Tag: writers

With a natural lethargy, she put her makeup on slowly elongating the whole process by several minutes. She wasn’t used to wearing it. Moving her neck like a snake upward from left to right, like she was wrapping it around a trunk or leg, she admired the stretch first, then the movement itself; hypnotic and quiet and binding. She stopped applying the powder to stare. Motionless, she admired herself head on. The blush she chose was dark; a shimmering burgundy that ran across her face and cheekbones in the shape of a bruise. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear examining the soft waves falling over her shoulders first as they moved, and then again as they settled. 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.  She wet her lips with her tongue. 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 her thirst, and picked 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. It was distracting. They were being seized by something else; something distant, either imaginary or future she could never tell, but something tugging at her sleeve. Look behind you. She reached 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 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 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. What the fuck is this all for?


 As she fawned herself, praising the way her eyes grew from small and doting to big and black and full of infirmity, she heard a car backfire somewhere in the distance. She placed the pencil on the sink and waited. Goosebumps trickled up both arms. In her spine, her bone grove of smoke and scream and sudden life, she felt it.


“My name is Catarina Kacurek. May I come in?” she practiced again, feeling the backfire of other every other thing.

0

well, they always start
 the same way:
in winter, it always starts in
winter, that’s when I am my weakest.
I am usually unsettled,
raving at the window,
the frost,
the cracks in my joints announcing
themselves in arthritic temper.
   you’re so young
I’m so young at this.

inexplicably manic
during the darkest months,
 at times I know I should
be sleeping so I am reaching
for anything that reaches
to help me get through the
night.

in truth, I am a nihilist.
men didn’t teach me that
nothing ever matters and
nothing is ever coming back.
I watch my days get dragged away by tides
that become encroaching swells
and think to myself,
well, it always starts
with a storm.

“well”

0

i’ve been out to lunch since we got here.
it’s another change in seasons;
spring and everyone is out to
brunch celebrating
 maternal lessons,

begotten lies, or if they’re more
 triumphant; forgotten spite.
spring hats,
spring sandals,
spring grief,
sometimes things just go away
like missing pieces:
backs of earrings in the hotel room
at your youngest cousin’s wedding,
origami florets you sprinkled at your mother’s ankles
when you were just learning how to fix
 the pancakes to give appreciation;
diplomas, expired passports, birth certificates,
reiki and doula certifications,
everything a lover gave you,
hand me downs, or cute owl
 pajama sets that were xmas gifts
callously discarded in the great
“I saw a bed bug” throw
everything the fuck away fest.
      I have nothing left.
anything that reminds you of your
lineage: scrapbooks and family
heirlooms, voicemails from your dead
brother pleading for you to
come back, the ashes swinging from
your neck,

they don’t really mean much.
you’re here and you can prove it if they ask
with this giant gaping hole in the center of
everything
that you at last had the guts to crack;
the diamond she stole,
all winter blooms,
the time you had left,
grand ideas slipping out of your ears like ripples of
eureka!
plopping on your floor for the ants to devour
before they ever land.
you should have tried harder.

because love is boundless I can’t possess it;
it consumes me with its humility,
strangles like history,
swallows like tidal waves of
unyielding southern humidity,
and  I can’t escape it.
feelings for the flesh that steal me are so
 palpable, like ghosts, I’m moaning
exorcism! and synonyms for
 hurry up.
the climax is the body’s clever parapraxis,
and love?
I want this thing gone

so I can be empty with my tea
 and good ideas
shopping with the other women.
I’ll slice open those ants and rip my
thoughts back out,
write down our fused imaginings,
send you the book stuffed with their dead little toes
and threatening locks of my dead ashy hair.
I’m vanishing inside of myself again.
I knit a sweater full of verses I’ve never heard,
wrap it tightly for the winter.
wear the world like vapor,
my fortune cookie says
and something adds:

my dear girl, you are so lonely
 you have created all of this
        (the world just falls from my shoulders)
you are mourning events,
people, places & things that never existed
      (cut it open, pull it out)
wipe those ruby red eyes
     and take a look around
            (before it disintegrates)
but my house is a burning building
so I better bounce.

