We enter the church and immediately
have to push through two dozen sobbing Italian women
dabbing dry eyes; their tissues only show
black and multi-colored smears. Amid the echoing
“Oh my Goawd”s, they lean down and kiss my sister’s cheeks,
but even in my best black cap sleeves, I am the taboo
to my cousin Janet, a woman as barren as the stone lot
in between her husband’s restaurant and Deihl’s Autoshop.

We find an empty pew, and watch as the men
stride down the aisle, contestants
in a cultural Miss America pageant where the wrong answer
gets you whacked. Their heavy brows
sink in condolence as they hand over stacks of bills,
every hundred becoming a pity penny
for all the moments Janet lost in her luxury-life
made shiny by diamonds and cars and fur coats
which can’t be cashed in for a second chance at a family.

The men have paid for the food, the china, the band
in the corner meant to fill the space of sadness—
a reminder that we live a lavish life.
My sister shifts in her seat and as a man walks
by she touches his jacket, and gasps.
He’s a god.

Said no man ever.

He'll just want you to come again
every now and then.

Her face, flawless and filtered, flows over
my chest, ribs, stomach, hips, fitting the curved
mounds of my body, and even within simplicity
of thread and dye, I sense her presence as her face
hangs from my frame, a statement louder than pillow-lips,
Nancy Sinatra-hair and a glamorous 60’s ***** face.

When paired with leggings and an artfully-distressed denim jacket,
I become a member of the “freshman generation of degenerate
beauty queens,” a hipster fallen to the circumstance of youth,
but I wear her face and the romance of it all reminds me:
we are not defined as Lolitas lost in the hood, or distant,
airy voices in a sea of crude jokes and half-baked skits

meant to highlight shortcomings of a person who doesn’t give
two *****. Lana fits me better than my ribbed, red
sweater and even amidst gods and monsters,
this T-shirt makes pretty last, and I am just as cool.

TRIGGER WARNING*

They met at a dance recital.

His eerie blue eyes watched her, stalked her,
riveted by sinewy skin and the way her legs stretched and parted
skillfully, seductively: she knew how to captivate her audience.

They had mutual friends.

Her curiosity thirsted for more, for she had been taken
over by an empty lust, broken by another, but the way he spoke:
she felt as pretty as his charms sounded.

They went on a date.

He kissed her, pinched her, and spread those legs
that comprised his fantasies, not caring about the bruises he left
when he took off her lacey coverings, pinning her to the floor.

They learned more about each other.

She saw the empty, carnal look in his eyes, but her pleas
and shoves were not enough to lessen the weight of him, to push
his hands or his hips away, as he broke her over and over again.

They ended the night with a kiss.

He grabbed her face like a starving man grabs his first meal,
forcing an intimacy she could never get back, but he said,
“You liked it, didn’t you.”

They kept in touch.

She tried blocking his calls, his messages, asking her if she’d
come over to his place. Like the continuous force he prodded her with,
the pounding in her head beat out a thumping heart-line of no’s.

Alone, I sit with my feet
propped in front of the flames.
Heat pushes along the curve of my instep.
Bug spray coats my legs and arms, stickier
than sweat, which flows like raindrops down the back
of my neck, pools in the valley between my *******.
Even the air feels too warm in my lungs.

Games and night walks do not appeal
to me as I sit in stifling confinement without
a cool breeze to whisper relief.  Suffering the fire pit’s front
row seat wins over stretching my lips into insincere
smiles, watching, but absent, while
my friends talk of a life
I try to forget.

Snickers buzz up to my ears.
I lean my head back
as a whole pitcher
showers me with
arctic salvation.

Dead from 8-4
Fingers sore
Weak core
Faxing war
Still poor
Nothing more

Out the door.

