i am running out of new forms of
consumption of new ways to
**** myself i am slowly draining the
pus from a wound i
am washing myself off my/
self and pulling nothing out of
thin air and the ocean turns and looks at me and i look at it and it asks me what i’m doing here and i
try to look at my/
self but i cant i cant my eyes are messy runny egg blobs like the girl with the
bomb i am the girl with the bomb
i am the bomb i am the
**** im madonna and the ***** and im locking myself
back in the tower.
the tower is
burning and crashing and suddenly,
the waves.
i still havent answered the oceans question, its getting impatient,
i am eating breakfast—eggs—and the shore
erodes away until i am standing on nothing, the ocean beating mercilessly away at me—it does not tire like i do. it does not tire like
i do. i can’t look the ocean in the eyes. i want to bottle it up and swallow it, salty brine and all, and maybe then i’ll finally
know just what it wants me to
be i will look at me through the
ocean’s eyes and know
my place but the ocean shies away from my hand and
shies away from my hand and
shies away from my hand until my hand is nothing and nobody
Jan 27, 2021
Jan 27, 2021 at 11:43 PM UTC
i had a dream once where everyone died and no one believed me. i spent ten nights
trying to convince a town of ghosts of their death. i spent eleven trying to forget.
it goes like this:
i can’t prove to you that this happened,
but it did — your body through the windshield,
your hands empty and cold, your face marred by sweat, hair out of place.
i’m in the passenger seat. every car stops and turns inside out.
i get out of the car and you get out of the car and say ‘at least no one got hurt‘ but i’m looking at you and i’m looking at your body as two separate wholes. both are cold, but only one lies still and rots.
my face is wet. it’s raining, i think, and a butterfly lands on the broken glass without landing and dissolves itself into the rain.
you lead me away from the accident, to the side of the road, and walk me home.
my parents’ bodies are sitting on the front lawn, skinned and cleaned, but you don’t see them. my parents greet us and walk up the steps to my door. their bodies still sit, and say nothing.
there is no longer a glory in the perverse.
i wet my hands without cleaning.
Mar 6, 2020
Mar 6, 2020 at 1:23 AM UTC
devour the garden and the
sunshine and the rain, too,
with open-armed and tight-
jawed glory. my mirror is
cracked more each time i
look into it; my mirror is
slithering, silver liquid pouring
down my throat, thorny bird
of paradise curled across my
shoulders. your shoes don’t
fit me right. your scene isn’t
mine and i don’t have a scene
anymore and sometimes i regret
it. is the self-assured smugness
worth its weight in gold? am i
better now that i’ve stripped
myself of bracelets and ink and
leather? or i have i sacrificed the
essential for the sake of your
comfort, for you and your dignity,
for the neighbors and their
mouths? my mouth is inverted and
my smile is crooked and my teeth
aren’t quite together, but i’m tired
of straightening myself out for you.
Feb 28, 2020
Feb 28, 2020 at 12:01 PM UTC
and the river unfurls like a heart attack at work, his body a bomb captured on camera.
We are watching him from the banks waiting to see
the unraveling, waiting to see if anything happens, waiting for the smell of
fresh blood on the sand, for the ocean cold longing to spill
out and over
as he tears his body in half.
confetti falls from the sky and onto my
tongue, glimmering wet, the ground is
craterous where the paper falls
and the trees
shiver away
their leaves.
water spills down the canopies like
something half holy,
his body shaking and seizing on the ground,
the river winding around his form like a snake.
is constriction freedom or oppression or are we just waiting for another storm to pass? i am watching the tornado **** my house up from underneath an underpass. i am ******** bricks and it is a very dark morning and i can still see the stars in the sky like tiny pinpricks of light spilling through a velvet curtain.
have you sat in spilled milk yet or licked up the shine from the floorboards?
there is something
pulsing under mine,
under my pillow. there is something whispering his name in my ear i do not want to think of his body in repose i do not want to wonder on the motions of rot.
i have a snake tattooed on my arm
it is eating its own tail
it is removing its mouth from its *** and slithering up to my throat: a shiny new necklace made of emerald to flaunt.
my therapist asks me if i have anything to say and i say nothing at all and curl tighter around myself like a duck-patterned blanket and the man on the riverbank retreats from the waters and sits up right and carries his blood back into himself, him and the river two whole circular separates.
Feb 26, 2020
Feb 26, 2020 at 8:47 AM UTC
Every morning
the birds taste morning light and
soliloquize it like it’s
their job.
The robin’s eggs are
blue but his body is red like
strawberry jam, your favorite
because it tastes like June and
June is for forgiveness.
