Tag: women who write

I have a fear of swallowing pills
sometimes, and sometime I am fine
but sometimes I stick my zinc
inside my water
and wait for it to dissolve.
dress the glass with
lemon slices,
don’t cough at the medicine taste.
daily I take:
*I put my thumb up to count*

b12, nasal spray, rose hips (for the vitamin c),
vitamin c packets (for the vitamin C),
liquid chlorophyll for the lungs, elderberry for
the immunity, and aloe vera for the reflux.
(that’s one way I almost choked).
plus I dab in mugwort for the dreams
and movement of any sluggish blood,
coltsfoot for the throat, mullein for the
allergies, cohosh when I’m cramping
up or need a baby out.
nettles for some iron.
marshmallow root to coat my
irreparably dehydrated throat.
 chamomile at night to rest
my wanton soul from leaping
out her skin.

honestly, I’m just trying not to go outside
 or touch my face.
wash my hands.
bathe the day in isopropyl alcohol
and bergamot.
I ended up increasing my walks
to twice a day.
I don’t touch a single thing.
honestly. also
I almost choked to death five
times so this kind of means not a
thing to me.
plus I’m a nihilist.
my jaw clenched shut twice while eating
and a mouthful lodged itself.
a cherry pit got stuck in bolus,
two pills got caught in esophagus
and once I swallowed a safety pin
after placing it in a shot glass I then
used for vodka.
I somehow managed to cough and pull
it out.
oh and once I am pretty sure I got
alcohol poisoning.
oh and once I ran headfirst into
a cement mixer with my car
and broke my sternum and now
have a traumatic brain injury,
once I fell down some stairs,
once I got sucked in by a wave
and almost drowned,
once I leapt off my balcony after being
locked out and my landlord even
walked by me.
I waved.
could have told her but
I had a cat I was hiding.
we weren’t allowed to have cats.
I waited til she went inside the other building,
she was showing a couple around.
I took a breath, jumped  and
 barely missed the pole
that was poking out of the ground
right below my apartment.
 it was about five feet high.

honestly, I’m just trying not to go outside
or touch my face,
i’m not thinking about anything.
just sort of
twitching uncontrollably
which is why you maybe think
I’m more frenetic or stressed than
I am.
oh and I’m not allowed to eat
turmeric,
*I smile to show him my white teeth*
so I had to buy a capsule.

sometimes I’m scared to take that one too.
but no, I’m not any  more anxious
than before. what did you ask
me? Im sorry. 

“OCD” or “the iteration series”

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“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”

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this is fresh.
the way I put on blush
and got my bangs cut,
properly at a place just
to show up once,
just to take my scarf back
and without a hug.


like the last word
someone said
          I was hoping we could talk about this
or me finishing packing up
anything belonging to my
ex; an entire bookshelf he left
which leads me to a shoebox
to stuff the card my new
ex-thing sent.

find old photographs
of myself unsure in blue hoodie
set to the mountains
at sunset like I couldn’t
imagine not being there.
it was such a casual stance
to permanence I carried.
the last time I look at a place.
the impassable space between
 states, abysmal and
the plane ride to my
brother’s coma.
it all comes back.
this is fresh.


this is the last time I’ve ever
seen or heard from someone.
my intrepid cool affect
pushing edges further back
to margin;
my rehearsed gait.
the way I asked how are you
three times with a nervous gesture,
without listening or waiting
for response and then
a sudden turn away.

I spent all my time at the beach
as a child
watching waves take things away.
I’d throw sticks in there,
seaweed, sometimes bottle caps.
draw lines in the sand with my toes.
throw hermit crabs back.
the day the sky was black
 and cut with
lightning, swollen
with compulsion,
a tropical storm touched the
ocean and on instinct,
 it swallowed itself.
I was there at the edge.
watching waves curl up to
my chest and
my aunt screamed,
came to grab me as I touched the
shore with my hands and
carried me up to the house.
Sarah, why did you do that?
the whole way up,
I was crying, screaming
bout a flip flop
drifting in the current,
begging her to go back.
I remember it to this day.
it had white soles and  yellow and vinyl
ribbon tied into a bow
at the toe.
I was trying to go back
into the water to get it.
you can’t tell anything
about a statue
except it’s resting form:
cool

but if you ever saw the contents of
my purse: the twisted straws,
the clutter, lists of
things to get or hold,
the collections,
you would see
 that peevish child
taunting the ocean’s
grip and dashing,
longing for her
endless swaddle,
but also longing for
everything that ever
existed too.

 invincible in
execution only if
carried everywhere.
people don’t change,
I think, and having second thoughts
throw the dinosaur
you mailed me away.

the birthday card he gave me.
the set of text exchanges.
people don’t change.
I empty the bin,
make space for lipstick.