Throughout our childhood, our grandmother would turn to us,
in her yellow-lit kitchen, brandishing a rubber spatula or meat
tenderizer to warn us against falling to temptation. She’d witnessed
too many good people disappear into what she called
a consumption of the soul,

              and as my cousins licked sugary batter off their spoons,
no one could have known that one day the candy-coating
would melt from their eyes to see their mother
for what she had done the last six years that now showed in her trembling hands, glossed vision, and a temperament that splashed into anger, flowed into melancholy as easily as she had found herself downing bleary bubbles at the brim of a precipiced fountain.
She was promised her very own message in a bottle, and this keep-sake

manifested in cousin Libby’s dreams, floating down a wine river
that gushed from the slashes in her mother’s wrists. Somehow I knew
these nightmares were born from warm and heady “sleep well”s
mumbled from across the darkest of rooms which held so many glass
ghouls with names and strengths so real, they even scared

my grandmother into silence as she stirred the pecan pie for Easter dinner. She offered to let me lick the spoon clean, but I simply
asked for straight sugar instead.

I am a dramatized china doll,
but I never rouge my knees.
The MC introduces me as Scarlett.
Lulu embraces me as we saunter
off the platform.  Whistles follow my footsteps
digging into my brain, fermenting,
to strong wine.

Gentlemen enter the club to leer
at cabaret girls dancing in lace.
Some are drawn to the boys of the club,
the ones in the dark corners with kohl-rimmed
eyes and eager kisses.
From their seats in the dimness, the audience
fails to notice rips in my blouse, cigarette
butts smudged out in the wings.  No one
sees the ***** face powder spread out
among the lighted mirrors, overused,
my own makeup dried out.
Their giggles and applause keep
the club alive, filled with dead
grins from dinner to dawn.
Drum roll—my turn.  
We rid them of their troubles.

Silent and alone, I flow through shops with so many
windows, but I see nothing except the faces around me, the ones
who might believe I'm more gossamer than the shawls and tunics
meant to disguise us all as ethereal hippies in the New Age.

Silent and alone, I stand by the fountain, waiting
for something to break the sleepiness of solitude when
two men spot me: mouths parted, eyes appraising, judging, appreciating my physical worth. Rooted in place, I smile.
Only when they look at me do I have purpose.

My friend Ana has many followers.
She feeds us promises and fills our dreams
when we cannot, will not, sate the cries
of our bodies because those are easy to hush
during the din of day, but not in the void,
night when

my friend Ana comes through a glowing
screen in the form of thigh gaps, community forum posts,
and calorie counting apps where our intake dwindles,
anticipating the moment we take in the waist of  our skirts
so maybe that boy with the blue-jean eyes notices
our size 0 because on a scale of 1 to 10, we don’t fit.

My friend Ana remains forever in our minds,
teaching us to listen to our inner strength as muscle tone
ebbs, seething when we reach for some bread, but loving
the sweat-drenched skin as we run nowhere on a treadmill that we believe leads to a salvation as perfect as the symmetry of ribs—

of cheekbones that jut out from a thin and beautiful face
which smiles at muted murmurs and falls as I look
in the mirror at bodies shaped so divine, you might see
premature grace because
Ana never dies.

More than one person remembers that day
as hot and tasting of catastrophe
in the flavor of airbag dust and gasoline.
We were talking as you drank your root beer.
Windows down. My shoes off…

4:02.
Your eyes widen
as metal screeches and the revving of engines
winds down, a man wearing sunglasses
yanks on my door, but it protrudes
into the cab. Another man takes you out —
shouts to me to move.  I can’t
find my shoes and my wallet is soaked.
Bystanders flock like they would at a circus
where a lion’s attacked his tamer.
Tears flow more freely than blood.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry. God, my fault spills
from my bruised lips until finally,
I collapse to the pavement like the fender
of the opposing Mercedes.  

I tried but failed to explain
that swerving the car to save you
meant near-death for me. Only after
regret and responsibility that crushed
my lungs faded, the way mascara dries,
did I acknowledge,
I am here.

In the aftermath, I lay across my adolescent
comforter in the faded spot, hoping to soak up any
remnants of a sun that refuses
to show its face today.

Raindrops stick to my window,
spattered from juvenile tyranny,
born out of temperamental
tempests that literally manifest
from nowhere. These are the tears

I wish I could cry, for even the sky
prays it could hide from the tumult.

I sit on our recliner,
Luna bar wrapper on the floor.
My robe is cinched
too tight, a reminder--
your fingers should meet
around my waist, but my ****
and *** should spill out of your palms
because defined curves and wiles
are the definition of a divine
woman worthy of insta-fame,
tumblr posts, and right
swipes.

