writers – Page 5

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”

August 29, 2018 0

I should walk out
big as Venus,
arms uncrossed,
if I was ever honest.

my arms are wrapped
in a purple peacoat and
my hair is curled with an iron to
add ebullience to errands.
suddenly gather every strand with
self importance in
tiny felt bundles.
that week I had even painted my nails a
bright color; a conversation starter,
but I’m
truly as vapid as possible.
remain as sunny as possible.
insipid and careful,
rip it all out later
privately
as if beauty even matters
when I’m on the floor in tangles
trying to untangle
words I can’t commit to;
making the motions of crying stopping
to cough politely
to no one in the room.

I listen to AM radio today.
grasp the magnitude of crooners’ legacies,
of death reverberating against each window,
understand how most lives are wasted shirking
the embarrassment of a simple
I love you
when we could have said nothing,
just hugged more or looked at
each other. .
but I put distance between myself
and those I run to.

i’ve been dying drying to drown
myself again
in three consecutive hours of
smuggled moonshine and
a quick spin around the block,
no seatbelt,
knees up and the airbag on
climbing that ladder to the sun,
project my inner warmth all over pedestrians
in middling dust
and they’ll say

oo I feel like I was gently touched.

or locked in a necklace that bruises my clavicle when
I’m not careful
and I suddenly have to
run from it all.
I want to be fetal in silver and sapphire
grabbing his charred pinky to hold on,
hugging his hard heart and I still can’t call home
with any urgency and there are
people always seeking me.

storm clouds form on the side-view,
settle and condense.
the glass is dotted with a thousand tiny reflections
of survivor’s guilt
anthropomorphized.
this decade feels like elastic chaos,
one overwrought vignette that stretches
continentally and I can’t
get a break and the light rain
from a gray cloud
can’t flood this whole thing.
did God intend to rip this from my insides
this way? I hurdle myself
headfirst into a mirror
in an effort to memorialize
fresh heart all over the closest floor
without a towel or a
polite giggle
or a posed frown.
no monologue or saccharine coat
or any real motive
except it was true:
i wanted teeth too.

lit a cigarette and choked.
take another drag,
i’m composed.
watch the smoke cut designs into the ceiling.
you liked this don’t forget the feeling
of the first inhale;
the first time you rolled the stick
between your fingers
your thumb smelled like
the kitchen window.

the first time you saw your brother
smoke behind the garage
and he sneered;
you had spray painted your name into it first.
before you learned to paint the worms,
he taught you how to shake the can.
he taught you how to tag the shed.
he taught you how to lie to dad
about the missing colors.
he taught you how to
curl up into a ball and drift
back into your insides
whenever you hear the rattle
like baby’s teeth
being tossed left to right
inside the
bottle.

“anniversary”

August 29, 2018 5

keys,
a shuffle,
my half smile directed at a
windowsill and a forced
dulcet pause to
wrap a throw around bare shoulders,
strapless bra i’m mussed enough
to form new creases,
stretch my tousled jaw
into a long yawn.

I can see your long trail of spit
glisten lightly like snow,
still,
from elbow to the scar
above my wrist when I was
really hitting the wine.
I wipe it on the pillowcase.
my lips are sand dry,
knuckles crack a bit when they reach and
my toes are curled for a different reason
this time, I am emptied.
your shadow’s growing larger:
an elongated feeling that stretched and stretched
and stopped right before
it got to mine,
bit back,
ran.
toss a look over brawn shoulder.
i’m no feast, you know,
but you wait like March hunger
for ful lspring, so close
yet still light blizzard,
still heavy rain.
you want that
hot spot to hit the ground
but snow lingers you want
that drizzle then moist
and green, some sunflowers,
a tomato plant and bees
offer their honey from the bottoms of their
black bellies and you take all you can get.
sniff a tulip,
feast on cool breezes of
me
when I’ll have it.

I cough or sneeze
and no make no motion to ever
be haunted;
to ever be eaten,
to ever grow something from the arm
you licked that used to hold little butter knives
threateningly
towards him, towards me,
us hold scissors and
think about it,
hold shot glasses to not;
where I used to force myself to hug my brother
at Christmas
and nights, nowadays
any holiday,
I etch his name everywhere it fits;
where you watched the sun
shadowplay with branches on my olive skin
and you mistook them for
fingers to grab,
hold,
swallow;
where I stretched myself,
a bored tiger and lifted my once
impaled bones, my once river bones,
(wet for it every time)
up, held my hand up,
nails long and dry,
held your gaze,
waved without change in
expression and
your back is to the door.

i’m sitting up in a fetal position.
my profile is reflected in the
dusty whites of your eyes.
I have developed a new shade:
smudged green eyeliner and
the rest some kind of
lovely barren.

“beds”

August 28, 2018 0

the day I arrived in the hotel
in the financial district
to meet a Russian photographer
who promised me a night in an expensive
suite and a binding contract
that has been violated over time
without my awareness,
my nails were painted
blue to match my
bruised knees.

I thought that was
cute.

“how I made rent”

August 28, 2018 0

slugs salted on the patio,
cicada shells clinging to the moldering
legs of my childhood picnic bench,
hundreds of unclaimed Easter eggs
rotting under rusty swing sets,
a mouse writhing on a glue trap
that was just SHOVED
in a garbage bag
and me
just staring–
just
freshly out of love.

my wings tip towards
the sun and I’m triumphant
in my emptiness,
my patient nihilism I
chew when the void becomes
the only measurable thing
in my life I don’t

notice the oncoming car.
grasshopper never notices
the magnifying glass
or pesticide gun.
dog with the mange and glaucoma
blithely to cage.
drunk blindly to rage
then car
then grave.
snail to salt,
cricket to web,
temple to gun
and you say
what I never notice is
us.

