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Apr 2016 · 601
Saudade.
brooke Apr 2016
Saudade.
we're whipping through the backroads
without seat belts, kicking up the dust--
the Sangre De Cristos looming with chalky
crowns above the hills, riddled with fence
posts and battered lean-tos, homes with
green shingles and matching john deere
tractors--the mountains, the mountains.

you go around every corner like it's a straightaway
I still see you smiling at me through locked doors
cradling me like a baby bird and hoping I might
throw caution out when all around your heart
there's these warning signs on big yellow placards
glinting in the night.

there are a dozen thoughts, all equally crippling--
staggered images of you squinting up at me on
the hill above the barn in that wrinkled white t-shirt,
a gray murdoch's hat pushed high up on your forehead,
hip cocked out with your hands twitching at your sides
rubbing brake fluid between your fingers

brooke, it is pointless to you. That's so obvious to me.
they tell you to stay down when shot, play dead when
in danger, but i've been seeking solace in your neck
trying to keep myself from telling you that  I love you, feeling
it at the back of my lips ready to spill over, overcome
by your gentleness, asking God why, why can't I just
love him?


it's so obvious to you? that i've spent a  month telling myself that it's okay, that you're right, that you're harmless, that things can work
out, so pointless goes on ringing in my ears, clattering down the
airways into my heart where i love you still hangs loosely by a
thread, or maybe a rope, maybe an industrial wire ready to bring
the house down with its weight, a marble for each day, a stone, a
boulder.

county road 255 seems a whole lot shorter,
I'm preoccupied with the dry shrubs the color of verdigris, the color
of your laugh,  how i can't see through the tangle of my own emotions, how i really do want you to be the one, the one person that just happens to be right--it's so obvious, you said.

so obvious.
Saudade: (portuguese)  a deep emotional state of melancholic longing for a person or thing that is absent, or soon will be.

(c) Brooke Otto 2016


today really ******.
Continue reading...
Apr 2016 · 400
Apples in Bulk.
brooke Apr 2016
Apples in Bulk.
I've been twisting apple
stems hoping to come up
on your name, but i've
seen it written every
where else.
(c) Brooke Otto 2016

true story.
Continue reading...
Mar 2016 · 648
Calving Barn.
brooke Mar 2016
Calving Barn.
you weave through the heifers with your arms out,
palms down, barely sweeping your fingers across their
hides as if you were gliding them along grains
of wheat or stalks of tall grass, with careful footsteps
as if only you know the way through the hay and straw
(the way you look at me says that there's a difference)

sometime at one or two am you are out walking among them
again, and they all rise with their burdened bodies, swishing
their tails and swaying from side to side with their engorged
bellies, softly groaning and parting. You are some sort of holy
man, they're smart, they know when to move, you say. But
I think differently, there's something in your body--a gentleness
that emanates softly, a warm light that cuts the denim coats and
steel-toed boots, you're hard but your voice comes out in this
southern sing-song that makes my chest ache, ears red and a
laugh as rare as normal midwest weather.

you don't mind, do you? and you fall into the recliner next to me
It doesn't feel the least bit wrong to sleep next to you, doesn't feel the
least bit right to let you do it because i can feel your heart swelling
through your carhartt, don't like to look at you when you're
leaning into the side door, because the sun does you some sort of
righteous justice, spilling into your irises--streaking through your
lips when you speak as if ending every sentence with I dunno is the gospel itself.


just let me know when you make up your mind
the inconsistency of it all doesn't fall on you, I realize,
once again choking on my own insufferable selfishness
not brave enough to make the right decisions (probably)
convincing myself that things can just work out as if
the most wrinkled material doesn't need an iron, needs some steam
needs more than that's just the way I am, this is just the way
you are, and here I am tortured by the thought of telling you
to shut up, how can you have pricked my heart and
still be
So far
Away
I've been hurting lately.


