had our timelines not converged
think of the god
i'd have been fed to

i don't need god, i tell god.
i need a surgeon and money.

god says, look.
like an ant in my kitchen,

you were born
the moment i noticed you.

the hand of hurt
has long fingers
and sharp nails

it's morning in the morning after city.
i am hunted, all night, through suburbia.
i won't lie.
it's my favorite dream.
there are no safe places to prey

they still plant flowers
in my blighted mouth

i have
emptied
my soul
of art

it feels homeless

what’s it like, god asks.

god, who will never know blood. who will never know meat. who will never wake, one day, teething. animalic. mawed

i don’t know, i say.

i’m not honest. chimeric, my body coils around a clutch of eggs. i will test their shells, one by one, with the tip of my most solemn tooth

before i remember what i am.

my wings hurt in this world

in the other, my throat

bedlam

my stuttering night light

boring, this exile /

god drags a belt through the garden
and the angels broke my radio

i need to go home, i tell the angel. you are home, the angel says.
and i am.
this is the trailer i died in. glowing like god’s throat, a hallway
crawls before us.
at the end, a snake.
biggest snake i’ve ever seen.

I’m too drunk to count the things that ruined me

One

i ponder the brutality of hands. it winters me. i feel loss. loss that gets drunk on loss. in sadness, i **** on my fingers. cloven, my nails cut my tongue. wintered, my body snows blood, and ashamed, it hides blood beneath body. oh, hell. oh, garden. post rapture of the axe head. what am i going to do about the trees now

"I ever tell you about that fish? That big, ******* catfish with the human eyes. How it looked at us, so full of doom. And you can't miss doom, you know. When you see it in some eyes. But it wasn't just doom. There was something else. Something familiar- like... like disappointment. Like that ******* fish was watching us from the shallows, and it tagged that hook with purpose. But then it got up here, right. It got up here and saw us. Just some drunks. Just some idiots. Now, I don't know if fish think about God, but I think about God. I think about God a lot. About the day I'll meet the man. And I'm afraid most of those days. Afraid I'll wake up naked on a river bank, doom in my eyes, and not much liking what I see."

"Everyone's afraid of dying, dad."

"Not the dying, boy. Do you listen when I talk? What do you think we did with that catfish, huh? We didn't take it to heaven: we ******* ate it."

o rabbit
of death
where is
your paw

i tell god if this doesn’t **** me i’ll do something with my life and god is understandably skeptical i’ve made bad deals before but i mean it this time i tell god i’m thirty one years old i’m handshy i’m pretty enough for two and i know i haven’t done anything about any of that and i know i don’t always act like it but right now i’m scared and i have nobody to tell i’m scared and i wonder what i’ve been doing for all this time i mean what have i been doing for all this time was i waiting for the poverty to let up like summer rain was i waiting for the city man to enter frame and smile at the camera no i wasn’t i was writing poems and i was drinking and i was smoking but mostly i was writing poems i was writing poems i gave away like kittens like kittens with miserable bones and a language that can only speak to language and god i guess i’m not that scared but i am sad and i’m sad for being sad and i feel so dumb i feel such a sense of loss i feel it in my mouth like an omen like my little life given body and when it dies i am reminded things can be wasted

(****** syrup in a glass bottle
dead flies)

i was always the brave sister.
this is fear. watch me drink it

the summoning

dream, not dream. does it matter. light a match. should your match fail, don’t light another. just leave. otherwise, approach the window silently. you will see your reflection. your reflection will see you. you are allowed one word. your reflection is allowed two. use this time wisely. if, when your match dies, you see a beast beyond the glass? know. know it’s yours; know you did this. prepare the blood and go outside