I had one fawn over me
but he fell in the giant yawn
 I stomped in the yard
and like my bright wishes,
he’s also passing me by
carrying something I don’t get
because it’s real and it’s found
he is holding it and I am
     eyes shut tight   catarina
thinking about it
again when something grabs  
my arm.

“how to forget everything day 67”

0

we are sharing visions.

during our forced intermission,
I became a lantern and
my own crucifixion was
paused to grow my
sparkling spine sharp like
sudden beams of light shining
on your morning sex and
I walked forward slaughtering
everything hidden with a
 wave of my hand, focused
eyes    incantation, scribe
and text      I having been reborn with bone
 like wand, am luring rooks
for guns and ;
turning mice to men
with a flash of tongue
and then turning men to wolves
to find him.

the queen is fat now
gorging herself with army;
the war you begged for
and are bound to get
 is here on time.
I gather every friend I know
and share my plans
for combat enticing each one
 with a different reward.
this is the queen you
asked for:
acerbic communist,
generous with her
violence, but you are
Persephone’s
final futile hours
picking berries in the
garden,

sniffing tulips absentmindedly,
          (nevermind the sunset)
plucking lilies from the water,
watching the ripples form circles
around your fingertips
and then you’re
screaming at your flowers
being swallowed by the ground
  switch places
an earthworm bit her and said
as Pallas emerged with reminders,
a sello from the water,
floral crown and
speaking in her native tongue:
ways to blow direction,
ways to conjure storms.
oh, here it is again,
that little lie about choice
she goes with her knees
falling through the earth,
prayer hands.

but she goes and keeps
her head above that dirt,
what’s a curse to those who
know the power
of reverse?

well, we are sharing visions.

“the magician reversed”

0

I believe in wormwood,
dried root,
my brother’s ashes
in a silver heart,
a ceramic urn,
a chant, a poem.
datura when the time
is right.

sometimes I do ceremony,
sometimes I just let things pass.
we do that for others:
carry our grief quietly,
we bury things deep
 within ourselves.
but sometimes in a fit,
 I spill over,
tell you everything.
you said
I like to swim
so I am braised with razor;,
 become a carnation lake
at your feet and
  you said rain,
I like gardens.
so I condensed and
waited to show off my new arms
lined in fresh alyssum.
my cycle: I always meet them in
winter where my only
light is moon.
my flowers blossom
under the chilled night:
drip a dark nectar and
I am thirsty and
you already know,
I believe in
altar.

I believe in overflowing
chalice.  you believe in holding
space for growl,
holding me with
distance.
you watch me lay the
dill in bowl, line the bed
with tourmaline.
run the bath with
chamomile and yarrow.
  I am full of tincture now.
I can move like a jaguar:
slow and black and
hungry.
I am hard to see that way.
you said
 I am game.

you’ve been watching
 jaguars move,
you’ve been memorizing motion,
you said
I’ll be around
and I drape myself in constellation
so you can better see me,
storm so you can better feel
me and I traipse across the forest
floor waiting to be found.    
my tonsils growing
chelicerae,
my rib cage growing legs,
my bottom becoming fat
with thread and
I know what you like
and I know that
you are game.

you are writhing
game in tiny, tiny
snowflake threads
hung far above the
ground.
I said let’s switch places
and I know you said
my name.  I become the woods
encircling your howl and
you become the kicking,
screaming, young and
drowned.

in winter,
it is long and dark
and hard to contain my
grief.    I
am gorged with nectar
and hidden by
the wind.
sometimes we do that for
others: hide our
spines.
you watch me prey;
sip the drip of
the effulgent crescent
bulb I worship
and become the
nightmare you fear.
you become the shivering
deer, caught fly,
gutted bunny on my
jaw.
I become the bath
of blood.
you were right:
we’re the same.
rewind to the night you asked
if I would ever kill someone
if I knew I could get away with
it.  the butterfly effect
demands a death. 

we become the woods
in dream and you become
my game. 

“datura moon”

0

“Everything has happened.”