(c) Brooke Otto 2016
Continue reading...
Mar 2016 · 504
on loving god.
brooke Mar 2016
on loving god.
this is a love letter to my body.



this isn't a love letter to my body
because I so often hear people say that i
am a spirit with a simple packaging, someone
naturally without form but capable of so much
splendor.

they say love the skin you're in, but I say love
the spirit, hiding.  Love the spirit who came
to these fingers and said yes, who took
residence in those legs and cried out in
joy, who found richness in a gift without
precedent, love the spirit that reached
out with itself and grew a soul in
a shell, where you thought no roots
could gather, where you doubted the
integrity of a creator's hand,

Love the spirit, sitting here. A warm whisper
of a girl pulsing in the spotlight, who never
asked for your blame, for your guilt and
headstone, for the things you said when
you were mad, or the disgusted turn in
the mirror when dissatisfied with the
the coat for a never-ending winter
the vessel for without
she might seep into the very
earth and cease, be raw as
a blister against the wind
and seek shelter against
the other realms--

love the spirit, here.  Because
though the lights are dim and
the tunnel is long, train tracks
need a destination and birds
never fly without a place to
land.

love the spirit, here.
love the spirit here.
(c) Brooke Otto 2016

this has been in my drafts for a while.

written september 17th, 2015.
Continue reading...
Mar 2016 · 565
He says I'm a clean mirror.
brooke Mar 2016
He says I'm a clean mirror.
you're so brittle
sometimes I feel stronger than that
but you make me seem like some
stained glass window in the belltower
of a church, you don't want to touch me
for the sake of a metaphor you heard once--
but I won't collect dust on your mantle
to satisfy your mirror tropes and sweet,
sweet, nothings.

that's exactly what they are, right? more than
once i've peeled back the ***** of a wound just
to make a point, to emphasize a passion, only to be met
with *is that any way to live? As if you were accosting me
in the street for the birds in the trees or dirt in the cracks
as if you were saying is that any way to be you?
I don't know, is it? Bare your heart! you tell me,
and I do, I bear it.
(c) Brooke Otto 2016


this was supposed to be longer.
Continue reading...
Mar 2016 · 556
Yellow, so Yellow.
brooke Mar 2016
Yellow, so Yellow.
you gave me a list of everyone
you'd kissed, not arbitrarily--
I'd asked. The way you ask
where the bathroom is or
for a glass of water, but
you sent me a full directory
of names, a rolling file of
women I didn't know but
would rake through the
similarities and try to define
your tastes, blonde, blonde...
blonde

When I asked you how many
people you had slept with, I was
lying on the floor picking at the red
threads in my carpet while you rolled
your heavy palms into my shoulders.
you stilled for a moment, sliding down
to the base of my hips

I dunno...five? Or ten...
I laughed and you loosened.
Well, I mean...define sleeping with.


to me there are not many definitions for
one thing, there are synonyms for *** but
none of them you really need

Just four, then.

What happened to the other six? Were they only
kind-of-sort-of's? if you didn't really feel them, did they ever exist?
if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around hear it, did you really sleep with her?

Later on you would casually mention that you were worried that's how I really kissed as if a peck could dictate a whole eight years of
kissing--and I was kind of offended. But then there's that list, the list of
all the trees in the forest that fell and the six that went missing and i think about how I can count the number of people i've slept with on
my pointer finger and how perhaps that doesn't even apply, do you pump gas for twenty seconds before the girls at the counter start crying?

suddenly there are experiences that you
have stamped into your belt and none where i've pretended to be
full of lusts and talents and shortcomings
really I'm just a baby, a wisp of cotton
yellow, so yellow
and you're a full bag of burlap and wire
(c) Brooke Otto 2016

this poem is a mess but I don't feel like spending more than ten minutes on it.
Continue reading...
Mar 2016 · 610
unboxed.
brooke Mar 2016
unboxed.
we are encouraged to be light
but I beseech you to be heavy--
with your skin and hair and every
bone, with your gossamery soul--
a soul that could sink ships,

be heavy, you are much.
I've been keeping a small journal to log stanzas i think of while out and about.