(s.o.b- nathaniel rateliff & the night sweats)

god says, you were born a poet,
so i gave you a gun.
where is your gun?
kelsie, where is your gun

i will be found, i say
as i lead the devil’s cow
deeper into the cave

exit the body, walk skinless through the forest, stumble upon the thieves, mother a type of lore, transform moon into milk, dig a grave, go to sleep

i fear
i’ve given you too much. i don’t know how much i’ve given. i fear anyway. i fear i’ve been a bad mother. i mean, i fear i wasn’t good. i mean, i fear i wasn’t god. was i. was i god enough. did i make you immortal. did i think, did i bleed, did i give you life. did i make a monster. a starving, long tooth-d, hollow claw-d monster. i hope so. you can eat me. i’ll regrow my soul. i’ve done it before. there are no instructions, but once, years ago, the angels ate the whole thing. they carried it away in their mouths. they carried it for days. they carried it for months. they uttered no prayers for fear of losing me. fear. losing me. i fear losing me. i fear the chew. i fear being digested. being **** out and then forgotten. that’s not what immortal means. how many souls do we get

(i need my girl- the national)

my lake is on fire.
you have a wooden boat

god, im sick. it wont last forever

****, i don't know. god came. god came and shook the snow globe. doesn't feel like anything changed. probably nothing did.

where did you come from. why are you here. my wild puppy. my bronze age collapse. i love you. i want to kiss you until you lose your breath. i want to choke you until the stars turn black. i want to define your undefinable body. i want to draw your most shapeless of shapes. and then i want to ruin it. note to poetry. if this is all there is

(how full of worlds i’ve been)

the devil touches my stomach
. asks where the monsters live

the bathroom is a solemn shed. smells like blood, like flowers, like *****. the angels pretend to save me. they hold my hair while i puke. when i’m done they clean my face. i almost fall in love. almost

(i found the devil in my mother’s closet, holding a bottle of perfume)

the box sits on my kitchen counter. i don’t open it right away. i change my clothes, i roll a joint, i wash my face. i take my time. when i go back into the kitchen i think it’ll be gone. i think it’ll have grown a body. a devastating body. a devil. but i’m wrong. the box is still there. i hold a knife in one hand and my fear in the other. i ask the box if it knows how i’ll die. i ask the box if it knows how bad my dreams are. the box doesn’t answer. i cut it open. inside is the perfume. i bought it. i want the lore to come home. i’m lonely. there was magic, once

the grasshopper girl tells the matchstick eater all mirrors come in pairs

(the lore is dead. it perfumes my body. my body is a funeral home. the mourning in me)

god, i’ll be real. the lore isn’t dead. my body isn’t a funeral home. i’m depersonalizing. i’m half eaten. i’m entering my romcom era and my body is political. it doesn’t feel safe so i take my body home. i tell her hard truths. i feel bad doing it. she’s dumb. she’s like a baby. look what happened to her diary. how can she survive outside

hurt is the softest word known to god

dear god
are we sad

my mind is a ****** milkshake
that dreams of a vampire

it's a hunger. it's a second stomach. grows teeth when you forget to feed it. newborn teeth, aching stomach. i didn't forget. i can't find your mouth

snow

self portrait at thirty years old and i’m drinking myself into my mother. the mirrors have forgotten my image. i do terrible things in front of them. i’m not above that. terrible things. i killed my mother. banished her. stole her body. i replaced my memory of her with replicas of me. it was surgical. it was an extraction. the hurt was sublime. i stand in front of a mirror with a cranberry juice and *****. i stick out my tongue. i put on mascara. i drink. i was not a good daughter

snow

self portrait at thirty years old and i’m bleeding. this means my mind is on fire. this means my body is abstractly dark. this means i dream of katharsis. a letting of pain. heaven, but heaven is a bathtub where i can open my veins. where i can empty myself of the beetles, of the leeches, of the spiders. of all the tiny monsters with their tentacles and their claws. i want them out. a body can’t hold

snow

i want to tell you a story but the whole story is too long. i can gloss over it. i can pick a spot. six years old, sunday school bathroom. i was hiding, only i’m not great at that. the sunday school teacher found me and took me back to the classroom. the other kids were singing. the sunday school teacher stood in front of windows so yellow with sky and held up her hands. she talked about jesus. she said jesus could save us. idk. i already knew about danger. i already knew about wanting to be saved. the sunday school teacher asked if we all loved jesus, and we all said yes. then the sunday school teacher called on each kid and asked them if jesus could live in their hearts. and i got real scared. i got numb. i got static. i didn’t want jesus to do that. i thought it was permanent. i thought it was a *******. i thought it would burn me like a brand. i thought, if i did this, i could have no other. and what if i wanted another. what if another could save me better. what if jesus hurt all the time and i couldn’t give him back. so i said no. i didn’t want jesus in my heart. and everybody was disappointed. and i think about it every day. what was my little soul thinking. what was my little soul wanting. waiting for. is it out there. can i have it now

all night i think about god.

