look at me with
       unseeing eyes, fevered cheeks,
so I reach
down into my throat and pull out my stomach.
Here. Here! Touch! Taste!
This is me! Thus I am!

I clench it in my fists. I squeeze, nails subducting into pinkish jellies.
I lunge wildly for their mouths, I smear.
~Alas, they also lack tongues.

Fridays are for drowning.
Tipsy, tipsy, let me ~shell out my kidneys.
-Says he works at the smoothie bar, looks at me, has a heroic jawline, I

stumble.

Waves lash ankles, steer comatose foams - my waist is grabbed at as i slog into waters.

Smiles, nods, propels with wide eyes.

I ate with a fork.

Numbed spines, turn-table minds of froth and iron, we shook-
Holding the flashlight while he wrenched at engine and rubber in the rain. Ward of the physical touch. When it wasn't too wet, we'd paint the windshield to match infinity then get in and drive. Drive, just go! As we
Implode.

Or lie in feilds. How many they are, numerous as stars, grassbeds sprinkled with violets and clover. -So similar. So same. The roads (we'd race, tires screeching, screaming, outrunning, false) and clouds that look like bedroom windows.

Anything's better than home when you don't know you're sick.

You painted me pink and gold, wrapped around me ribbons of it to become my skin, my hair, ribbon. Would let the loose ends fly, too. For windy days, i was a private ballet, swirls and leaps with me, standing there, watching you, enjoy.

Tosses me with black eyes~ He,
flipping us onto our necks, whistles.

Devil, devil, look me in the face and LIE.
>.<>.<>.<>.<>.<>.<>.<>.<>.

Me again, (it's real, it's real) i can't help but tear out the zippers of my clothes for you, crunch on muscles, oil my teeth.

And the sun kisses the sky goodnight :my dear: with its evanescent arms trailing out over the waters, tickling the fish i'd bet. But,

Marbles. They're obsidian carved, best of the best. He puts them where his eyes were when we met and thinks i can't tell the difference. Well i know. Oh boy sure i do, do i know, do i.

There's a calendar on my ceiling that's not really there but I sit underneath and count the hours (which wouldn't be there either but (I count and while I count I hold my breath and I pray ~knowing no god~ I pray for and end, end, end,

This sea is non-believing, filaments unhearing. So, magic in hand, i become tremors in the waves, rust in the walls.

Doll snatcher, let me down.

curvature of the thigh, smokestack scars and frothy seas.   so crouch with ready ears, involuntary vertebrae. sirens in the city-
Knock on our ribs and PRAY for us! oh, medusa,
mother.

You pointed to where she'd thrown the glass against the wall and then
traced the veins of my neck with your
nails,
clammish things with a lust for
god knows what

And if it's propriety keeping me from gobbling
                                                        ­              up your suns and
                                                             ­                        moons
*******, fool i am, yes. But,
then again,
                                            id be but a shadow
                                            across your horizon,
nightmare from which you'll never wake,
                                                           ­      witch.
And, i say again, my love,
I never wished this upon you.

'Kilt.'
'She's kilt for sure,' as the sparrows look down at us,
Bluegills pecking away toes, memories.

What.

He ate out my heart and threw it up.
Poison lungs, poison veins-
****.

Viscera numbed, spined eels wriggle,
I am ******.

****** as in : a shut-in, swain of Gehenna, rocked, rolled.
He needed more rope for his net and so cut out my tendons.

What skies to worship now? What skins?

i am:
fall off the bone, tenderized,
dry. Caked mud falling from the mass.
God forsake me. The way in which a love clouds my nostrils and my mind will mesh shut at each new instance of the molecules O and H forming the stuff of my body, makes me faint.
I am now. Heartbeats tick unwillingly. I am yes.
Kiss me and I'm yours, I'm -fall into his arms, princess, you who have the world at your beck and call- , casual, I am innoculation.

prairie girl, home for the summer
                    steals ceramic eyes to shade
         sunrises of gasoline kisses -
                    she lies underneath and counts
                             each, whilst marveling at snow-
                             globe winds and birds that can't
                             fly.

yellow clouds
     kiss
          smokey skies  
          awake as I wait for you.
I swear
    there are lighter winds
    this time and that peach
    is not a suitable smell but
No matter,
You're gone and   ~
                                      I'm so tired. My lips have
                                      cracked in anticipation of
                                      your kiss.
                                      \
but ******* it, when you come back you will
love me, I've decided it. You'll be smitten,
You will ache.

We were crazy.
he and i.
We'd cut ourselves with rocks to see
whose blood would run the fastest,
It was hailing and we went for a swim.
Nuts.
He said he had a rope. He said
there's two Smith and Wessons in his ******* closet.
I kissed him.
No favorite colors,
We'd lie in the shade of synagogues and under the blaze
of search lights, a couple of lost springs. Picking me
up around the corner so they wouldn't see, he'd
tumble his bike so that we'd fly and i'd scream.
Beautiful.
He said for us to run away. Never sweat. He said let's
run, let's ******* run. He said shut the ******* door.