–Sylvia Plath

I need it gone,
please, it can’t stay,

I am speaking out loud without
realizing      suddenly snap back to present
in the middle of a dark prayer,
in the middle of washing the dishes
contemplating when and where
and how to do it;
just jubilant yesterday that is what
disease does, it festers
and pokes you when you’re
good, when you have a taste of
joy on your tongue and you’re
ready to sing and  the next thing I know
I’m saying:
I’m going to kill myself soon.
if not today, tomorrow
and I look at my cats
and I make the motions of crying
and remember the end of the poem
I read: think, on the brink of
your death, I am asking you
to think.

it always strikes during my domesticity.
whenever I am practicing chores,
I feel it.
I put the straw down to use my hands
and I feel it:
the interminable prison of head,
of daydream, of coma
that I laugh about in public
but it’s twisting me
in crooked shapes
and I have held the ineffable,
or rather it held me.
an arm around my stomach
near a window,
my mind was blank.

I suffer from chronic suicidal ideation
and I haven’t cried in years,
I begin to the invisible audience.
I’m starting to pace,
lie down plan ways to face
it or fashion the rope
or grab the blade or jump
the bridge or anything at all
to speed up the ending and
I asked if I could please get help
without telling anyone this time
and then  I choked on a cherry pit
causing a panic attack causing a
light cessation of breathing.
you don’t know you value yourself
until you are faced with two options:
let it or fight.
but I called 911
and the EMT took me to the crisis center
when I told them I can’t quite
tell the difference between
 fantasy and reality.

the way men think I lie,
they’re right.
I never tell them how many
plans I’ve drawn for suicide.
today, I dropped the straw,
started crying.
and you don’t believe anything I say,
but there is no time to coddle you.
everything has happened.
the thirteenth draft was suicide,
but I didn’t know it yet
 and people really do try.
God won’t let me.
 feelings subside.
the way some watched me
suffer, I forgave it all.
the way I sobbed
in the hospital.
the way they said:
it’s not clean, you’re right.
the way the pit lodged.
the way I had been picturing the woman
 grinding the cherry
seeds to make cyanide earlier
in the afternoon.
the way I was seeking adjectives
for distant unconditional love.
the way I told someone over dinner
it’s called “The Woman Who
Saw Her Own Death.”
the way endings can change
without warning.
the way I quit my job.
the way it’s so unlinear.
the way God’s sweeping
fingers cradle you in darkness
and something says:

yes, that was the way it was
then, but now we begin
again.
how quickly I grabbed
the phone in terror
implies commitment to staying
here; there is no one
here to comfort
but I hold that
tight at night
like flesh.

12.

 

 

 

0

when I was a kid
my dad played this game:
he would ball his fists and
 stick his arms in front
of us

start turning them over;
one over the other in a circular
motion like a machine; the way
gears turn round
and round and he would repeat
the phrase
perpetual motion.
we would start to laugh;  
those secret games
only family gets.

he would say go ahead, Sarah,
you can’t stop it;
it’s perpetual motion,
go ahead, go ahead
in his thick New Jersey accent;
Wild Irish Rose on his breath,
and a pack of Merits nearby
one burning in the ashtray.
my brother pinching or
poking me to distract me.
I was so small.
I would reach for his arms but
he used his might and
kept turning them like
he was churning something.
the dog was usually howling
and I would be overcome by a fit
of giggling listening to Matt’s
sarcastic comments, watch the smoke
drift from the table and my
mom somewhere near smiling
and he was right:
I couldn’t stop it.
I was  too young
and weak.
he would just roll his arms,
his hands clenched and say
perpetual motion
perpetual motion
sarah sarah it’s perpetual
motion.
I would scream and
jump on top of his forearms
to prove him wrong
but everyone agreed that was cheating.

it was the emptiness
I couldn’t take;
the space from the post to
my side and the absence of
words between that.
and also the unbridled
mood swings.
the way no one saw me
or heard me or checked
in.
  I would spend hours
pacing the small corridor, the
tiny living room and saying things
out loud to myself:
I can make it
it’s fine
I can make it here
or I would turn it up
as loud as it would go and
vacillate between the pacing and
jumping up and down, twisting
a necklace or straw
 in my hand
and I would picture only one thing:

breakfast or dinner
with a man   it wasn’t
the man, it was the nourishment
I craved, the nutrition
I lacked and the double security
of food and laughter.
it always took place over a meal.
I reached for it every time I felt
anxious, every time I had a
major transition–the savior returned;
the reverie of an unconditional
ear, someone placing their hand on
the small of my back,
handing me water,
congratulating me on completing
a piece and asking me
the question.
I rarely pictured the warmth
in sex   that wasn’t what
I lacked.   it was the question I wanted.
he always held space for
the long version.
taking a bite with my fork,
it was cooked or take out
or restaurant, it didn’t matter.
it was warm and filling
and good.