(c) Brooke Otto 2016
Continue reading...
Mar 2016 · 608
Crab Wontons.
brooke Mar 2016
Crab Wontons.
maybe i got caught up in that rustic
devil-may-care way that you leaned
on any counter, how the hot oil from
your grandmother's pans shot up and
flecked across the posterior of your
hand and you didn't even flinch, just
sort of sighed through your teeth
and how I spent the few seconds after
that wishing I could press myself against
your back because you are so solid.
But I digress, because I've learned that
idolizing people is a mess of self-inflicted
palsies

Nevertheless, my affinity for compounding
problems manifests in my lack of willpower,
in your forearms that are like thick bristlecone pine
branches, dry and scarred with your
obstinance--

and when you would go to wash your
hands, you'd roll your sleeves in
this rough, intensely **** manner
with your hip pushed up against
the lip of my sink, working the
dirt out of your knuckles.
So as you kneaded your fingers
back and forth; your Venke's
pulsing, I found myself to
be too hungry for you,
for this

I've never been around so much
man,  so much cord and bark
i've never touched a person and
not felt like I was going to slip
through them like some spectral
being, like their spine would
give way before they bend in
two around my palm, barely
grounded by their own
body weight.
The difference is (was?) that
you feel so full, so stalwart
and



(I got to thinking; maybe I wasn't ready.
Because for all your worth, all your
redeemable qualities, I'd cashed in on
the way you made me feel when
I hadn't for so long and that's not
the way I want to,
Not the way I
Want to
Not the
Way )
and we are

(c) Brooke Otto 2016

i wanted to leave this in my drafts but here it is.

written to Death Row by Jimi Charles Moody, definitely sets the mood if you're interested.
Continue reading...
Mar 2016 · 435
the life of
brooke Mar 2016
the life of
how exhausting to
fall   in   love   with
e  v  e  r  y  o  n  e
to be wrenched in
fifths    and    sixths
to say you could but
know you c  a  n  '  t
and     rushout     the
way fools rush     in
your hair leaves a flick
in the door frame before
the house comes down
in your wake, and your
lungs catch the heat,
billow up on the cliff
side, giant sails that
bring you elsewhere
that take you far away
from the choices you
don't want to make.
Written January 30th, otherwise known as the beginning.

(c) Brooke Otto 2016
Continue reading...
Mar 2016 · 572
Hylaophora cecropia, Part II
brooke Mar 2016
Hylaophora cecropia, Part II
underneath the nylon blanket I got the
impression that your hands were
these beautiful, shadowy, cecropia moths
reticent with their intentions, while they sat
idly on your ribcage before seeking out warmer
bases. My back, my thigh, my hipbone that wasn't
connected, you whispered.

You smell like cologne and beer; warm and perfumey,
faintly sweet.  I wonder if I'm still tipsy, that was over an hour ago,
over an hour ago when I had to focus on my words
to make sure they came out in pieces and not viscous liquids
thick and sugary. I imagined gems hanging from my lips,
gems hanging from my lips and letters bubbling past
them.

you keep pulling down my shirt like a curtain, derisive of your
own actions, only to find that you have yet to prove yourself
and rock my thigh into yours which was perhaps too zealous.
Too zealous, I think, nonetheless quickened by your thumb
brushing the underwire of my bra.  I laugh because we are far
too juvenile. Here I am protecting the sanctity found in patience
and yet you've evaded the rules.

all this touching and we haven't even kissed, I say, which wasn't really an invitation, but then we are and i am breathing all of you
in sweet staccato breaths, tugging at your skin and still doing the
guesswork, still trying to pin down your wings like a true lepidopterist
all the while knowing that butterflies on cork-boards are usually
dead.
That last bit was surprising to me, too.
is this poem done? who knows.
(c) Brooke Otto 2016
Continue reading...
Mar 2016 · 549
Quaking Snapshots: Act III
brooke Mar 2016
Quaking Snapshots: Act III
Queen of the fallen tree and the gneiss ridden
shore, ruling over an empire of celadon
moss and early spring waters, you stand off
to the west (of me) and i see your breath shift
over your lip and dissipate in loose tendrils against
the evening sun

