The inherent eroticism of religion,
How red the little g gods bleed
By the soda fountain
And all the women who devote themselves to their gods (plural)
Gods like those that ruled over Greece
The flawed ones
The ones that made monsters
and humans both
Is that the neck of a coke bottle or
A glass skinned girl
Between those teeth straightened by mettle?
I’m telling you, if you’ve ever met a priestess
The real kind, the wild kind
You’ll know well enough what it’s like to be eaten alive
And I’m not talking about by the mosquitos in the swamps of Georgia
I’m talking about
How the glass breaks
How it shatters
How it cuts the mouth of that little g god ******
By the soda fountain
And he’s left wanting for more
The taste of blood is acquired like this; early
There’s no such thing as a benevolent divine
Mar 2, 2021
Mar 2, 2021 at 10:50 AM UTC
Nations and nationalism;
Religion and re-legend
Grandmother killed the wolf, didn't she?
There is another, separate story
the retelling of an old legend
(all things important are lost in the retelling)
The man turns into a monster at the sight of a
full moon,
turns back again only when somebody loves him.
I think about that grandmother often,
sitting by the fire with a
rifle in her lap-
The things she's seen
The wolves she has left to ****
In the other story, the other legend,
It's the grandmother who loves the wolf
and turns him back
And I think that this one is truer, somehow
Because we are really all just fury things
with barred teeth
that need to be told to come back into the house
to eat the dinner on the table
to stop howling at the sky
all of it, give it all up, for the sake of somebody you love
and if that is not enough, at least for the sake
of the old woman in the woods
who loved you before your bones were thought up
(hide the blood on your claws, little wolf/monster/thing,
she's just washed the sheets
and they're bright white
the color of the moon
the color of her eyes that were blind all along)
Jan 27, 2021
Jan 27, 2021 at 8:12 AM UTC
The air always smells of rain
somewhere, right?
So somewhere, you're always knocking on a door
And somewhere, I'm behind the same door
And somewhere, somebody is saying,
'It's for you'
Even though you're not for me, and I
can tell that
just by smelling smelling the air
(Which does not smell like rain)
But these words are for you,
They'll always be for you-
And maybe someday I'll open the door.
It won't be you,
or maybe it will be you
and maybe you'll be here for me
Isn't that a nice story?
You wouldn't believe the stories I tell
myself
while I sit here in the sun
and dream of rain.
Jan 27, 2021
Jan 27, 2021 at 8:02 AM UTC
There’s a story about Calypso or maybe it’s a legend
or maybe it’s religion
Daughter of a Titan, seducer of a hero
Maybe she was actually the hero
Must it always be about princesses and dragons, girls and ogres?
Anyway, we’re the dragons and the princesses tonight
Summer whites instead of white
wedding gowns-
There’s a bachelorette party a few tables down and the bride looks uncomfortably close to my age
The four of us, the dragon girls, around the table
There’s a story about sisterhood
or maybe it’s a legend
or maybe it’s religion
Daughters of regular men and students of 4 different subjects, citizens of three different countries between us
Sounds like a bad bar joke: a Romanian, two Americans, and a Chinese citizen walk into a restaurant on a Saturday night...
We laugh at ourselves before the punch line hits (and these young women actually liked themselves!)
When you’re the princess, ogre, dragon, girl
When you’re the prize, villain, hero
you get to have all the fun. That’s the secret to all this, I think: have all the fun you can
Have all you can. Have all of it. Be all of it. Complex human beings with complexes of our own behind our eyes- we laugh
The bachelorette party orders more alcohol
China and Romania plan their trip to Greece for spring break over
the side salads and
COVID-19 travel restrictions
Americans try their best to help navigate the travel website
Imagine this: history happens and we live through it anyway.
We plan through it anyway.
Once upon a time, Calypso trapped Odysseus.
That’s the way the story goes, anyway, but every dragon knows
men only come to the lair looking for a prize
he must not have been expecting something that looked like us
he must not have been expecting the dragon to be the prize
Oct 3, 2020
Oct 3, 2020 at 10:51 PM UTC
And she looked at the man mostly named for a color
He had a real name, of course, but the color was so much more true than that
Names are just sounds, identified
“Oh, you.” A smile, recognized
Maybe she knew him from his own words
or a long, dark wall filled with names from a war from before she was born
or maybe it was more than that
“Oh, you.”
Homecoming
Cliff jumping
A Bildungsroman novel in 18 years
Here it is, hear it coming? You have to listen closely,
it’s in the whisper between two friends
then and now
When is it that we realize we are all just mirrors of each other in the circle of time? Soon, very soon-
We’re coming around the bend of it now, hold on tight and-here: immortality
Oh, you: immortal.
Oct 2, 2020
Oct 2, 2020 at 11:48 AM UTC
So he sleeps behind his fathers counter,
little prince of a general store neighborhood dynasty
Is he a king, that he should doze on the throne?
Kings and boys- they’re all the same, anyway.
Anyway, make it three if a kind: kings + boys + Gods
A full hand, royal flush, this boy-king-god in his palace of cereal boxes
cheekbones polished by the flickering fluorescent light
the type flies are too afraid to land on, the type they land on anyway-
and here, he sleeps on; unbothered.
No one will believe you but me.
He will keep sleeping and you will keep stocking the shelves of his domain and nobody will believe you but me; justice passes by
The fly gets fried by the light overhead.
You saw it, he slept, and who would ever believe you but me?
Oct 2, 2020
Oct 2, 2020 at 11:30 AM UTC
Red boys worth blood
listen to the things they can’t hold in their hands
like sun and color
and the supposed shoes of a Cinderella girl
who was really their sister
and didn’t run away from them,
just the angels in the front garden
Burn the house
Burn the garden
Take the gut-punch
Grab the slipper
The watery grave she finds herself in-
tears shed by parents over the rejection of a suitor
The boys are only red because they faithfully cling
to Cinderella’s heart.
She gave it to them for safekeeping
Oh the things that brothers find themselves holding
past midnight.
May 4, 2020
May 4, 2020 at 11:00 AM UTC
The garbage truck sends noise crashing through the air
A plane adds to the din overhead and there-
A helicopter, hear it?
Thwup-thwup-thwup of the rotors
For a moment, there is no lockdown
There is not even a college or a crew team
Just me on the back porch in the mountains, looking up
Time bending full-circle.
I am eight and eighteen, looking up
The helicopter passes and so does the plane until all that’s left is the garbage truck and me on the back porch and my college professor begging the class to please, please pay attention over scratchy video feed.
May 4, 2020
May 4, 2020 at 10:50 AM UTC
Body politics
Is this my flesh or yours?
Hard to tell, since I never loved you
I just wanted to be you
May 4, 2020
May 4, 2020 at 10:49 AM UTC
It’s not your shoes at all, actually.
It’s the way you tie them: firmly, decisively
You have good, strong hands:
Van Gogh’s starry night,
Michaelangelo’s David,
and your hands.
You have a very specific way of holding onto things
all at once or not at all
The mountain ridges of your knuckles.
But how could I explain a thing like that?
Instead, I say: “I saw someone with your shoes,
the purple new balance 360s,
and it made me miss you.”
But what it is,
what it really is,
is I saw those shoes and I saw hands that were not yours tying them.
May 4, 2020
May 4, 2020 at 10:48 AM UTC