the two of them, blonde and spitfire,
hollow turquoise blue eyes in the sagebrush,
stormy and unspent
reluctant to grow up
homesick
lost in the washed-out denim skies of our prairie,
heather fields sprawled soft grey forever into the skyline,
it's a grainy stage for a 1970s play about alcoholism,
characters dressed pastel in 1980s hand-me-downs,
production with 1990s debt, the script written in the language of early 2000s anxiety.
always fixin' to do it,
planning and unplanning the thing,
learning to tie bows from stolen fishing line,
whatever we caught was the hill's high ransom
twisting the blade and choking it on its own blood.
absolve me, frilly church clothes
and squeaky-clean pearl snaps,
carried away on the wind rushing by pink ears,
running down long cool tile halls,
the whispers of hushed women at our patent leather heels,
saying something... well,
it must be nice or nothin' at all.
forgive them their ignorance
for not knowing just what they do
pushing our hands to their throats
away from each other
I am listening to you, still singing
mom's scratchy old cassette tape of the truth
playing like a gasp between last breaths:
"we are but sisters"
Nov 4, 2025
Nov 4, 2025 at 5:07 PM UTC
up to my elbows
in spoiled milk and blood.
my love oozes out through a break in the bone,
uncaught, and spills between swollen floorboards.
sorting through our silences now,
all scraps of memories, and anyway,
why would you want to keep them?
i've always hoarded your lies
in my marrow
let the grief kick hard from inside
i am happy to hurt
if it is in the service of somethin' good
tired from loving your way,
afraid of the light that cuts the smoke,
hot tears in evaporating off our cheeks
eyes, blinded in the sun.
waiting out another hard winter
only to be unsoftened by spring.
time keeps our shape like a bruise
pressed, flowers in the dark of itself,
waiting for whoever we are now,
or what we've got
mostly for the better,
though, often not.
Nov 4, 2025
Nov 4, 2025 at 2:45 PM UTC
unravel before it is too late,
stop the questions revealed here
so sad and small
the answers beg
in a hold-your-breath way.
please-
i do not want to know.
solutions to these things are stillborn, swollen with evil.
too-big-questions with no good reasons
choking themselves out on their own sorry nature.
"what is it for?"
digging around
buried ****** wrists in strange bodies
searching for a reason etched in the back
with muscle and teeth marks.
i lost track of what kind of answer would have satisfied me
don't even know what i wanted to hear
when i listen to the ancient ones
sleeping limbs in the body of the earth
they are speaking this same malediction.
powerless as a wound,
the split you hear in my voice-
cleaved neatly down the middle for your pleasure
a **** of wax weeping across my throat
sleeping in a warm blanket of blood
spread clean across the forest floor.
Oct 28, 2025
Oct 28, 2025 at 11:57 PM UTC
Dancers slip past goosebump skin,
peeling silken layers from themselves-
eyes trace the helpless edges of chiffon
swept to the floor.
Impossibly strong muscles
and soft skin blooming, slicked wet,
brilliant beneath hot-pink neon.
A forest of false eyelashes, dense and measured in inches
stories hidden behind sparkling acrylic nails-
Some experiences she folds tightly, holds extra close-
tucked in the waistband of a lacy thong,
surprising even herself
when they release all at once-
their invisible tension
quickly relieved
like snapping fingers,
she opens wide, gasping
for vanilla-scented air.
And know that she means it,
when she catches her gaze in the mirror-
a moment later-
while counting her money with those same fingers,
the ones that clutched at the bar moments ago
pulling again and again with all of her body
knowing it would not ever bend.
Something seen far away in the fog
compels us to stay in place,
stops us reaching out to grip each others bodies
inadequate, overextended
never grasping.
Could it be the evil of the burning gaze
the one that follows us across those small screens?
"That is not insane, is it, girls?"
Too earnest, asked out loud.
Do they want it too,
the validation their ****** is real?
The external heat of eyes is too familiar
bodies comfortable under throbbing bass,
reflected passion
the spotlight, mistaken for the sun.
She turns her head
at an uncomfortable angle
to see if they are even looking.
We share an uneasy beat,
aligned in strange harmony-
internal, external.
Together in this club: we eat-
this chicken, this steak,
a buffet, the flesh
hedonistic and keen-
under persuasion of the music.
We don't have to haunt each other,
these ghostly hands are ill-fated
opening and closing pocket books and Chanel bags
hunting for the roped gold chains, precious jewels
lost to us years ago.
We should try to figure out who made it this way,
stop holding each other underwater,
forcing heads below us deeper into mud,
us gasping at the murky surface,
our souls float coldly in the shade,
alone, and in misery.
We don’t want to think it's our fault,
so it probably is.
How easily we tune out the morality,
and stay horribly fascinated by it.
We let it be horrible,
let it sleep in our bed with us, decaying us.
Open to the absence of consciousness,
like it or not,
and the ideas feed us
the taste never completely foreign.
All we want is for ourselves.