I catch him staring up at the trees arced over
our heads with a strange boyish grin,
this is sorta what I imagine my life to look like he says
all this **** in the way and then beyond that it's clear.
He wipes his hand across the sky as if to illustrate the
supposed clarity beyond the tangle of branches.  I am startled,
I meet his gaze briefly and nod because
if not a mess or entanglement, what better way to
describe the way I feel than to elude to the bracken
and brushwood ?

Out across a wire fence, deer gather quietly and stand
stock-still as we pass, aloof if not for their big inquiring eyes
watching us smirk and bump shoulders because
we don't know how else to be close (I already tried my tricks).
But he surprises me now and again with his gregariousness
with a determination to get to but an equal pleasure in
idling, in stillness, in gliding across my instep, performing
quick studies on my nails or briefly succumbing to the shadow
beneath my collarbone--

Quite arbitrarily, i ask for his pocket knife
but it's him that carves our initials into the
snarl at my feet, his hood pulled close
around his neck as he sets to work
Bis now with those hands that
have been kilned and slipped
with engobe, I am stirred
stirred
stirred
and
awake
awake
and
afraid.
February 25th

(c) Brooke Otto 2016
Continue reading...
Feb 2016 · 991
Swedish Stroke & Venation Patterns: Act II, Scene ii
brooke Feb 2016
Swedish Stroke & Venation Patterns: Act II, Scene ii
we were laying on the floor talking
about your perpetually ***** hands,
stained from rusty machinery, and I got
to thinking that they looked an awful
lot like terra sigillata, or marmalade
or yams or tulip poplar honey--
waxy, with a glazed finish

you brush your left thumb down my pinky
and comment on the thinness of my skin
(unsurprisingly) I mean, look at my hands! you say
and I do and you're right, your hands
are like slabs of green wood--in fact
your whole body seems like some sort
of pliable tree trunk but I don't say this
because we've lapsed into a silence or
an otherwise conveniently synchronized
thought that has billowed up around our
hips until our arms are overlapped and
extended like a petiole of our bodies with
my palm cradled in yours like some aeriform body,
birdlike and gentle. You're tracing those lines like they
mean something.
Like they
mean something to you.

you have to understand that I am too often
inside myself, awash on a shore, grown into
the sand like a clam, experiencing solitude
through a shell, keeping at bay on the bay
sending prayers up like signal flares
pumped up into the sky, silent on
the horizon, loud from in here,
so when I tentatively thread my
fingers through your hair, know
that I do so in supreme intimacy
because words supposedly say
the most (depending on who
you're talking to) but my
hands are a different language
a different place, a different time
a company of dissarranged thoughts
and emotions, rippling and swelling
trying to make sense of being touched

so

softly
(c) Brooke Otto 2016


deep, deep breaths.
Continue reading...
Feb 2016 · 518
Earthenware: Act II
brooke Feb 2016
Earthenware: Act II
on the way to wetmore, I find myself
watching his hands, whose movements appear
sheltered but warm, tortoise-shelled and dipped
in metallic sod; look like the surface of a leather-hard
***,  mottled with molasses spots and inlaid with
the rivulets of earthen gold and chalk--


i can't find my heart here, on the truck bed
where my eyelashes cast too big of a shadow
on his face but i'm still savoring the fine lines,
the heat that builds where plates meet or craters
settle--we've collected here as though on slopes
(inclined to meet one another)

slid shoulder to shoulder, wound up in icy whispers
put under consideration by the stars, up for debate in
the heavens, already settled before the dawn of time
just waiting on the answers, holding reins on hearts
taking it slow


taking it slow






taking it slow
(c) Brooke Otto 2016

this sounds better when I read it out loud.
Continue reading...
Feb 2016 · 470
North And South States: Act I
brooke Feb 2016
North And South States: Act I
no one tells you what the strain is like
when you know you're waiting but the
when is questionable and the who is for certain
when you want to stay frozen because without
a leader you know not where the ice cracks
but just how to crack it--with your heavy feet
and sand-laden spirit, with a body drained
down to the dregs, so hopeless and inconsequential
an existence in the flesh.