I must confess, I have never
known your friend in a form
other than from your mouth.
You thought anything, anything could
be forgiven: blood on
the cleaver, mercury in the tea, our
lungs in our hands,
a heartbeat gone wrong:
silent is the night and silent is
the wind and silent is the hand that
takes.
There are other words I could say.
Softer, perhaps. “Darling, forgive me for breaking our wedding china. I’m
sorry I left for so long.”
Sorry I didn’t say that. Sorry for
making you believe I ever
meant it.
If there’s a limit to desire, I
have yet to find it. Our love is dead but
propelled onwards without
rhythm or reason. In another
universe, I am somehow
kinder, somehow better. It’s
not hard to be. To be better is to
know the taste of honey and still say
no, to get back in the car
and drive away,
to buy chocolates on Valentine’s day
and pretend they’re for anything other
than an apology. Sorry I said what
I said on that night, but
I meant it. I’ve never meant anything
before then and I won’t
take it back. I can’t make this
any easier for you, but I can
ball a melon and serve it
with toast for breakfast if
you’d like.
Somewhere, the robin swoops
over the open coffin, over the
unfilled grave, and
sings.
Jan 17, 2019
Jan 17, 2019 at 11:32 PM UTC
His name brings new meaning to living in the perfect blackness of a
sleepless night, to living in the dusk and the
squalor of a tired
desert town
vacated by devils and angels alike.
His body is bathed in pink light,
bathed in bath water,
bathed in marble dust and mildew:
you love him.
You love him because you know nothing else,
know no other way to do or to be
than to be with him,
at his side,
at his feet,
wherever, whenever.
He is yours in the way that
nothing is or ever
will be and,
by god,
do you love him
like the birds love the sky,
like the gods love tragedy,
like the trees love their roots.
Without pride or falsities, you bask under
the golden light of the sun at noon, all encompassing and
burning in the way of your shared home.
There are no new sensations—you've been party to them all—
but you have no desire for change.
This is it, and you are happy.
His name is on your tongue, always, like the rivers of blood that run through your
body, like the warmth of the rocky cliffs,
like
the taste for disaster that swells in your
chest when the air is
too still.
You crave action, movement,
and he is a forest fire at play,
endless and aching.
He burns in a familiar way.
The water of the creek runs red with your cheek,
gunmetal touches your tongue and
for a moment you are in
another life: you are underground, caked in calcium and
butyl, letting wave after wave of shock make its way over you.
It’s over now and you have him, he’s yours. He’s yours.
You carry his name on your heel, in the center of your shadow,
at the bottom of the well in your heart’s heart.
You know nothing other than him.
You don’t want to.
Nov 9, 2018
Nov 9, 2018 at 9:22 AM UTC
I was born in the cold
of the waters, shivering and crying
in the embrace of an armless mother, wrapping around me too tight,
too warm, too hard, too much.
Everything was too much and I
was drowning in it.
I was born drowning.
There was blood on my body then,
and in my mouth,
on my teeth and tongue,
when you hit me yesterday.
When you said it would never be enough.
But no price is too much,
not for you.
I would pay anything, anything
to be by your side,
to feel your flames licking my heart.
I am full of cinders and
cherry blossoms,
trees born from nothing and dying
from nothing,
painted purple by a battlefield blessing,
plum kisses on hands and wrists and forehead,
salt in the air, in your tears, from
the sea on my skin, always.
Write me a hymnal for all the things we must forget,
a rhyme for all to be stolen,
for each barbed wire and rust
sunset painted on my skin in the desert’s forgiveness.
Because it will forgive me, in the end.
It always does.
And when my body rises, darkly,
from a sand and calcite tomb,
be ready:
for the ocean always reclaims what it has given,
and even its gifts bear a price.
Sep 16, 2018
Sep 16, 2018 at 3:51 PM UTC
My neck is open and my hands are gone.
No, sweetheart, I don't where or when they’ll be back.
They’re just
gone.
My skin is dissolving. It’s melting off; I'm only marrow and sinew
and muscle, bubbling and festering, and I
can’t reach around the sun to get to
You. I can’t.
I can’t, it’s too far, it’s too hard,
and you know I would give you my
life-blood if I could
but I can’t.
Because the sun is too wide around and I
don't have the hands,
don’t have any hands, to reach inside,
Schluff off flesh, sickly as it is,
and rip out what you need,
whatever you need:
I would.
I would give it you without hesitation, without penance, without
mercy.
If you want me ruthless and bloodied, then I
will carve your name into my heart-skin and whisper it on the wind.