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I’m obsessed with transition.
the form it takes
in movement and
thrown against a wall;
stalled in its pounce;
sudden landing
 without intent.
the motion to freeze,
liquefy.
reabsorbed and to
precipitate or the moment
before, to reform.

and after all that patience
and miles of crouch
through the city,
admiring the syringe tops
and mortar and filling
the jacket lining
with bills and your ardor
growing big and bright
and pulling things towards you
like the moon
to be suddenly seized
by your habits again.

 

when I walked into the room
I saw you again.
you offered to show me upstairs
right away, ushering me with
your hand on my lower back
and I heard your voice
behind me, concerned:
   watch your step

it’s just one breath,
that’s all it takes.

 

“the men” or “the loop”

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suffering incursion will
change you. there are a thousand ways
to die, my head begins again.
nail in eye.
car to body.
man with fist.
I begin to count
and begin to twist the straw
in an effort to curb the brain
from going deeper, usually
the fixation begins from the most
likely place.
it was the end of February,
2014 and I lived in a rowhome
on the cusp of Port Richmond
and Kensington and knew two things:
cars don’t stop for anything here,
and neither do men.

I begin to count and organize and also
step into a dark long reverie
of a place that is warm and
seeking me, but I also begin to
count and create myth from fingers.
begin to list the ways I’ve watched the
Earth take: my aunt run over multiple
times, murdered. my eight year old cousin
died from a brain anuerysm. my uncle
shot his face off in his father’s
old house. my aunt drank her body to death.

you see I have to stop and enter
the beach seeking me.
you won’t make it otherwise
as I turn the headphones up,
just miss a truck but I can
hear the ATVS revving.
the sign says walk
but my aunt was once run over
repeatedly.

it’s the coldest winter in years,
they tell me after meetings,
and it’s not an easy time to make friends.

“doors #2”

1

     “I have no future plans,”
I began calmly.

 I am arms outstretched
walking nowhere but with
ardency so
I am labeled,
whimsical and manic,
a troubled woman
not to marry and
like a wound up
fairy, the character that
keeps the music box

spinning.
until it’s boring:
the repetition,
the posing,
the pink smile and
matching slippers
leaping from her
gold coiled post
sprinkling glitter,
growing nerves and
ankles that bend flat
to walk to run to
crawl

 people like me because
 I have
 no plans,
am honest about it,
resplendent teeth when
writing sonnets to the men
and a sense of fury when
reflecting on affairs.
big,
have wings that carry weapons.    I
hear in a distance
   someone repeat it
I use intimidation as a tactic
to seize opportunity
well,
I am blessed with delusive
lips and
 I also use
 black magic.

“seven of cups”

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shredded letters I tried using
as fertilizer,
grow something from our
sudden valediction:
calendula,

 

jasmine to lighten the darker parts
 of my libations;
the ones that tease my hair and 
take me    pull me under the bath
water gently
as I kick and try not to
scream.
violets, honeywort, scent of honeysuckle wafting
from the roach holes,

mugwort to get my blood moving again.
Easter lilies the cats shouldn’t touch so I
hang them from the rafters
and let the leaves fall brown
 one by one;
let the paws scatter the ashes of that,
mice, my previous
laurels.

cheery dandelions burst from
the cracks in the linoleum and
I keep a bromeliad at the doorway
to protect me with her spikes;
self-effacing, straight and strong unlike the
hard, twisted ways I grow to be.
orchids to wilt in too much sunlight when I’m
doting myself to death,
 a bouquet of roses to give my daughter
 when she becomes moss
in someone else’s garden,
feral evocation           an arboretum
started at the ankle. or
a whole cherry tree,

rooted and I can chop
it down to gorge.
something sweet to chomp
while I’m choking down
the acidic no,
extra pillow space.
my place: curtains drawn,
devoid of moons.
my place:
curtains open,
enveloped in
the new full sun.
my place,
giant cobweb stuck with
stem and black succor.

I prepare the dried lemon balm
in the mason jar,
two cups of hot water,
watch the window blanket itself in white flakes
of anesthesia,
embrace the change in seasons
openly without any phone calls,
any text, any hexed
postcard,
or really,
much incident at all
considering my history.

“perennial”

 

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carried with her
a weapon: her keys in hand,
a disarming speech pattern
and no reason to suspect
her about anything.

I never tell a lie,
she said
leading me to
someone else’s house.

 


(how do you get away with that?)


I just never finish the story,
she said and I
hung there like a
Christmas ornament
glistening in her iris.

 

“How guys save me in their phone #6”

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

“the web”

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preoccupied with two men
but not against my trespasses.

my name is Hecate.

came with two friends but ignored
the male.

my name is Hecate.

intently staring straight
but hawk-like periphery,
I know because she brushed my arm
when I waltzed past and cut in between them
but with precision.
like she was waiting.

my name is Hecate.

had a dream about her.
had a dream about her every night
this year?
she slinked into the party
dressed like a rubber cat,
snapped her fingers and said:

my name is Hecate,
repeat after me.

“3.”

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