“love”

August 28, 2018 2

the kind that takes whole
neighborhoods
hostage and

leaves the dismayed
picking through the remains
to find their charred family albums
while their babies are off
staring at ash clouds
that block the sun
holding an empty leash
and at such a
young age

finally understanding
accidents, permanence,
their environment’s
severity and no exits.
you always remind them
there are no exits.

“grief”

August 28, 2018 0

last words
hang in the air
like a drunk ellipsis
that doesn’t know how to
let go.

you’re famished: learn to
feed yourself first
eat the savage sadness
you drive with;
your third overdrawn
valediction between you and someone
you never really knew.
swallow your pride,
swallow your words,
eat his fucking heart out.
watch it all nest,
watch it nuzzle in your silk,
flutter in your lining,
incubate and bake
into a thousand tiny worms
squeezing from the casing,
a thousand black balloon
butterflies
are bursting from your lips
and gliding through ice
gusts of wind.

watch them hover,
watch them expand, watch them
land on the cheeks
of all the boys you kissed
hello.
watch them
*pop*
into a thousand
uninvited phrases.
no
run down and cake their
faces like mud tears,
turn to stone,
stay pressed there.
watch them carefully
from your handmade stage.
you can feel the prickle,
their hair stand on end
from here.

watch your men,
girl.
they are starting to talk,
shiver,
watch you with
a closing distance .

“a thousand salutations”

August 28, 2018 0

you’ve been coming home

mint chapstick and
tobacco pieces stuck to your lips from
those poorly rolled cigarettes.
extra bus fare.
bottom shelf whiskey and
natural laughter
spilling from your breath.
I keep finding

little post-it notes
shoved into your pockets
pasted with someone else’s playlists;
some other guy’s suggestions
on how to lift your spirits
when the depression gnaws your
spindles
like a cancer and
you’re too tired to
undress yourself.
I’m still here

following you under the covers,
taking keys from your hand,
leaving fresh water on the
nightstand.
gnawing your earlobes
with some panic and
whispering at your hair
you’re manic, dear
pinning you down with some
well timed stanzas.

“the boyfriend”

August 28, 2018 0

you seem like you have a developed a
patient practice
memorizing our delicate contours;

first your fingers,
then your eyes,
trace gummy worm spines taste it
women’s arched backs
soft wet flesh,
mouthful of yes
near the bed frame
as they fall into you,
as they open knees
as they open attachment,
as they open
gash and you

stiffen you watch
with now closed lesions
using us like drinking fountains
and we bleed irresponsibly
but remember
some mouth full of
indifference,
an old word or two
you threw like a heavy blanket ,
a band-aid
no
at their scapula and
they straighten back.
they stay in bed as you
are (finished) a leashed laceration,
tied to some place we can’t guess
with sleeves and scripts and
ambivalent attachment, chin tilted
towards street, and
a swallow that was almost a word but
you’re on one bad laconic streak
so you just sniff the air and
don’t offer them water.

they are holding space
on the floor,
Indian style,
in case you need warmth.
you have a coat so you
politely decline,
hand them their hat,
put on your shirt,
call them a ride.
bare feet, gather their socks,
tilted backs to check for rogue earrings,
grab the scarf from the doorknob
near the door frame,
remembering the gentle no
moving backs,
wrapped in sweaters, pea coat shields
as they walk
quickly, quietly
(forgive the boot heel)
a clacking no
away from you
that isn’t felt
yet.

years have gone by and
what lovely new spines:
unbending,
unending bone,
untended memories of
cool depredation,
once spread like legs
now inflexible.
once swaying effortlessly
like reeds in your lake,
now planted firmly in the dry
not yet.
spines that are walking,
sauntering,
coming back for an earring they forgot.
machete sacrums.
nerves like fighters
marinating in indignity,
blood lust,
no.
so many years have gone
by and these spines are

razor sharp from your
diamond stone tongue,
growing and
ready to write
you.

“backbones”

August 27, 2018 0

for some of us,
freedom was a legend;
a cage of smudged windows
and insatiable longing,
a crippled twirl pace
around the apartment
with a wand in hand,
repetitive crescendo in head
or the sudden broken glass
on the porch
the

knot of fervent caterpillars
sliding through my guts and
prematurely spilling out onto the floor,
dissolving into pools of blood
like little girls ripped in pieces
in the midst of a tornado’s whirl
when they should have hid in the cellar,
waited patiently,
incubated like their wild brothers
anchoring in the moisture of a soft,
hemorrhaging sarcophagus
before they soar;
destroy their cotton packages
and hatch into thin air.
when the day is finally warm
and facing them, they
tear through the tether
unbridled in
unimpeded exodus
to transform into grand ideas
and take off without interruption
like the little girl’s
scorn; now grown,
an envoy of acrimony
and the blue-black tones of
home.

and I pause here to ask myself
before I commit to the
flight,:
what does metamorphosis
feel like? my skin
tearing at the thread of
each inside, each wound
and stretching wide
for me to see, wide
enough to case the sky
and black inside turned
outside; now
black each wing of
bone and
vine.

August 27, 2018 0