at night,
pine branches scratch
the gibbous moon.
velvetine mouth, the opening dark
I am not the only creature
stirred from sleep: far off,
a grosbeak whistles.
the fragment of winter in me
drips.
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 4:50 PM UTC
God, but your patient.
I can’t stand how much you love me, in the grocery store.
You give me so much time,
you know how its hard for me.
But sweetheart, get angry!
Penne or Rigatoni is not a valid stressor
and you don’t need second opinions for cauliflower.
How calm you are while I fuss over fresh herbs
or dried ones--I chalk it up to your lack of experience:
I have, after all, known myself longer,
and I make a mental note to loan you
‘House of Mirth, which you need to read
so you can resent me properly--or at least with authority.
I just want you to hate me like I do
so when it turns out I’m a better cook than a person
you won’t be disappointed. But what if you only
love me more afterwards? Oh, my God, What can I do?
There are 41 types of pasta sauce here
but I only need one.
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 4:42 PM UTC
when your arms are around my waist
when I make coffee in the kitchen
it traces a delicate line around the present.
you never discuss the future with me.
here and now,
not knowing makes me buoyant:
it’s not a thing I’d plan without you
you seem to know the time goes somewhere
but I’m not sure if you’ve seen
the number of future Saturdays
gathering behind my teeth--
our dreams still sleep in separate beds
every task unasks a question
(will your arms circle my waist then and then?
coffee? here, or across oceans? when?)
tomorrows fall upon tomorrows in my soul
suspense, I am always suspended:
a bomb in a spider’s web--
time is building up in me,
will I, I wonder
one day rupture?
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 4:38 PM UTC
I live on a planet that terrifies me.
at night, I imagine a knife slicing open my abdomen
I feel more relaxed with my skin open
my guts remind me of everything.
animals are beautiful on the inside.
I am meat,
and the night is dripping wet--
digesting.
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 4:23 PM UTC
Stop, please stop that thud, that thud,
I hear your thirst like sand for blood--
O I will bring you water, water,
only beat your breast no longer!
Because I see your prayer becoming
consumptive by its own drumming,
a labyrinth that bears no unthreading.
God, I saw a black bruise spreading
deep within that dreadful cadence--
and his prayer was patience, patience.
“Tell me, please, what I can do
to break you from that death tattoo,”
but all he did was beat and nod
I lost him to an Awful God.
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 4:22 PM UTC
I used to keep my baby teeth in a butterscotch tin.
I guess I was making an investment
in tooth-fairy stock; trying to diversify my easter bunny portfolio.
Quarters: Like chocolate I could feed into a Coinstar and turn to dollar bills
which I could then use to buy more chocolate.
I just, hey, I just remembered that I have a butterscotch tin filled with quarters
sitting in the back of my closet right now. Funny,
when things move in circles like that--I can’t even remember
the last time I ate a butterscotch. Or even how my final tooth
came out, which I’d think would be a milestone.
I was eating an egg-salad sandwich when I lost one of the last ones--
I just took a bite and one tooth stayed behind.
For weeks I couldn’t even look at a sandwich,
I just kept thinking about the disturbing look of blood on mayonnaise.
I wonder if there’s much business for the tooth fairy these days--
my dad, winding blue ribbons around small stacks of quarters so they’d look nice;
my dad, stepping on LEGOs in the dark and stifling swears;
my dad, navigating bedroom geography to make a swift exchange
while I slept and turned a tidy profit, trading old small parts
for riches and a grown-up mouth.
Now I wonder what they did with my wisdom teeth,
after they pulled them out last year.
Were they drilled out, finally, into dust? Or did
a dental surgeon slip some pilfered teeth
beneath his pillow on the sly,
turning one last profit out of my face,
the summer someone noticed
I needed a grown-up mouth?
All I know is that for days
I stayed at home moaning into my pillow,
strung out on percocet and eating anything
that could be sipped through a straw.
(It was only then I discovered the Sonic had stopped
serving butterscotch shakes--years ago, apparently.
You’d think I’d have noticed. But then, you’d think
I’d notice lots of things.)
I wonder how much my teeth would be worth now.
I wonder if the tooth-fairy has adjusted for inflation.
I still get excited over stray quarters,
but now I guess I just have to find them on the street
like everyone else does.
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 4:19 PM UTC
fistfulls of tsampa, butter lamps,
kneeling till my legs are cramped
and feeling less than human here,
where I am but a sightseer--
the things I know of bhodi trees
are what was writ in books for me--
of this fourth summer lunar month:
frayed prayer flags’ silk like amianth
with them do my thoughts most align
at a festival that is not mine.
Apr 4, 2012
Apr 4, 2012 at 10:46 AM UTC
you read those books where they build girl angels in laboratories
who fall in love with lonely boys.
you like hearing your poems
read back to you in english accents
and you like your accents
licking on your poems
because, if I recall, you’re heart-broken
--no I haven’t forgotten,
yes I remember, you were the
curvaceous queen of unskinned knees;
I was ****** in jeans.
you got partway through Swann’s Way,
but gave up last November,
when I was hitting walls hard.
the last words you read were the last
on your mind, “Happiness is beneficial for the body--”
and you stopped, that was fine enough
for a tattoo. (happy needle,
breast imbrue)
Well grief taught me, grief bought me,
and I was hitting walls hard.
But straight back for you, to boys kissing boys
and you’re too old for toys and
you think it’s pathetic
how girls go to get it
with silicon and plastic
oh go on, tell me how
you’re a heart-breaker, ha,
because you showed them
your ******* like an angel.
you like to remind me how skinny you are now,
and you still love to dance.
There is no equivalent factory making boy angels.
Mar 2, 2012
Mar 2, 2012 at 10:47 PM UTC
1. I have to stop when I catch myself mentally titling poems about how you and I do not belong together.
2. Doomed like your mother, doomed like your father—don’t think it, don’t think it—loneliness is my birthright, loneliness is my bride.
3. This is a mania, this is a phobia. Tag your neuroses and track them, keep track of them.
4. Remember _______, think what happened to _______.
5. You speak of your friend like she’s dead.
6. She is dead, though, only wakes up now and then to bury herself.
7. What do you mean?
8. I mean she reaches out with one arm from her shallow grave, and she buries herself. Great fistfuls of dirt.
9. But?
10. But she was not a huntress.
11. And so?
12. And so it got the best of her.
13. Well, you tell me what I ought to see
when I self-perceive
Would you lie to me?
14. No, you’re a truth-teller, heart-sweller.
15. The Age of Huts, man, I never had it in me. I’m all ravens and bell-jars.
Feb 23, 2012
Feb 23, 2012 at 10:43 PM UTC
color camera filter gel
it's a black tower at tintagel
turns me every shade of dead
when i'm made to lay in bed
last night i fought so violently,
the neighbors left a note for me--
"*the walls are thin here; from above
we could hear you two make love.*"
born too early, slept too late,
crows flocked to their dinner plate,
and i studied aristophanes
amidst a shrill cacophony.
wet and wind in winter's maw
i opened wide, but tigers' claw
caught a vain and made it sing--
heaven hurting, heaven sting
a vessel filling up with sand,
myth and man with mountain hands;
sipping from a fiery flagon,
how i began Year of the Dragon.
Jan 27, 2012
Jan 27, 2012 at 10:38 PM UTC