 he would say
tell me again
and I would begin the story
where it began:
January 5, 2014,
I arrived in
Kensington to awake
from the middle of a
perpetual daydream.
no, the thing
about your brother
“Sarah,” she paused, getting my attention again.
“You were going to tell me more
about your brother,”
my therapist repeated.
it’s Thursday, I’m between worlds
again and we are finally
opening it. 

“synchronicity”

0

you want to ask about inspiration
without asking what’s become of
the ones before you
and I want to get to the bottom
of it.

imagine me
walking
in perfect rhythm
with the moon:
industrial moods unsteady like
my block; a concrete cell lined with
glock teeth,
warehouses lined with
broken windows thirsting like plants
for a peek of the sun
and I’m bouncing with the
tremors of the train I  barely caught
while I pause to fix my brow, bun
lips and the
other ones;
mud on my boots,
snow on my tongue,
those white whispers
like tiny quivers of attrition
eating me alive.
slurp the finality of requited love.
my voracious stomach is
prowling to the vibration of
your brawn, breaking chest
opening in some quiet place
to let me,
your hungry little ghost,
back in and then
right back out.

the lines of my veins
are blue-red and
flushed
with other people’s
last thoughts,
last heads on pillows,
shared stories, tea, beds,
and the repeated
click
of a door unabashedly
slamming shut
in my face instead
of an invitation.
my spasmodic heart
hurriedly smooths
the creases in her butcher skirt.

you want to know and I can’t
anymore:
the fastest way to get
between two points
 is a straight lie but
forgive me and try to
imagine me alive,
walking in perfect rhythm
to the cracks I made
 in us searching for
some light.

9.

0

(Boulder, Colorado, Fall 2013)

where I am laying currently as this
is happening
 my chest is a bright, blue door
standing slightly ajar.

I felt like I was floating:
not on a lake or an ocean,
or a stream or my beloved mountain creek but
just lying on top of a big puddle of water in the air
 that existed for no explicable reason, much like
 all the grief  that took me by the tendrils
 and dipped me
 in the center of the canyon-deep flood that took place
 in the core of a six year old girl
who grew up to be giant and made of tinted glass
 and a grand total of
no one.

I looked up to see a white flower billowing
 above and for once in my life,
I appreciated it’s grace and splendor choosing
 to pass by it without disturbance.
I wanted to leave it right where it was;
an illusion of life and growth and flying flora in the sky.
when she touched my heart, I felt a green electrical charge
 shoot through my spine
 and then,
I became a swaddled baby rocking
 on a river of God.

it was the vision that mattered and
some parts I had forgotten, I don’t
write everything down:
 I was standing under the moon near a lake and some trees
and miles and miles of stars–he and I both.
suddenly a large white bird fell from the sky, swooped fast to stand and
then lay like it’s prey, floundering on solid sand
just praying to die.  
I looked at life through those bird’s eyes
 and saw a family before me:
a husband, a woman and child: all me and mine.
I felt myself age; withering skin that turned into tiny wells
 of wisdom cut deep in my cheeks,
brows and crown of gray storms, and lips that
 kissed only dusty picture frames and hard candy,
 and saw myself mourn my own passing.
I was clothed in all white with lilies in my hair
 before I sank to the bottom of a lake.
everything was blue.
everything was silent.
everything was moving away from me.
 I used to be a sound;
a loud wailing of a door
slamming shut with every one of
my yelps
until I fell back into myself,
until I remembered this vision
and it’s bright, blue current of
wild and divine help:

the bird suddenly came
back to life and flew away
and out came dozens of
blue birds.

“reiki” or “death reversed”
and

“The Woman Who Saw Her Own Death”

Part 1:

2

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