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CaseyHayward
36/United States Poet, songwriter and painter. All art is mine. Reach out with any inquiries. / / / Underground in Tisbury, MA.
Oh medium garlic grilled chicken wings, two short of a dozen. You arrive with ranch—and an extra ranch because the female bartender knows I am hungry and I am not self-conscious. I am ready for you, my petite poulets. I rip into you feral, like a starving mother possum— flesh, bone, weird little veins, gnawing and ******* Sauce on my wrists, ranch under my nails, fingers perfectly soiled in sticky perfection. This is not a meal; it is a perimeter. Men sense it. They stay back. Protected by grease and tooth and bones, I am in my bubble of tyranny. Let them fear the licking of the fingers, the ten ***** napkins piled on my plate, the hot sauce in the corner of my mouth. You, my wings—my snack, my shield my mess, my sisters. I curtsey to you and our beautiful courtship.
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Dec 28, 2025
Dec 28, 2025 at 7:54 PM UTC
Ode to Medium Garlic Wings & Ranch
It was as if her soul left her body that first night she danced. Nothing left— nothing left— she rubbed up against strangers like a wet, feral cat who wants to come in from the rain. She let her fingers glide along the veins of the twistee treats, pulsing in her palm. Picka vine, Jane— you’re the queen of the jungle— swing! Can I just wrap myself here? Twirl my tongue all the way up to your neck? Give you a love bite, a love bite, to remember me by? Look at me— Slow blinking back behind Boarded-up eyes what do you see, daddy? Up my skirt on the mirrored dance floor, soon to cream and flip These ******* inside out in a metal bathroom stall— dented walls, and something to something to- to hang onto. C’mon, baby you wanna dance?
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Dec 28, 2025
Dec 28, 2025 at 4:07 PM UTC
The dancer
Tik tok **** the clock.
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Nov 22, 2025
Nov 22, 2025 at 2:05 AM UTC
The clock
It’s the time for tears— not thoughts, not prayers, not anger tears. And then tomorrow, or tomorrow’s tomorrow, in a chord of vision, when shards of cold light pierce the clean glass, and we will be able to look out again at this new world.
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Oct 26, 2025
Oct 26, 2025 at 5:37 PM UTC
The time for tears
In my house of grey scales hides a mollusk of a woman doomed to float, lights on lights off, driven only by primitive nerves an animal body of sensation Poison to touch her loving embrace, entanglement, a stunning killer and eyeless for to see would be to recognize the Self loathing that only a predator feels. And so the rhythms Of the boundless sea push me- an eternity of cowardice toward death. Up and down, up and down up and down, up and down
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Oct 20, 2025
Oct 20, 2025 at 2:41 PM UTC
Mollusk
You’ve got a hole burned through your nose. You snorted it, mixed it, lit it, smoked it off foil. You spent it all on bag after bag— white powder, dust. Now dissolved. You couldn’t get through the day without the high— sweating, serving, mopping, cleaning, smiling, eye contact— You burned a hole in your nose. You sniff, you snort, you snore, and when you swallow it tastes like, and when I kiss you it tastes like ******* on an aspirin— chemical, bleach, poison. You send your two-year-old bags for his ***** diapers, and you buy bags to keep yourself going.
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Oct 17, 2025
Oct 17, 2025 at 7:05 PM UTC
Bags
It was cold and raining and there was a foot of water in the grave already as the coffin was lowered down. And she thought- **** this isn’t how I wanted it to go. But it just was.
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Oct 17, 2025
Oct 17, 2025 at 12:20 AM UTC
Just was
This building's Miss Something Buildings that deny her This Miss Panting Effectiveness of a new drug I couldn't, in my distrust of metaphors, Rehearse death. Spring - we're so adamant to be heard. Similar melodrama, my workplace, wishful thinking of privacy and solitude, Dissolved in water. Sympathetic, once ambitious or greedy, artists with their mental illness. I saw on the last blank page scribbling - only memories mattered: dreams.
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Oct 16, 2025
Oct 16, 2025 at 8:53 PM UTC
Miss Something
Do you know when I fell in love with the man? When I watched him swimming in the sea When I sat with him while he listened to his grandmother When I hung out with him and his sisters on the beach When I gave him space to place a stone on his mothers grave When he rode with the dog in his truck with the windows down And spooned the cat on the couch And played guitar hidden behind the tree branch the whole time. When he cut his hands on the oyster knife because he was drunk but had to pretend he wasn’t When he made me a funny Valentine’s Day card When he shingled my girlfriend’s house When he brought me coffee the way I like it When he drank the orange juice that we called the “nectar” out of the carton When he made scrambled eggs and potatoes When he hugged his dad at his wedding When he kept smoking even after I nagged him to quit And wore my deodorant and my t shirts and stole my socks When he sent me that photo of his bad sunburn in Perth When he had food poisoning and wouldn’t let anyone else see him When he wrote me a silly song on my birthday that was actually really good When we slow danced to cheesy country songs because I like to When I put him down as my emergency contact because I know no one else has got me like that- That’s when I fell in love with the man.
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Oct 5, 2025
Oct 5, 2025 at 6:34 PM UTC
The man
Life is an epic, based on a koan— we were forced to show up, we couldn’t go home. Life is absurd as the rock rolls back down, doomed to repeat, heels dug in the ground. Let go of the fidelity that says lose yourself. No other love can nourish, you have all the wealth. Admit life is absurd, but all is well. Only then are you able to break the spell of consciousness, and return to the calm ebb and flow, a soft tide under a half moon— where we were long ago. I watch my rock roll back down the hill. I threw the seeds. I tried the pills. There is nothing more worthy, there is no other way. A long life is no different than life lived in a day
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Sep 2, 2025
Sep 2, 2025 at 3:54 PM UTC
Life lived in a day