Fearing, cynically
maybe we are all like this -
screaming idle curses into hollow compact mirrors,
crying children trained to be hopelessly distracted
looking up to an empty stage, lights on, eager
no saviors to be found.
Reading empty desires aloud as they are typed,
like the entries from our own useless diaries,
thinking to ourselves now, all these years later,
that there was something that we had come in here for.
if only we could recall what.
We could always commodify our worth and bide our time,
make the capitalists pay us,
lie to ourselves, to others.
Are we better off?
We could always use our bodies
as vehicles
to push
against our better natures-
just out of the grasp
of unrelenting economic insecurity.
If we have more than this,
pray we can remember it tomorrow.
Oct 28, 2025
Oct 28, 2025 at 11:01 PM UTC
sorrow, my sister, lives here
dark as any trouble, her lonely shadow grows,
skinny and tall against the armageddon skies.
western dusk toiling above
unrelenting and aflame.
we prayed all summer for a cactus rain,
only to be denied by our oldest gods.
this drought is our ache- hers and mine-
a collective burning in our shared throat,
****** by the season that will not go by
a spring that won't return,
a river bed that will always be dry,
a cursed blossom refusing to bloom,
petals closed tightly and wilting in stubborn hate.
oh, that sorrow who perches like a bird,
strange and blue,
singing a spell so sickly sweet in grief.
have you ever heard something
so much like a curse, sister?
with all the words doubled up in time,
impossible syllables
rattling out
from the thin seams
of our one-room shack.
pain, righteous anguish, gains rhythm,
the truth in her words gnashing hard
against rusty nails and broken boards,
shaking loose weakness
from these hollow man-made structures,
helpless against her torrent.
cool drips of night begin to pool
against the light of the burning sun.
howls escape from the stars-
echoes of something immortal awakened,
alive now in the last moments of a blood orange sunset,
she's hungry,
ready to roam the plains.
silicon clay dust breathes easy
through our grit and sandpaper lungs
sharpening teeth into too-big-smile fangs,
stained, strong and ugly
not-quite hidden beneath inviting softness,
parted lips of peachy innocence.
the immortal ocean bed speaks
in a slow ancient language
our bones answer.
under the moonlight, she is too close to be real
glowing white smile, white hair, translucent,
coyly creeping over the caprock,
slicing her bleached skin
into fine curves for my benefit.
sorrow, my sister,
is a blur of unidentified lights over the lonely highway.
the railroad cars grind under her iridescent glow,
heavy on their way to nowhere,
throwing hot **** sparks from big iron wheels
into our dry brush.
kindling the embers softly with a gentle breath,
the warm wind spreads a wildfire against the hills,
embracing the brush like a long-lost lover.
no water for tears,
but the burning sage does get in my eyes.
i can see the sickness like she does:
crawling, smoldering,
shaking ash from its terrible billowing body,
rising in a great pillar to eat the sun.
sorrow, my sister, is older.
she tried to warn me-
a thousand years between us,
but still the same fate:
these, our ancient bodies of dry-rotten mesquite,
sweet and flammable.
Oct 28, 2025
Oct 28, 2025 at 5:36 PM UTC
I hope that it's still snowing, so I can stand beneath the frozen sky
and ask the drifting white flakes if they remember a time
when everything was simple and no ones heart was heavy
I need to be reminded of a quieter time.
Dec 11, 2013
Dec 11, 2013 at 1:36 PM UTC
I lose myself like car keys
never where you left me
dig me out of the coat pockets
from between couch cushions
searching
somewhere in your sheets
behind the door
on the bookshelf
beneath the floorboards
I am here
under your bed with all the other things you cannot bring yourself to throw away
Dec 5, 2013
Dec 5, 2013 at 1:18 PM UTC
They say every scar tells a story
so if I run my fingers across my hips could I read all the thin white lines like braille? my skin cracks in all the places where you lived
and if I dug inside, would I only pull out splintering fragments of
a body I have burned down, just like this, a thousand times?
you always remain.
like scars stay too
Oct 28, 2013
Oct 28, 2013 at 10:25 PM UTC
you feel like blasphemy
(our love is sacred)
your lips gently whisper prayers across my skin but
the way you say my name illuminates our biblical fate
and this sin becomes easy
Here, beneath your holy weight
I am no longer afraid of what I might weather
behold, the storm of oblivion
behold, a sulfur lake engulfed in an eternity of flame
I know, only now-
that hell could not match
the heat
between your skin
and mine.
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 5:59 PM UTC
you were a too-many-words quote
scribbled in beauty
a splendid script onto my broken skin
your gritted ink bleeding through me
the stain tells everyone what it is on it's own
needs no introduction
staying permanently here with me
while you are not
They tell me it makes me look irresponsible to have it on me so plainly seen with
heart on my sleeve
broken and bleeding, still in your wolf jaws
they look, asking too-close questions with their eyes
I know how it feels, and I forgive you
love has made me a hungry thing too
Jul 20, 2013
Jul 20, 2013 at 11:00 PM UTC