Tag: writers of wordpress

this was years ago.
the first time I told them about it.
sitting on the edge of the bay
on a borrowed blanket, vomiting up
an Everclear Slurpee
and peeling back the bottom
of his parent’s quilt realizing
I had covered the entrance of the
ghost crab’s home.
taken by the dirt under my thumbnail,
the coil of a plastic straw and
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
to tell him
the rituals were there to
keep me safe.

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

my head is eighteen visions a second:
someone getting their face smashed
with a brick, someone getting into
a plane, slicing the skin of my fingers,
budding inability to swallow (we’re there)
blood. blood. a girl that follows me
and only me, everywhere.
and matching the numbers to the proper
order.    reorganizing mantles.
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
cupping your baby soft chin,
(despite your fear of frozen lakes,
we advise you when the time comes–
between Australia and Alaska,
Alaska will be more safe):

do you like warnings or do you
like to drown?

“warnings”

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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,
to showeronce a week
if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth.

graze your chin, scalp,
untouched chest.
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:
costuming yourself in grin,
(you’re vulnerable)
tights and boots;
an expansive blankness
still drives your body around
to pick up soy milk for coffee.

finish something you started.

there you are.
some cooing cobra.
the chills that almost ate
me: winter.   several
in a row.
the darkness and
introspection of how
I’ve chosen to succeed,
lone and the two of swords.
thanking my institutions
for showing me how to carve
pure copper into
green or sharp to hold,
the likelihood that two things
look identical enough
to both be chosen,
that I will learn the
ways of mask
and holster,
unfrozen and
burgeoning.

there you are.

“rage” or “the fifth wave”

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only two days ago
your hands circled my throat
to toss me on the bed.
still dutiful,
merely dotted with color,
I am on my way
to pick up a bag of cutlery and dishes
for our house from the front porch
of a stranger’s
when I stop to admire the cracks
in the side of the building.
the wall is coral, faded but
garish,  still stands out.
it’s brick and

this building has no doors and
one broken window.
each time I run an errand,
these defects catch my eye
and I pay my respects in
photographs.
I’m trying to get my memory back:
      stopping at each one,
trying to remember how the boulders
haunted too      how the ocean felt
on my wasted ankles at dusk when I guzzled
vodka Big Gulps and watched the
white crabs roam the bay.
watched myself dissolve into
the bits of me and can I remember
how the sunset looked draped over both
tide and flatirons,
hold two things at once
without favor?
how it feels to lose several
small countries you claimed.


the way men have held me:
(invaded)
all claws of resplendent mortar
and cracking at the edges
even with the scrape of thumb.
I snap a picture of the broken
glass pane and the beginning of
the first layer peeling into
white; the fissure.
trace my finger
over a chip and watch
it flake onto the sidewalk.
snap a picture of
that with my boot
in the corner of the frame.
things to remember us
by: namely,

the way
things have
left me after once
holding me inside;
cracked, split,

unable to safely hold someone
inside
but repainted a bright shade
for the pleasant gazes of
unknowing passersby.

“doors (#3)”

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where are your friends?
that’s a real good question,
sir. I’m crouched in the back of the ambulance,
deluded and almost paralyzed,
swaying like i’m on a ship
knowing the possibility of fainting is near
if they don’t keep talking.
I’m asking in earnest  if they are gonna
kill me and he isn’t laughing but i do notice
the way he eyes me like I’m a
honey-dipped sweet on the long night shift–
palatable, soft,
without defense.
I’m then left in a wheelchair in the middle of
an electronic door, closing.

first I walked five blocks to get there
and he asked me four times what
skullcap was.
remember this part as it comes up again.


Im alone in the hospital
realizing you’re the snake they
warned me about and I’ve been
the well-worn carpet they walked on
to get somewhere then left
in an electronic door, closing.
male nurse pulls my shirt up
without saying a word to me
so my breasts are exposed to everyone
on the floor
as I’m answering for the seventh time
what skullcap is like
I had never said it to her
crying, six times before.
pleading.

just listen to me.
please.
it is hard to speak.

“ (and) Degradation”

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I spent years
counting the silhouette
lines of my cell
on the wall
and twirling,
perfecting a
curtsy, repeating myself to
the bricks daily. 


wear a bullseye–
sheer blouse, the outline
of the areola glinting
from their truculent marks–
tongue-tip spit and a bite.
I’m invisible in doses

           when the maiden turns mother
but before that, I’m followed.


a car the other night and
the others on foot
yelling something about my legs.
           when the mother is hungry
tiny shorts cuz it’s August.
my massage therapist placed
his dick on my hand
(again).
tiny breaths.

                   any complaint from the woman

being forced to touch a cock
while im bent over puking;
that memory always comes back
second, and so does
being fucked without
“literally any consent.”
is the way I say it to him.
drunk.
tiny ruffle in covers
passed out in his bed.

                        any affirmation that doesn’t start with yes
                                      can no be an affirmation?
                                  yes,
                                         when it affirms your rejection of men

I have persistent, swallowed panic.
stomach problems.
the words histrionic
when I show any emotion.
inward disorder and
grief, heavy like 

my dad is dead.
my brother is dead.

my house is lined with crickets, asbestos
and mold so the pets all had
tumors.   squishy walls, broken trim
and no one will touch
the pipes.
my mom doesn’t remember the time we
watched the moon dance,
or the word for channel.

he wants to know I’m not faking it.
my first memory was me
being forced to try on outfits
for some guy 

until  he patted my day bed,
bent me over.
raped me.
he waves his hand
curtly and interrupts:
that’s why you’re so sexual.
as if I have never existed
without the shadow outline
of men surrounding me,
stone, corralling
and unresponsive
like bars to a cell. 

and don’t overthink
my outfits because
sometimes I wear head
to toe sweats,
bare face,
hair freshly bladed
so there’s nothing
to grab, to hold
to bend.