I mean to say that nobody tells you what the strain
is like--to be plagued by the notion that your choices
put a spin on people, a timer on chances, a could-he-be
would-he-be play in a hundred acts in which girl
sleeps with his sweater while simultaneously
managing to hate herself because she can't actually
see herself with him, hugs him with a hand slid
meticulously over his chest as he turns away
scared to death of the inner monologues that
begin with "I will hurt you..." and end with

maybe
if i just
s  t  a  y
a w a y
(c) Brooke Otto 2016

a peek into
Continue reading...
Feb 2016 · 1.2k
Ebb, Flow, Esau's Ankle.
brooke Feb 2016
Ebb, Flow, Esau's Ankle.
When I read about the brachial plexus,
a spaghetti junction of nerves webbed
behind the clavicle, I am d  i  s  t  a  n  t
half awake and dreaming about lovers
caught up in the mystics of medulla,
gingerly pinching the tendons and
sinewy muscle--

I consider the thick arteries (perhaps not
so thick) (not like other trunks, cords and
red threads) and how easily I could die,
how swollen 'tunnels' and blocked interstate
highways seem not so far fetched according to
medical terminology and the number of things
that could go wrong ( will ) as Murphy warned.

yet here I am, alive and well, a celestial giant
housing stars and all a manner of great, lumbering
structures, pith, and blood.
(c) Brooke Otto 2016

inspired by the Adventures in Human Being by Gavin Francis. A book I highly recommend, especially to you, cd.
Continue reading...
Feb 2016 · 558
Deep-Rooted.
brooke Feb 2016
Deep-Rooted.
there's a dale as you're entering
El Paso County where my fingers
feel heavy and my arms take on a
distant memory, a spirit dug into
the highway that radiates the way
the land does in Mailuu-Suu or Sellafield
because in this valley the rocks are coquelicot
and the trees gasp from snowy outcrops
in a tender, pleading kind of way--
so much so that I want to reach out
and thread through their weeds--a
demand so visceral that I feel the
pine brush on my palms and the
bark scrape skin from my forearms
but
then

the valley opens with it's shaved hills
and pulls back in the rear view mirrors
where its memories don't reach.
(c) Brooke Otto 2016


true story.
Continue reading...
Jan 2016 · 621
Otherwhere
brooke Jan 2016
Otherwhere
do your hair up all pretty like
for those of us that are sure the world
can see our fly-aways, just fly away
our cuticles aren't healed enough
from nights spent jamming our
hands in between the rough *****
and city junctions, telephone wires
hooked to our skin because we're
just fish to greater demons

but

when you hear your old selves
discuss their polarities and crack
the mirror with spiritual hits it's
best to talk them off the ledge
that faint precipice in the distance
where they linger and stare too
long at the other sides, the other wheres
otherwhys and othertheres
see the green grass in other hells
but you tell them that
there's no place like
the here and
now

the here
and now.
(c) Brooke Otto 2016

on a day when I was struggling with myself.
Continue reading...
Jan 2016 · 579
plasmapheresis.
brooke Jan 2016
plasmapheresis.
i feel like a medley of bloods
of non-favorites and choices
left undecided, all corners and
edges--a heart beating in sheets
of rain where the freshet of my spirit
has ravaged the banks and driven
bones from this ossuary.

that leaves something to be said
about the state of greater things--
of the things i've left frozen that
melt in torrents and wash away
this facade of placidity, this
supposed contingency plan
swept away in a deluge of
all-the-things-i-had-going-for-me
and the worst of it is that i have
not yet been drained, I am still
raging, still raw and
r a g    i    n g
(c) Brooke Otto 2016


plasmapheresis is the removal, treatment, and return of (components of) blood plasma from blood circulation
Continue reading...
Jan 2016 · 466
beat beat
brooke Jan 2016
beat beat
he says he's an open
book but

why bother with
a heartbeat I can
hardly hear
inspired by misheard lyrics.