You are on the moon and gravity is a shackle: tell the stars I want to come home.
Tell the stars I have
vultures pecking at my liver
and there is a girl,
singing, behind the rock, behind my eyes,
just out of reach.
Is it you, sweetheart? Are you my golden sunshine girl, singing softly where I can’t see you?
I just want to see you. I just want my hands back and my
skin back and these bones shoved back into place, ripped out, ripped off, whatever.
Whatever you have to do, I’m game.
Is it cold up there? Is there room for me, still?
I built a ladder from my failures and called it Perseverance.
Call it a royal flush, call the doctor, call my lawyers and my mothers, but this
room is a closet and the closet is empty.
All the clothes are
on the floor. All the clothes are
on my body but I am still so, so cold.
I think the sun and I are feuding. I think he cursed me. I broke a rib trying to reach, reach around him and when I felt it snap, I
just took it out with teeth and spite and placed it on a pedestal in his altar. Placed it in a
museum, and called it Discovery. And then I left. I’m leaving, sweetheart.
Tell the stars I’m coming home.
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 12:02 AM UTC
I got in my car and drove west,
police song playing on the radio and sirens, wailing, on my left,
only to stop my car five feet in front of
a dead cow,
gutted and rotten,
bones pecked clean and free by that which I ran from.
The air around it was dead,
heavy on my tongue like fresh rainfall,
and I was twelve years old, in a bathtub,
trying to figure out
how to die.
But then lightning struck and
my power went out and
the cow caught fire.
And then I caught fire.
I couldn’t answer his questions because
there was still ash in my throat
and I was still choking. I was choking.
He offered me a glass of water but
that only made mud pour
over my tongue and through
my lungs,
clogged pores and sinuses.
So now I was drowning in tar and
a hand brushed mine, so I grabbed it.
I couldn’t tell which way was up.
I got pulled deeper.
I died in the lake but they still asked me questions.
I died in that lake and got stopped when I tried to leave.
Aug 16, 2018
Aug 16, 2018 at 9:58 PM UTC
The moon swallowed around a mouthful of bile and blood,
sangria rising in its throat,
orange knocking on its forehead and honeysuckles falling at its feet,
and turned its back on its humble worshippers.
I threw my bridal bouquet backwards into the ******* void and fell onto the shore,
the sea chasing my heels
angry at only having itself to fight and we laughed. We laughed and the world laughed back, the flowers and bees and dust settling where you left.
Everywhere was where you left.
You were gone
and the house was about to burn, burning, burnt so
I told my teacher my homework burnt and she gave me an F and I told her my heart was ash and she gave me an F and my throat filled with cinder and my lungs filled with copper. My lungs filled with copper, rotted away the gold
and with the gold gone I began to
shame myself, for I was imperfect.
I was imperfect and I was
marble and I was copper and I couldn’t feel
my hands or my feet or anything, anymore.
The moon left and it took away my lungs and my knuckles and left me bleeding in the
stairwell on my birthday,
ruined.
I was copper and kerosene and ruined,
soiled, in its abandon. I lay fallow and my eyes had shutters and the clouds were
suddenly antediluvian in their loss and in their weight, heavy and
waiting for another chance to unite the sea with the earth and the earth with bile and the bile with holy water: the floods were coming.
The water would pour, was pouring, poured and my gold-turned-copper rusted and I couldn’t move to chase after you and then you were gone.
I can’t blame you.
I would leave too, if I could.
But my joints froze over like the dead in the lake and you were gone so I had no reason to fight to free myself, or anyone else.
Before you left, I told you if this means anything then carve it on a cave wall and draw me in blood but you didn’t hear me because the door had already
shut.
My whispers didn’t reach. I knocked from the inside, but you had locked it.
I knocked from the inside
but my wrist snapped
and then I snapped and then the world snapped back. I looked through
the window in the door and the bars
framed your shoulders like pillars
of some ancient grecian coliseum, of some Shakespearean tragedy, or trees in a forest.
Trees, the space between them,
and the earth beneath our feet, crumpling like origami and folding like cards.
The ground shattered and so did my heart, the trees fell and so did my hopes, the birds fled as the sky bled out, pink and purple and red, and they took my hands with them so
I couldn’t do anything. I had no hands,
how could I work?
But someday the birds must land. And someday I will oil my joints, my rust will break. The moon will come home and the clouds will deplete. Someday my hands will attach onto my wrists backwards, and I will write you love letters backwards, and we will live, happily, backwards.
Jul 24, 2018
Jul 24, 2018 at 9:01 PM UTC