with her. To clear her throat, her desert dry throat that desperately needed attention, she let out a tiny cough. She came back to life.

 “My name is Catarina Kacurek,” she began, facing the mirror.”May I come in?”

 She held it there, in her reflection, her dirty blonde and olive complexion not unlike her original self but twisted, distorted slightly like the way it feels when you finally see yourself without a mirror. You’ve been looking at yourself backwards. She was looking at herself angled her whole life; angled smirk, angled eyebrow lift, angled posture. Manicured and yearning and looking more nubile lately, she began wetting her lips again with her tongue. Her lips tasted like plastic fruit and she laughed aloud to see her smile lines so she could once again hide them when the time was right. She laughed aloud and the car backfired again but she expected it now.  Her spine grew. She let herself feel the backfire of every other thing in the distance.

0

when it came to me
you said I was all
  muscled positivity
as if I didn’t hang myself once before;
as if I didn’t try to tell you

how cavernous a grin is,
or anything at all.
even though you are never sure I won’t
find that perfect bedsheet knot
or not or a razor
 or a kitchen knife
or a drunk night on the freeway and I’m
headfirst in the cement mixer
but I made it out of that
in jail but alive and I am
always palms clasped and grateful.
you say   you pray
with FERVOR  as I finger the locket,
my brother’s ashes clasped
around my throat
and I hold onto
 that same little lie
about choice.

I let go of the wild lavender
 sprouting from your toes through
the hints of splattered paint.
there’s a meadow in your abdomen
coaxing foxes from their
holes    your knees knock mine,
sudden sting         close and sharp
  the way memory sits on your skull
then pulled back
 how you held me
far away sometimes;
making wind happen
blowing kisses from the pines.
the bath is on, I’m cold.
you always say
I’m cold.
I beckon to the side:
you and I are from the same
arctic sky.
help me in so I feel
the frost of your fingertips
trace me;

my broken back to you now.
my nails are brown tipped and filthy
from digging myself out of my ancestral
grave and I’m spattered in the ,
sweat from a hard night’s day,
walking alleys, stalking shadows
and you’re truly unremarkable
 these days save
the mosaic of carpenter’s paint,
 some gray cement
garden: no flora, no fauna,
and even God told me to pause  
and rest on my previous laurels
before I get carried away.
but i’m a martyr for this,
God,
I crave repercussion

I become a
yawning, clanking watering can
 spritzing your open lips,
dolling up your stolid ground
to birth your stories:
pollen murals out of micro gestures,
extinguished longing that suddenly reignites and
I’m grabbing cattails from the gales to
 comb out the tangles of your childhood
    tell me about your father
fistfuls of mud    planting seeds in the
 tiny cracks around your chest that my own
sharp-toothed grief left when you
muttered the first
no  and I stepped a few
years back.
freedom will teach you how
to stay in all new ways.

there is no difference
between love and liberation
and some were born saints,
you say as you help me
in the mugwort bath,
the smell of rose and geranium
circling the tile.
I plucked the petals and dropped them
one by one for aesthetic.
not free of indulgence, but
patient   your fingers make
stems in the water
and I guess I am waiting
for something.

“the swell”

0

She walked slowly towards the house. A transfer of guilt must be achieved, she recited in her head. She was moving her fingers, clutching at the bottom of the jacket. The straw lost somewhere, she kept moving her fingers to mimic cradling it. A transfer of guilt must be achieved. What was the rest?

It was the second polar vortex in four years to hit the city this hard. Pounds of air stood packed around her so she felt boxed every step.  She couldn’t see. Snow fell all around her and because the wind whipped her face with each violent gale, she was also forced to look down. Forced to crawl upright, she could only feel her way through: the knife-life breezes, the sting right below her eyes with every movement, every touch of sleet against her skin a slow-drawn slap. Every snowflake bruised her; it’s touch burrowed hard beneath her cheekbones and lingered.  She was red faced and trudging.  Her eyes were brimming with tears that wouldn’t leave the bottom of her lids. It is freezing. They were frozen there. A transfer of guilt must be achieved.

Her eyelashes were coated in snow and she could hardly make out the building in front of her. Being drawn to the light in the window, she floated like a black moth to the driveway. As the girl stepped closer, she could see there were candles, maybe a soft lamp, burning in the upstairs window. Everything else was dusky and had the stale feel of abandonment. The house was coated an ashen gray color by owner or night, tall, protruding but with no bright awning or curtains or mailbox or car. No song wafting through the howl of the storm. There was no sense of welcome but it was her only option. Let it be a party. Let it be jovial and light inside. You can deceive yourself into believing anything just so you’ll participate.
 About thirty feet from the door, her body was suddenly struck with sensation: panic. This is respite. Stillness creates panic. She stood still and let a shiver take her; let something pass through her. The future was here and it was portentous. She grabbed the sapphire amulet around her neck. God, give me strength. Pausing at the top of the yard, she allowed her breath to come out slowly, deliberately and with planning. What do I look like? She was draped in all black but blue in her flesh; pallid and chattering. She was a ghost in a cloak. Blue like ice. Blue like river. Blue like the ash-filled locket. Give me warmth. Her breath was slow and deliberate and planned. The girl was pacing herself in stillness instead of step.