I'll twist and turn and pose
in front of any mirror, desperate
for a flat-planed stomach and fuller
cleavage, the whole time
wondering if you look at me bent
over the bathroom counter, fixing my eyeliner,
and think that I'm a dime disguised
in a size 0 dress.

If my sides could shrink as fast
as my self-esteem, I'd never crunch
my abs into idealistic numbers again.

My mother orders a smaller size
for my leotard so I ***** in the gym
bathroom, in the last stall.
Later, I put on the outfit: small, shiny,
with cutouts for a fashion statement,
but I draw red circles around those patches
of flesh--mistakes to fix.

Every day in the car, Mom gives me a lunch
she packed: two rice cakes, peanut butter measured
to exactly one tablespoon, carrots and ranch dip.
Accepting her boundaries seems weak, so I never
eat at all, my only spot of control set against
the nightmare of a needle spinning around
numbers in a sickening game of roulette.

She kneels in front of the stage during
all eight routines that thinned me into a figure
worthy of her photos, immortalizing
me with vague curves, a slim face replacing
pink round cheeks--
but that was enough for my mom
because I know she sets the scale
five pounds above zero.
Inches disappeared, until that needle,
sharp like her eyes, aligned
with the big 85, causing mine to
open in a room with blank walls
and sterile-smelling sheets, the place
of rest.

I would not wake up to a war with flesh,
twisting and turning to pinch in a soft waist to lithe sinew.
Slim limbs and sharp clavicles—
my edges would cut deep.
Perfection; walking anywhere as a body
of art, letting everyone’s eyes peer through
me to sunlight, a curved heaven.

The women of my family have said that success
depends on matchstick legs and sleek hips that
insure a delicate beauty, seemingly effortless.
But if my smooth form fractures,
the weight swelling into weaknesses,
I would rather lay scattered as another’s
mess, so throw me down to the swift end.

My textbooks, propped between our knees,
I study how this became
our hot dates and the way I get to lean
on your chest makes me tingly,
shallow-breathed,
but I shift around
so you don’t feel my heart bumping in
between the stillness
of our bodies.

—stillness—

We lay in the same bed and actually sleep;
no squeezing fingers and searching
mouths, but at least our clothes stay on
and I don’t have to search for my nightgown
shoved under wrinkled
sheets, or worry
about ****** wrappers
stuck to my skin.

Finished with our club meetings
and fundraisers, we act like weekend
warriors, clinking bottles in half-lit
rooms, sliding around, laughing
in each other’s faces
and once we’ve smoked our stress
away, I place your hand
under the ruffles of my skirt and kiss
your neck, whispering
                                 I want you
Please touch me
                  I need you
but you put your lips
to my forehead, mumbling
that you’re tired and won’t keep it up
because you’re strung out
on Red Bull and Adderall, promising
we will tomorrow night.

I hang up after speaking to a high school friend,
the idea of change and the past few years against the present’s
current creates an overcast in my head, like the nights
I sit outside, searching for the moon.
I’ve found liberty lingers in the harsh smell
of lent cigarettes. It collects in a shot glass, shines
in the eyes of my best friend as 2 AM ticks out
the blame she harbors and my ongoing inadequacies

stemming from the need to please teachers
and parents, my peers, earning me the gentle title
of Class Peach, which held expectations like
amiability and persisting kindness too high
for me to knock off the shelf of reputation.
Academics pushed me, but books and poetry allowed
me to look through the keyhole, a world
where humanity rips off restraints to help
each other become free, encouraging the trip
along white and yellow lines leading to different places.

She drives along faded highway, not seeing, thinking,
following twin red guide-lights to 21 days from now,
10 months from now because it's so easy to get lost
in tunnel-vision future when a path reaches out ahead--

--and we can think we know where to go, seeing our dreams,
not thinking with our lives that feel so cold and blank on Sunday
nights when the looming no rest-9-5-help me-bills to pay doom rolls up behind, whispering in a voice born from anxiety...malevolence in her ear...

and yet

She drives along a back-lit highway, seeing, and believing, that the sun
rises on the other side of tomorrow.

