I thought if I could swallow the stars
I’d be as beautiful as the evening sky
I tried one night    with fireflies
They burned my throat
Their legs striking at soft flesh
But my skin did not glow
No moon crawled from my eye sockets
I was left with corpses in my stomach
I soon learned I would only ever be
A cemetery

but last night—
after two years,
you smiled to me,
waved your hands,
and we both laughed
to each other's stories

suddenly,
the light turns darker—

you took my hand,
slowly lifted it up
right above my head,
make movements
as if you wanted me to spin
as if we were dancing—

and we danced all night,
somewhere only in my dreams.

I Found God

I found God in a Baptist Church
in Milwaukee.
Faith,  small hands and
scratched bibles.

Warm cookies.

The delicate and the children.
Their names in coded
words on the skin under

my arms. .

Dedicate: the
day to the great E. Perience.

There is a new Age
coming.

I smoke a cigarette.

God arrived in fancy clothes.

Women dressed, frown.
Still voices in the

Wilderness

Witness the Beloved
baptism of perfumed
sinners

I smoked for them all.
My fee for being previously

Apostate.


Caroline Shank

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Time goes by
And I miss you

Just like me
The flowers grew
But soon they wilted
Just like you

You were sweet
This I knew
Like an addiction
I loved you

Now the roses are dead
The violets are too
The garden's all gone
And so are you

Your flowers died
I did too
Because all along
I was you

Full of hatred,
This garden is bloomed
Full of dreams ,only becoming abandoned
I hung myself at the stake of poisonous expectations.

To love me is to accept sleepless nights; to accept immortality; to accept that you love what you cannot mend. In other words (which are not my own):

“I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn’t happiness.”

your name is
forbidden in
my mouth
or in my heart
because when
i think about
you;

i'll cry a little more,
hurt a little stronger
love a little softer
because you no longer
make me feel sober

i'm drunk on the
memory of you