At dawn, her unripe berries glint
A bluish milky white—
Pale ova, pure in their infancy;
The lustrous pearls nest in nooks
Between several sprigged fingers
And sit patiently ‘round her crown,
Clustering at her clavicle;
And her hardy skin
Seeps rich with olfactory bliss—sweet
Sweat of gin, balsamic breath
Of damp, green wood.
She stretches at each fingertip,
Yawning, quietly nursing her young;
She bleeds fertility, silently fruiting,
Flowing maternal certainties.
Her round children suckle preordination
And grow and grow.
Each recoils from chill, dry air, nestles deeply
Into its mother’s folds.
It is winter again, and they
Are white as snow.
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 1:49 PM UTC
it made you feel awful—
the contagion very carefully got,
letting the slump in again
and in, and again,
deeper and deeper than ever before,
shaking, trembling, mouth
shut over a sudden darkness
like a token—a dry
communion tablet.
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 1:46 PM UTC
it may all be a false alarm,
but there was a stirring—
something born, very faintly
warmed by simplicity—
a whisper of God,
practically automatic.
like breathing.
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 1:46 PM UTC
waking in darkness, he saw
curtains
waving manifold,
their inward edges
delectably touched by carbon light
white as sugar—extravagant—
and elsewhere was black.
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 1:45 PM UTC
keep your mind,
your own rotten luck.
you’ll bear it because
there isn’t any choice—
except to go to pieces.
say nothing,
hold yourself together.
think about your certain cool pride.
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 1:45 PM UTC
everyone secretly hopes
that a syndrome
—a respectable eruption—
will cause the world to admire
the performance
of the youngest sisters—
of the beautiful, modest,
worried people.
“Is it going to explode?”
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 1:44 PM UTC
some are dainty
some are kind
some are precious
some are vile
some are poisonous
and black underneath
some are thin
and corkscrew-like
turning constantly
until morning.
break off the cover
show a buried pit of coals.
when done, skin
scales, or feathers will all come off.
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 1:43 PM UTC
The boundaries of my body are blurred. The once
Blunt ends of my fingers blend and smear, like Rorschach blots,
Into a pool of surrounding air.
The short scrubs of my hair sprout wildly
Like stalks, seeking
As vines of some flowering **** for something to leech on.
I am expanding one moment,
Collapsing the next, retreating infinitely inward,
Drawing in my limbs.
I sponge up all my musings, stifle
My breath, tuck words under my tongue
Or in the penny pouch of my cheek;
Some days I must go mute
And lock myself in the echo chamber of my mind,
Re-absorbing reverberations
Of the sour thoughts that I have shunned
While I searched for peace
So keenly outside of myself.
May 18, 2019
May 18, 2019 at 2:58 PM UTC
when the sky blackens,
and the full moon brightly rears
its white bald head,
their words resound in my ears
from ghost-mouths and artful
tongues which, like thorny roses,
bloom and snag.
darkness shepherds them in.
and now, in solitude, under the charm
of somnolent night,
words cease to be words alone—
they are life in a breath.
they are lips and teeth
and tongue and cheek,
skin, blood, and bone.
May 18, 2019
May 18, 2019 at 2:57 PM UTC
Faded building-tops
Tips erased by smog and haze
Are dulled, washed out
As the sky comes down, smothering the ground.
Flags lay limp, ephemeral trees
Like phantom shadows, dissolve
Into **** heads
Or bare crooked limbs.
Everything is cloaked
In staler colors.
The mind, too, is dull.
Stale people drag in driveling stupor
To places I do not
And never will know.
May 18, 2019
May 18, 2019 at 1:26 PM UTC