He's always bought his heart's desires, the ATM his cupid.
Last week he sent a blank greeting card, check included.

My last memory of…you
I drove all the way through town, chain-smoking through half
my pack as I burned deep inside from stoking the ashed embers of a fire
I had attempted to smother before it burned us both out after it had licked

Its way up my whole body—

But I reveled in how it ate me from the
deepest
inside while I let the tobacco
consume the healthy volume of my lungs leaving me breathless which I prayed
would either make you notice the red in my cheeks
or make you worry about me
in contrast from the systematic silence that had deafened our
friendship and scarred
any possibility of our future, but
when I got there you told me to drop the habit so it didn’t linger in my hair.
You also pointed out where the butts had rubbed away my lipstick and with a look that made
me want to smack
you across the face, but
also crush your lips
with mine because it
deepened your gaze
and sharpened your jaw
instead I said I’d gladly put the rest on you. Your friends, the Miss Priss Brigade,
saw chipped nail polish and slightly dull skin and last summer’s leftovers and I knew

we’d never end up
unfiltered and imperfect in the barely industrialized studio flirtingly touching
and kissing and dreaming and enchanting ourselves with the what-ifs of a future
we saw through wine glasses worn

by teenagers who didn’t know love from illusion.

They warn us that fever travels in the air,
so women pull the shutters closed and keep
children out of the empty, heady streets.
Grandpa tries to assure me we are safe,
that yellow fever will stop when the ports
close. He never speaks of how the victims suffer,
shuts the curtains against my anxious eyes
as the bodies are removed, but rumors catch
the breezes, too.

Vomiting, bleeding from the nose and mouth,
the eyes yellow, and then victims reach out
in a last fit of delirium, demanding forgiveness
from God’s wrath as He turns them the sallow
shade of the September sun. This is the color
of a body when salvation fractures
from the depths of their souls.

Each day, the count of the dead rises.
My cousin, the milkman, a widow down the block—
all pass within hours. The Quakers deem
this the Almighty’s will, his “rod.” Physicians
bleed the sick, and I think not to rid them of disease,
but to account for sin.

We all hope for frost. I know Grandpa will not leave
the city, but I do not imagine his eyes yellowing,
for pride keeps them clear of exhaustion
and glaze from inviting liquor or laudanum.

My whole body sweats from dreams
of corpses the color of tobacco-stained teeth,
blood pouring from eyes like tears, each one dropping
to the ground. I wake up, dizzy in smeared-red sheets,
my nightgown smelling like a mausoleum, but I do not
call for help because I’ve been waiting to look
into the face of God, to see my yellowed city’s reflection.

Every single time we go to your car to light up a cap or a bowl
that never leaves us with nothing, we can feel something, even if it’s just the stinging in our fingertips as we draw ships and cats
on the windows, convinced we could make masterpieces
if we really wanted to. When we finally gather enough ambition to move inside, I sit on a couch somewhere and think about how my life
has led to a moment like this and I question every insecurity, every decision, and every conviction, but I just can’t get over how nice
it would be to taste cake or cream cheese bagels right now
and eventually we end up watching the same shows with the same people who make the same mistakes every single episode and it really does remind me of that video you showed
me with the disturbing sitcom theme song that never ended,
and that’s what this night is all about.

Disregard my silent replies, I’m listening,
I just keep staring in the mirror and wondering if lacquered eyes
and lazy expressions are what you think looks good
on me because whenever you look at me, I try to focus on your face before you kiss over my ribs and I take my socks off
because there’s safety in socks and maybe that’s why we feel
such a devastation when they can’t be found. I’ve lost mine in your
room and I think maybe that stands for something, but here’s the thing:
I just don’t understand why everything you do makes me so nervous.

We leave the biting winter winds to bully
the landscape, the cracked leaves
and stark trees are pushed and shoved,
but we lay in our too-small bed huddled
not for physical warmth, but to welcome
heat from another because at times this union
rises above the praise we offer to the summer sun.

My mind, racing at all the future events that wait
for me, anticipating questions I’ve never known
to ask, conjures flowery images, the two lovers
separated by the whim of the gods, yet
conjoined from an inexplicable desire even
in the dark which sprung from fear and cursed
them into a blind-love.

