I am nature.
I am tidal waves.
I am a doe surrounded in a flowered clearing.
I am a pack of vicious, snarling dogs.
I am fear.
I am always reacting with flight.
I am an Arctic freeze.
I am a ***** in heat.
I am thawed.
I am flood.
I am the wood of a madman’s arc.
I am what brought you here.
I am what rots away.

Your dress was plum;
although, my fantasies remember Maroon.
Dancing in God’s house, you moved like scripta,
and I burned like the sinner’s hands.
Had you blushed near me again, I was going
to hold it against myself.

Thrice removed
(grief-stricken) and held against him,
I am empty of you.

But not yet extinguished from your singe of interest,
of your reading me like The Price of Salt.
Wondering, suppose I call, if your
arrival would be the difference of a few vowels.
Divine intervention, master of my curiosity,
I spend my evenings drunk on forbidden fruits.

Pardon my chaos talking in triangles–
of lust’s longing in color–
our tortured poet already said it best.

poetry is a business with
finger-snap appraisals
that thrives on how
much I hate myself

silver spoons
singe privilege
hungry, wolves

steal copper
for the thief's
wife and their sons

24k gold in her
eyes, attracting
common men--

all fools.

brought bones to
a gun fight,
cartilage and
cartridges.
/
Does the rope
around my ankles
make me look fat?

the k nine & its teeth agree
that tender meat is better raw.
a land under one primal god-
his face slipped into ***** hands;
folded in grocery lines.

at a 24/7 gas station buying a
carton of a mother's hard work
cheaper by the dozen but i can't
sell mine; **** this ****** biology
it makes for another product taxed

and builds another landfill. I'm
stocked with candies i didn't want
to buy myself. It happened two
nights ago by myself in bare sunlight;
an ugly mess a day can make.

unaware of myself
the gawking
something about a man and those
repetitive hungry eyes.
where have i seen those hungry eyes?

the family dinner of twenty seventeen
and the serialization of a girl and her
father and then every day after. straw
berry kool aid will never be the same:
nostalgia is not who she used to be.


my ex boyfriend says he can't feel
sympathy for the opposite ***
because he isn't a woman & that's
why he's a ****** and life
***** me over

slicing the surface of your sun kissed
face, i used to nurture each grain and
crevice that decorated your profile,
now i have created the insecurities
that dig through your hard skull and
crumble your layered state of mind,
only for me to sell your pure love
to the fairer man. at the time your
prostituting was said to bring me
wealth and status, but i now sit here
in shame as you have been *****
beyond repair. although i deserve
not a gram of forgiveness, i hope
my patriarchy and greed does
not undermine my apology

-t.m