I run. Run away. He doesn't like me to. He had a rope
and there's two Smith and Wessons in his closet.

Leaves fell
          p
            er
              p
                e­
                  tu
                    al
                    ­  ly
                               as we
didn't,
BuT I (your ardent lo>er)
Choose to smite
                         the indigenous winds and
                         forests' unpledged palates with
: A Stony Subjection:

She is looking out the window

again. Wishing for there to be

no window. That she could feel the

tumbles of pittering rain droplets as they

run with the wind. On her face. She

thinks on how her autumn-harvest

hair would plaster against her pinked-out

cheeks and jaw and lips. She

watches, seemingly unable to forget her

evening plans. It's down to her mother's

black silk or the leopard-skin

gloves, but both are ripped and she

doesn't know how to sew. She

isn't tired. She's exhilarated. Ready to

feel the rain and wind and trees sail

across her face and down her neck. She

sits and watches through glass panes as skies

whip clouds like batter.

flesh and b
                 o
                 n
                 e
flesh and b  l  o  o  d
                                          traps me
                                          |           |
                                          traps me

i blame You for this
t r a s h e d feeling in my
heart,
oh sWeET
song of mine.

Under a younger sun
                                perhaps
                     ­                         You
might have saved my life.

                       xox
                       grim reaper

Ran, i
{ r { a } n }
with my heart beating, beating, beating I
Think.
and in my running , a thought   !~<    Ripped    >~!   into my chest as I threw myself                                                           ­                                                                 ­                                                      Forwards:
t­hat I would perpetually toss myself out
                                                             ­        w i n d o W s
for Him.
the whole of my insignificant existence.

The doctor’s screen flashes with
boxes, bells, ribbons
all so enchanting, shimmering, shining;
She’s been forgiven;
God says ‘yes,
you are,’ and she claps ‘please, please,’
her lungs now underseas, with blue ***** and
barricudas in search of new colonies.

This is the coldest room in the
house, they say as we pull
out the fan with its blades a-
swirling and fill the air with
Friday night conjectures.
Her fears come out in
rivulets: red and black striped
maunder with thorns and
petals maybe rosy but I can’t
see it’s dark.

i just wanted for you to run me
over with your sugary words and
bold gait and you did, by god, you
ran me straight into the ground so
that i linger along the walls and in
the cracks under the pavement and
how could i
do this
to
me

I prefer swimming
because I feel the water
and the sand and shells
carrying my weight, my emotions
Waves rock me to and fro like a lullaby
to sleep, sleep with lights,
snow, and no-promises on the
other side. O brethren, pick
me up with the unwanted jellies
on the beach. and wash me
out, swirl, away/Let us roar
upon far shores and
dance with the sharks and stars,
forever fleeing the drying-up sun

I prefer that the adrenaline race alongside my bones rather than swim at an unpretentious gait and
I know it's short-lived but ,oh god, I love the feeling of no-tomorrows.

Fiend he was and fed away my heart to the pack of nightscratchers in his wake - all the while looking me in the eyes, my superfluous pose, his wired,

wicked laugh echoing at me in my dreams, behind my nose and in every strand of

flitting, fleeting hair, like a mechanical fantasy of Mr. Poe, and It was Then, in that freakishly drawn-out moment of my life that I realized I am not a girl, this nonsense may have

ripped the veins from around that kaleidoscope dreamland of my interior but from now till on I will

live unreal realities outside the mind, bequeathing thoughts and sense but as a woman,

taking my fall with grace, gracing the light with a smile, smiling at the

dreams
                     I
                             once
                                         dreamt.

and I know that at this moment I am like the flapping
/for sale/ signs in the wind but on the inside I feel so
safe,        not       hot        not       cold        but this soupy
mix that only reinvigorates when that biting wind
reminds me of future engagements.

i used to want to be the hero

now I just wish to be saved

from myself, like some helpless

princess in a tower

sometimes the
stars seem to clink
like glass and then fall
out of place and drop and drop
until maybe I guess they land in some
farmers field in Armenia or Laos and then
perhaps a young boy will go out to play and find
a feat that will take away his boyish charm
but oh those boyish fantasies will
soar

and i think now id be happy to
stand behind you as you say 'yes' with
waves in your throat
and mountains in your eyes

And in the mirror is an older girl from yesterday, for it was then that I wrote every fantasy for which i've yearned upon a golden sheaf and I tied it to a kite, black and red and orange, and I watched it sail up and up and up and forever away from here, for what will dreaming do me except milky teardrops and sagging doorframes. I'd like to live a life in peace away from falsities, and it is for that reason which I cringe at the lies and shallow untruths which are spoken around my core, too close, I push away. If I could fly I would go to the seas with whitecaps of pearl and ruby fishes jumping across my lazy, sundried belly, impregnated with ideals, puffy with a folly that gives the only true happiness. But if is but a word and I am but a girl and maybe with my grandmothers looking down upon me I will be that emerald eyed fox running for the moon.

my favorite poems are
chapters in a story
I can watch as you
fall in love or
squash insecurity
I can almost say im
there with you.

because I haven't yet.