As I form to your body, I realize,
that as your lips gently find mine over
and over again while you dream of things
I only wish to know, love does not demand
irrefutable brilliance.

Faceless patients forgetting their patience
How does this computer work?

My summers spent idle:
Pool by day, Netflix by night

But I crawl into bed at 9
That's not right.

A proud emblem of fabricated fatherhood:
"My daughter and my money go to Lycoming College"
Bumper stickers show the love.

A certain softness
swirls in the shallow toffee-colored
coffee, and as I squint against
the 8 AM fluorescence, I wish I could be
drowning in the depths of your eyes instead.

When I fall for a guy
it's like
doing ******.

Barely eating
because he turns
my stomach inside
out
when he kisses me
with tongue (and he knows it).

Restless sleeping
because I hear
my skin begging
him to touch me (and he knows it).

I trace lustful
track marks,
reveling in the ravaged
fallout
but ignoring

the dark hollows
under my eyes
and ribs poking out
from crop tops--
they don't bother me

so naturally

my friends give
a full length Ted Talk
on "Being Independent:
Don't Get Attached and
Give Him Everything He Wants 101"

Family doesn't even ask
but tell me he's not
good
enough,
handing out cryptic warnings
like condoms from the RA
that isn't worth listening to.

So naturally

I ruin their interventions
with sleepover
sexcapades that not
even a wine-drunk
binge can fool
me into thinking is real.

His pretty words whispered
into my ear
are needles
into my arm--facilitating
illusions that are
just
delusions.

For My Cousin Jason*

I hide behind the shed in my backyard hoping to smoke
long, lingering grief away, imagining how you float
among back-lit clouds because I refuse
to remember how your body must have flung
into our grandparents' mint-rimmed pool that you claimed
was a sanctuary, I couldn't have believed the coroner's
conclusion, judging the crack in your skull--

            a suicide.

5:37 AM. Your mom found you face down, surrounded
by strange black waters--

           your blood

in barely-there morning sun, making us wonder
why you chose a late night swim to clear your hazy
brain where ship-wrecked joy drifted to the unperturbed
floor of a soul too weak to surface from hideous ocean-sized distortions we never would have found within lined-spine
daydream books of childhood. Even then I knew

          escapes

were your thing: and I wish I had sent a makeshift summer
reading list or voiced some pep talks when I had writer's block
at two in the morning because then I'd know if you wanted
to find your grave in a shallow end.

TRIGGER WARNING


I lay awake at night, reflecting on the way your lips feel on mine,
but like a reflex I compare them to the many pairs I’ve felt in many places, how some lingered over my goosebumps, maybe to try and turn that feelinginto lyrics, I don’t know, while others bruised and pushed, too starved of faded
love pangs that the only pleasure was to fill *something—
But one pair tugged and burned across the delicate paleness of parts not meant for him, stinging red from fingers that squeezed with fight and pulled with rage and scratched with a greed that blocked any thread of humanity from a woman’s fear.
His arms created no protective cage around me because he never desired to have me but to hold and pry my legs to take a barely blossomed womanhood waiting for that boy on that bed listening to that song
but teeth bit into my flesh offering no promise of soft, loving nips meant to excite the blood that should have flowed sweetly through my heart instead of pumping so hard it drowned
out my broken no’s as they quieted and died.
I noticed how his lungs labored with power as he finally burdened me,
shamed me with his need, but I realized later even if his eyes had locked with mine, nothing of his liveliness, nothing of his friendship would have lingered there. Going home, the jeep clanked and wheezed, sounding as used as my folds felt—but then he told me,
“I gotta fix that”
The dark corner of my mind rasped that he didn’t mean the tears of my skin or the abandoned pieces of my trust, never to be molded together again, not even by you.

Talking to my God
mutes the background of worldly idolatries,
voices that whisper of fear and hate and jealousy
and box me in until I’m stuck
in a dark corner of my ghoul-filled soul,
but the light that gleams from my heart
up to my closed lids finds me
walking on water to answer the call of the Lord,
for I cannot drown in the river of my sorrows
when He raises my chin and shows me the way
to an eternal place that will lift my spirit
if I raise my hands in worship.
I’d rather ask forgiveness
from that Savior in the Sky who listens to a sinner’s
valley-ramblings than shun the thirst for hope in this world,
even if it means chasing pride with holy water.