(c) Brooke Otto 2016
Continue reading...
Jan 2016 · 548
Cleaning an Old Place.
brooke Jan 2016
Cleaning an Old Place.
i was beneath the bed
listening to the in-out
thinking about how we
all take the air differently
when josh came with the cold
outside and drunkenly mistook
me for Christina, found his unusual
place and passed out  in stiff shadows,
smelling faintly of fireball cinnamon whisky--

plenty of moments reserved for sinking
or abandoning ship, receding into that quiet
place, hungry for a will and a way

when matthias finds me ransacking the
kitchen cabinets, i am rattling the underground
Seattle with a clorox induced vengeance
because i only seem to find peace in leaving
an old place clean, running my fingers through
jello shots that have disintegrated sometime in
the 3 am when for a few minutes we must
have all been asleep.

( all            the             while              Adele   )
hums in the background--a languid Hello
solemnly stitching itself into my memory
something to later hold dear, some fragment
of an adolescence that was realized on this
night, when I was removed from the place
beneath the bed, stolen from the house
dreaming that I was found inside
the mouths of strangers that
passed alongside Boylston
with their misshapen bodies
coiled in streamers and
various liquors

so when i return at 7 am
still wide awake and waiting
I examine my ******* in the
foggy mirror of the bathroom
before taking what I would
endearingly refer to as the
dirtiest shower off my life---
how could such a thing
be so? I'm curious myself.

I've spent two weeks cleaning an old place.
I started this on the 1st. I've been anxious to finish it but still can't quite find the words. A poem on learning that that old things you long for should be left where they were.


(c) Brooke Otto 2016
Continue reading...
Dec 2015 · 816
Caesura.
brooke Dec 2015
Caesura.
ode to the flower next to belladonna
the trees on south-facing mountain slopes
silently musing into the nights and not
the avalanche's daughter whom the hills
sing praises and woes

her soul's a quiet unison, meno mosso
a choir and composer spun through
***** pipes, doors cracked and never
fully closed, (there's light beneath the
lids...) she'd like to think of herself as
the wind but she's content as still air
between prayer beads--

and if not the star dust--then who? why else
do we call pauses rests? Why then is there
beauty in fermattas? In crescendos that vibrate
the material of the immaterial--if such things
happened to be true for the unwild and untangled
the perpetually pianissimo, the leading and kerning--
because she would much rather be an empty vessel
or a plate without food, a seed or a grape on a vine
because neither go without lords or masters and

she is not her own.
it's been a while.

(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Dec 2015 · 523
smart.
brooke Dec 2015
smart.
today analeigh gave
a single fragile blink
before bursting into
tears--I've never seen
a child cry.


I've seen children cry.
but from a distance, across
the counter, in the aisle over.
I've seen hundreds of scrunched
faces and balled fists, dozens of
raised voices dismissed in popular
clutter but

when she dipped her head and fell
between the cracks, lost in between
vowels and performance orientation
before I could catch the things that
had been said and suddenly
i was aching, welling, raging
holding--tucking little strands
of wet hair behind blushing ears
and my voice was new and not
mine--soft and assuring
no, no, sweet girl

you are so smart
breaking a bit
for a baby
folded into
social constructs

she cried
and I broke
for her.
You are so, so smart, sweet girl.