Before continuing, she allowed her body to stay there, frozen from foresight and weather, in a posture of complete surrender. She was upright and floating allowing the wind to carry her up the short driveway to the door. There was no effort to shovel. The driveway was packed with snow too. It had taken her several steps to get from car to driveway and several more to get from driveway to knob. The door itself was plain beige without number or knocker.  There was nothing spectacular here. Looking around once more to confirm there was no one else on the block, she held the locket with her bare fingers and set her teeth together to quiet them. She was a shadow in the doorway. .My breath is slow and deliberate. Her hand balled in a fist, she began to raise her other arm as she fingered the silver chain.  I am breath. I am breath.  She tightened her fist. B r e a t h e. She was muttering. I am safe and protected in white light. She exhaled. God, give me grace. She began knocking loudly, feeling her jaw clench and her respiration stop, the last of her crystallizing in air.

0

one day I had a dream
you bit the head off of a blue jay
 and spit it back into her nest.
when I asked why you said:
To prove you will never leave me.

here I  am,
on command about to run
across the canyon and I
laugh real loud in my
skin tight
dress:
the one cut real low in the back
in the shape
of an obtuse
triangle;
jarring contrast to my
scared-straight spine
but I still
slouch.
I twist the straw into crooked pieces
and tell myself things:
make sure they know
you are having
a real good time,
show your teeth,
hearty laugh
with belly and mouth and your
lips are stretched to the limits like your
social apathy.
show your full moon eyes
and hide.
hold your tonic like a wand;
fall asleep
inside of yourself
in the middle of
everything and wait for
the night to break.

later, he will show
you photographs
to prove you were
there.
if you are lucky,
he notices the story
dripping from your
eyes, the door
opening, the splash
of scarlet on your tights
as you replace each page,
as you become the
walking lake flooding
the wake that held
you, and he becomes
the witness that love
is a quivering knife.

“tributaries”

0

sparkling explosion of
cellophane and champagne nails
tickle birthmarks down a
back.
fallen glitter eyeshadow:
roving crescent moons
dangling off a throat
from everywhere a lip hit
and pieces of gold dust
rolled off my nose.

bare mattress,
a girl licking a cheek and a
bare tear
sort of near.
hearts like lava
fill the blue gray cracks.
ghost stories and berries in bed,
mouth filled with laughs.
I’m in an afghan
sinking my teeth into a shoulder,
straddled with bare feet.
and what else?

I’m somewhere else.

11.

0

I believe in altar.

The opposite of destruction
isn’t creation; it is
stability, longevity,
ground.
It is mired in the Earth.
It is steadfast.
It is wings
with purpose.
I had insisted on burning every
bridge, every baby,
every body that came from a fit
of fervent execution.

Play Oya,
the moon dared.
I hoisted myself on the stake and
displayed my plotted empire in pieces
dancing to the flicker of my
ardent fire parade.
Previously, my life had
been of lingering malignance,
but it had no fangs to suck
the bleak from my veins.
I turned black
and sidelong
with every corner.
Now, I am
moving in giant
fit of blaze:

I am the forest catching wind.
I am the scream of the first tree falling.
I am the silence of the spark’s eventual dim,
the mess in between;
the burst of orange, the hara kiri,
the gray cloud of obscurity
where nothing can breathe,
where nothing can leave without
serious damage.
I am the stampede that warns you.
Everything that tried to stay in the comfort of
my pine bosom;
 gone,
lay slain at my feet.

And me,
incendiary and flying,
rising from the ash in a
crown of bone
and teeth.

“the stakes”

0

apodyopsis inflicted
and I can’t lick it
so I imagine you unfold
like paper origami
one more time.

finger your jeans and
you spill open.
I lick your cheek and
feel you bite the side of
your mouth in halt and
can you remember
the times you fanged
your way through bra hooks
 and brunches, never-ending coffee
 and one-liners?
something the other ones taught you.
stiff congratulations or how are you and
that’s wonderful
followed by
nine months of inimical
silence.
I move quietly     quickly
distort you into something
palpable.

my hands move
clumsily.
I keep you in amulet
in my pocket and I queeze you when I am
nervous.

you are licked,

smoothed with assurance,
rubbed.

you’re the botched swan
I frame proudly;
me, robed in black flowers
and loaded rifle walking
out of mid-February
with you tucked in the crook
of my arm.
you become loosely creased
 looseleaf reduced to a crumple
floating to the floor
without altar,
a harmonic little
m o r e
in my palm
on your way
to the tile
where I gently lay
you    leave you
altered without prayers
once more.

leave you twisted
in want,
deformed.

“warning forms”

0

kiss her fingers and say:
you are a jungle.

I stretch,
yawn,
and out falls a
knuckle.

What does love feel like?
she asks.
I turn,
cough,

and out falls another.
kiss flowered mouth through teeth
and say:
like a wet machete
ripping through the jungle

“camouflage”

0

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