Talking to my God,
and the praise pours out, smoother
than the oil that blessed me as I stood
before my friend, our heads bowing
not from the shame that men forced upon us,
the lights we’ve lost and the suffering that broke us,
but from a conviction that resides in our hearts:
*Let us love one another, for love is from God.

From the start, I easily forgot
differences, like miles and years.
My mind played your smiles on repeat.
The countdown to our union dragged,
but looking into your sunburst
blue eyes lit me up like kindling.

Typed words transmute me—
pretty wrappings thrown away
to reveal mirrors warped
by my insecurities and a hasty
decision brought a voice that softens
into 3 AM, half-laughs when
my cheeks flush
under your warm palms.

My mind splits half and half
for ends and beginnings.
I shove the bowling pin
from our first date, given
to us with our names in grand,
black letters, to the back
of the closet, listening
to “The Show Goes On”
to weld back together.

He stares at the whizzing blades above the bed,
recalling each face during moonlight hours—
civilians twitching with each bullet as they slam
into walls, finally trapped.
His hands, trembling, remain bare
but the faint iron odor sits under his nose, unmoving
since 1967 in Dak Son.

Defeated cries pierce the early morning silence
in the village.  A baby whimpers next to the body
of his mother. Women’s feet pound against gray dirt,
an anthem for the safety of children.

He visits fallen brothers, squinting
at endless rows of gravestones.
The villagers all lie together.

I half sing, half hum a slow melody
to myself as I strip down my face,
leaving only freckles and pores to match
plain child eyes.

Strong, warm arms encircle my waist
as I dry my face. You nestle your cheek
against my neck and shoulder, making goosebumps
where your scruff catches my skin.

Surprised, I listen hard to hear you mumble
“I love you” and sigh as your nose runs along
my collarbone, telling my skin that I smell
so good.

My mind turns fuzzy because it’s hard to fathom
this moment that’s a recreation of some sappy
young adult romance novel. But right now
I know you adore me, made up doll eyes
and airbrushed skin or not.

Driving past your house reminds me of how different
our lives are now, so far from the summer evenings
where we drank your brother’s Yuengling and watched
people walk by the abandoned building from the dance studio
of that free time we lusted after,

that moment I lusted after.
Our lips, pressed hard, too frantic from time lost,
built up for months, wanting, and night walks
through the hushed neighborhood, moving parallel,
knowing someday we might cross,

throwing clothes aside, stale breadcrumbs
of my relationship guiding us to your bed, stripping
me down to my soul as your mouth whispered my name
down my neck, I-love-yous across my chest
as if they wouldn’t dry up

like the rust-colored roses you bought before I left
for school that stayed at home because flowers
can’t survive in a dorm without the love that brought
them up from the soil.

I wake up and feel death
in the room, sitting and waiting--
the day-owl that hoots
when the sun blazes to every corner
of my mind, taking away
my senses so that time passes,
circling back around itself, as the cold
serpent taking over my body
and saving my head for last.

Beast nature bellows a fit
out of me, my cold hands throwing
objects in reach and the screaming
pierces through my heated brain
with smooth, sharp talons

until I wake up with a face
over me. Not an angel, but not
a demon because the eyes
have goodness spinning in them--
like a light swaying over above,
telling me to follow it. I do,
across cold plains where dark things
curl up and hide against their own hell,
for evil has fear of itself.

Across smooth ground that lets me fly
until I am at rest with a slow heart
that thumps too hard for every
conviction it cannot say to those
that swirled inside.

Do you still recognize the colors
in my hair when the sun hits it just right?

Can you sense the differences of the perfumes
I wear every day, shuffling them to see
which one lures you in to my wrists, my neck,
my chest?

Have you thought about how my body,
my passion, my needs changed from before
to after you’ve felt all of me, knew all of me?

Will you remember all the details of me every
single day and see that they’re right next to you
from the moment you wake to the last fluttering
of lids before you sleep?