which means all night i think about Rothko’s black on dark sienna on purple.

which means all night i think about what Rothko’s black on dark sienna on purple has to do with god.

god, am i alone.

a demon pales in the foreground of my mind, hypnotized by inside colors.

(like a leech i hold on as if we belong)

where
in the world
could
the world be

for the poem titled 2014.

**** that kid
before she hurts someone.

zombie looking for love in dead places/ my date had nothing to eat

carcass in bloom. bone in water. prayer. prayer that doesn’t look like prayer. pointing at an ache-filled moon. pointing at an ache-filled body. moon, body. singing sight to an eye balanced on god’s finger. i don’t know what else to do. long into the night i write answers for hunger. long into the night i unfold the part of me that comes when called. that sees blood and gets real selfish. i know her. i know her so well. what do you do with knowing

the metamorphosis of my womanhood was a spectacle. ******, monster, muse. gather the lovers to the hallway. not just the lovers, but the priests, the hunters, the mothers. gather them to the hallway, to the sacristy, to the bathroom. horror in the mirror. oily perfume. inserting a ****** beneath a crooked cross. wood touched by dust, body touched by blood. horror. sleeping bag in a bathtub. growing a tail. loving my tail. searching for pills on the floor. heaven, eyelash, beauty mark. more blood. gather them. let them know one week. let them be god. god, skip the years. watch it, like a movie. like a movie i will feed you, scene by scene, knowing you will change my name.

if there is a monster in the hallway. the hallway. endless stretch of doorless nothing. poorly laid carpet. fake light. i pull out my guts, let them trail behind me. i pull out my teeth, breadcrumb them along the floor. i retie my blindfold with ****** hands. where is the monster. i don’t want to be alone

there was no god in my 1998. there was a mother. she smelled like a makeup bag. read me poetry. there was a step dad with a pillowcase full of kittens. a step brother with a drill and a marker. my long braid. shirtless cousin with a bb gun. sister with cut off bangs. a baby, somewhere. i don’t know why i’m telling you this. it’s an old story

the poems in my dreams are so empty church. so church without doors. orange banquet hall. ghost with a gun. it’s saturday. jesus is dead. everything feels like jesus is dead. outside, it’s raining. outside, there is no outside. a corn field that goes on forever. taller than god’s knees. looks blue in the dark

is god a body.

a teapot shaped like an egg. a grandmother’s rosewood crucifix. floral shirt tucked into green skirt. blood and pine sol. flesh. is god a body. do we want to eat it. all that is horror. all that is abject. all that is gross; fluid, soil, ferment. zombie.

zombie, i love you. eat fruit and pretend.

my friend's dad is dying. it's been slow. there's nothing (clean watch a movie hold the babies collect eggs save the blood burn ceder steal from god) to do. i'll never know this pain

don’t read in dreams.
it’s bad magic.


(one tree, two branches)

the city of dreams is a full moon over still water. the stranger in my bed wants a tooth. any tooth, he says. i think he is the devil. no magic, i say. no moth, no lightbulb. i can’t take it. but he begs like honey. he finds my many stars. are you the devil, i ask. are you the tooth fairy. the stranger speaks, but it’s backwards. his body grows snakes, but they’ve no fangs. there is a lake in my bed and i drown. when the tooth comes out, it comes easy. i think it wanted to go. i really do

a spider the size of blood.

softness in the middle of nowhere.

abandoned milk on dead grass.

sheets on the clothes line. all those

eyeless ghosts.