“Rage”

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light the fucking candle.

stare at the mirror,
a little past it.

what card do you see?
they ask.
I see the moon.

turn it over.
it’s the moon.
they do this all day long
to prove to me the existence of God.

I have a jar of oil, bayberry, my own spit,
blank check signed, prick from my finger, dash of
rosemary, rose petal from my dad’s
funerary placement (private, just us)

and my menstrual blood
on the mantle.

“I give it all to you.”

(I’ve done this before)

take my blood,
drink it like pomegranate jui ,
get drunk on my rage.”

turn over a card:
Justice.
just to prove things to you,
princess.

I wake up the next morning
bleeding again,
a week early, moon in Leo.
pour a cup full to her.
candle lit.
to the lion’s head,
drink up, love.
it’s pertinent you take it
one bitch at a time.
Justice.

the first thing you notice about me
is my smile, wide, bright like a star
and  the second thing you notice
is the viper behind me.

the fifth one i call is Sekhmet.

“five of wands”

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January 5, 2014 and we
have arrived in
North Philadelphia.
the first thing I notice
isn’t the black plastic bags
lining the blocks or the
Auspicious Coin Laundry Service
sign boxed in blue lights
but the way you don’t
seem to look at
me and the way I seem
to blend in with the
tan upholstery of the
passenger seat
even though I am
wearing a bright red
turtleneck,
coughing, asking
if this is where we are
going to live and practicing
pronouncing
K e n s i n g t o n.

mired in the habit
of saying everything I think
aloud without
expectation.
of tapping a finger on
my thigh. of checking
time, twisting a plastic
straw in my hand and
fading.

something building
in my chest;
emergent waves
pounding at the
sternum like
irate knocks
when they want to
be sobs then
fading.

“hypothymia”

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they say I talk too much
and I’m inclined to agree.
perhaps I’ll
sew my chapped lips shut,
show them the scorpion etched
on my shoulder
first and no one
has ever seen my childhood home.

but I’m compromised
by the simple fact I think
I might be a ghost so I’m
always checking mirrors
and calling 911, waiting for
the fireman to touch my arm.
they say
“your leg is not numb, ma’am.”

but I can’t be sure so I make
him touch it again.

one trick is never tell them
anything. I like my men
to think I wait in lonely
cave: ache
and pray for them.
palms clasped and reverent,
sort of rocking like that.
real southern too.
just sort of worshiping
the idolatry of shadow.
please.
they make me repeat it:
please. and thanks
for everything.


my men remember me
incessantly and always
cut out of starry dough:
soft, head half-cocked
looking up at them
 with servitude but
sideways like I’m
about to laugh,
then me in my day skirt,
hair covered and
muttering.
candle lit or twenty seven
if I’m out of time.
devout.
pocket full of them.

what a violent question.

you’re sunburned,
gone for weeks without
inquiry and now
a wash of here:
 forehead fervid,
a humid wind clasping
the back of the choker
while your left hand lifts
my skirt.
thighs are soft,
reminiscent,
it’s the skin that brought
you back, isn’t it?
what’s that?
you say,
looking at the blue and
black ring of shadow mouth
 above my  birthmark.

it’s the way your jaw
bulges as you bite your
ocean tongue
that was just kept safe
and wet under me
before you begin to
pull the clasp rope
til the emerald center
pushes hard against  the
front of my throat
almost as if you are going to
bring the stone inside me
that proves it.
and please,

what a violent question,
love. 


“Five of Wands”

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which helps me to
instruct myself.
better not staid;
better fitted to be flitting
from corner to corner while
bossing them around but
what I tell you is truly
inconsequential.

merely I am pressure
of depth and that I believe it
so
having told you first
with conviction, I begin again
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 and
in such a way that you’re
riveted for entire minutes
by wax on the carpet
making meaning of the
sickle F shape; tracing it
with black, toasted fingers,
room wafting in the smoke
of rosemary,
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 add a promising
hopefully,
as in with a little
upward inflection.

I got a pocket full of
them and I’m banking on
that so I say it twice
with anticipation:


ojala.

1.

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consult the oracle again.wear what you want,
let these animals
control themselves
my tiny ball of citrine says
so
I put on my cat suit
and go for a walk
to catch tan
in the new big sun.

  it was a long winter
of regression, needs unmet
and anchored in self by
repression, lamps and
the length of
my ire stretched, permanent,
coming undone on your pillow
where you wept in peace
until I charged back in
costumed in tank.

I’ve blown the tea lights out;
my presence is altar.
sit naked in the eyeline of the fan and
spools of smoke from bamboo incense
crown my head.
I am showered,
manicured, my skirt is barely an inch of
fabric containing my
pubic bone or buttox
so they’re stuck to me
like sweat hot salt sticks
dripping down my skin.
I dab some tiger’s eye oil and
jasmine on my wrists,

brush their arms with
my nails, cut through centers,
stop absentmindedly to change song
and let their thighs press my thighs,
their forearms hit mine.
it’s the invitation I am waiting
for.  

there are
ambulances wailing
carrying victims of stroke
with blood rushing upward
forming an arrow,
fletching to the throat.
they feel the beat of wings
before they feel
my hands wrap their larynx
and the first thing they tell me

 you’re full of secrets.

“catcalls”

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