(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Nov 2015 · 461
Nocuous.
brooke Nov 2015
Nocuous.
my inner thighs are
sewn with phosphorous
and I jump for men
I don't know.
I have things to say but I have writer's block.
Continue reading...
Nov 2015 · 652
Shucked.
brooke Nov 2015
Shucked.
conversations with paul are a one
way street, an play in a single act
between himself and a shadow (me):


in which Actor tells Actress he loves
her and then watches as her feet burn
holes into the stage and sink beneath
the floorboards, while he dons purple
prose and begins to blame your fire
for the forests he's burned with
his hot breaths and angry manuscripts

and the guilt he peddles is contagious
it wets through your layers to dillute
your kindness, your sorries, your innate
empathy for people in pain and when
he's not here, he's whetting his words
and staking them in your soft soil
in the middle of the night while
you lay unaware but dream
that a thief sweeps through
your garden and uproots
the best and most purposeful
foilage, unguarded even by
the moonlight because
such a thing could not
disguise a lack of a
a person.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

I'm not sure if this is complete.
Continue reading...
Oct 2015 · 657
Brittle Anger.
brooke Oct 2015
Brittle Anger.
a voice said all low
and soft like a seed
not b e f o r e buried
but         found take
c o m f o r t  in  your
lowliness and when
i left  the spirit of God
stirred in the street
and moved amongst
the cottonwoods so
much like the brittle
trees that guard my
heart and shook the
leaves    from     my
branches--not at all
overdue

not at all
overdue.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

#god #romans
Continue reading...
Oct 2015 · 862
Unknown Pastel #3
brooke Oct 2015
Unknown Pastel #3
all the lights were out with the
exception of one orange creme
porch light weakly splayed through
the sliding glass door and it made
your face look like the purest
pastel I've ever seen in my life--
a-not-quite-brown but not-quite-yellow
and it moved across your lips when you
spoke, touched your tongue when you
paused and looked good on everyone on
the 1st floor of your parent's house
probably because i was delirious
and your dad had just driven 3 hours
in new years traffic to come pick us up
in downtown Seattle after your car took
its last breaths and we lost Joe as a friend for
the next
two years.


today
i finished the diary I started
on January 1st, 2014 at your
house before anyone was up
and I had fallen asleep in the
chunky gold necklace from
the night before, tucked into
the couch with my feet stuffed
beneath Brett's thighs, listening
to her voice--and Christina's and
Josh's and also my own startling
contributions in rhythmic breathing--
at some point you whispered that I was
sleeping (only half-true) because this
particular moment was insignificant
but happens to be one of the only things
i remember


that pastel color and making tea
the next morning wondering how
far away i'd be in ten seconds
and here I am,


here i am.
word *****.

(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Oct 2015 · 522
Still Angry.
brooke Oct 2015
Still Angry.
chatter downwind fills
up the glass baubles strung
from the ceiling and Zak
shifts back and forth
older and yellower,
still angry as ever
but Kynlee softens
him with her wide
eyes and inquiring
gaze, one leg to the
next, a sudden raucous
behind the white paned
doors, but the crickets
find their way back
into the hum--
Sometimes it just gets to be too much
he says, and we both look across the
way where a sliver of his wife can be
seen in the evening glow--
and I don't answer him
because we are no longer
children with a response
for everything, or teenagers
with an affinity for bragging
two adults with financed metabolisms
and organized problems

more chatter, a bit of song.
I am the last unmarried sibling.
I loll back on my heels and press
in to the quick air between us
yeah, I say.    


*yeah.
on growing up and being quiet.

(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Oct 2015 · 478
Stationed in the Clouds.
brooke Oct 2015
Stationed in the Clouds.
our friendship has always been
platonically stitched, with letters
that start with I was thinking about you today
and could probably end with can I just hold your hand?
maybe to feel its warmth or be close to another human when
we're both so far from romantic assurances--bothered by neither
departures or the static created by bodies nearly touching. If one
were to use the other it would go both ways, kisses, while inherently
affectionate might just be to feel lips on lips the way grade-schoolers do



but we have known each other for years with gaps, and if you asked
me to be completely honest, I would. But to broach this would mean
relinquishing the rights to such sincerity--something only you or I
have the power to do. And I

prefer it this way.
never having held
your hand but knowing
if I asked, you'd say yes.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

the only platonic thing I've ever known.
Continue reading...
Oct 2015 · 459
Diatribe.
brooke Oct 2015
Diatribe.
the
girls at the counter have
called me beautiful closely
followed by it's disgusting
meant as an endearment, but
i feel every letter sink into
my heels, like sharp rocks
on the islands down by
the Arkansas--the ones
you don't expect that
your flesh rolls over,
smarting in the late
summer fuzz---but I've
always felt this way, like
rolls and wetness, curls and
clumps of mud sacked and
tied onto my joints, buried
by the sound of my own
laughter with a headstone
reading couldn't love herself
enough, rest in pieces.

God, I hate girls like you
zipped up with a smile and
punctuated by a hearty
chuckle--just kidding
yeah, me too.
because I
used to be the
wallweed who
was too forward
with her affections
unlearned the art of
grace--on how to say
thank you without
a hint of panic,
because they
teach you that
an agreement over
beauty should only be
one-sided, should only
be an extended invite as
long as you're not there
as long as the compliment
coats you but never takes
residence
how
then


do I say thank you to that?


I'm not trying to dredge up every
instance where beautiful was
replaced with ugly, where gorgeous
fell in line with rejection, where attention
was reversed with inadequacy--because
not every speckled bruised from my
childhood came from a direct hit
but all grew from the same
seed, the same insult, the
same withering glance
that taught me I
should be careful
where I put my
thank-yous
where my
heart lies
in the seat
of it, bleeding
out discrepancies,
escape plans, and
a certain measure
of unbelief that
cannot be gainsaid.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

a poem still in the making.
originally called "Pine Bark and Too Much Bite."
Continue reading...
Oct 2015 · 401
Smaller, Smaller.
brooke Oct 2015
Smaller, Smaller.
i'm struggling between
the halves of my soul
that grow out and away
upholding a frayed doctrine
that shudders and trembles
on its string, unable to be
on its own without a divine
voice to soothe the cracks
and speak sweet truths
place definitions over
ragged cuts and
stitch together
stone to stone
with nothing
but water.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

written to I Need My Girl by The National
Continue reading...
Oct 2015 · 414
perfect.
brooke Oct 2015
perfect.
perfect timing,
as in,
doing a once around and through
to find an old couple departing in
the senseless maze of a parking lot
pulling out in that corner space near
the front--they must have had
your name on their lips, on their
suede coats in the early October
chill, your name printed meticulously
in the shopper, carelessly thrown into
their suburban driveway, subliminal
during their morning coffee,

yes,

perfect.
I daydreamed a lot today.

(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Sep 2015 · 554
Love and Some Verses
brooke Sep 2015
Love and Some Verses
it's 9:41 pm at night

it's 9:41 pm at night and
i'm thinking about when Chris
told me no one would ever love
me as much as him--and I'm thinking
about you too. Because I know that love
is not a thing to be measured, and if it were
we wouldn't do it with time or space or the edges
of old wooden rulers tapped briefly on knuckles

and tonight you're wrapped around my ankles like
a tabby cat--somewhere out there with your ropes
untied and shoes unlaced, your straps all in an organized
tizzy, with your caps off, windows open, and an empty
dresser drawer that you never know what to do with--    but i do

and I'm not asking you to come find me because that would be
too easy and I know you'll settle in at just the right time
probably in no hurry, supposedly passing through but
you'll find that you're woven into the threads of an
earth so familiar, and the girl at the counter seems
to be asking if she can dance with you without
lifting a finger, because the way she moves is
not at all unique, but you've seen her before.
you've seen her before, somewhere in a dream
in a memory beyond your body.

Say what you can say--that's me. Here's your chance.


Here's your chance.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

Title is a song by Iron & Wine. This poem will sound a lot more right if you listen to it and read.
Continue reading...
Sep 2015 · 632
I will love you
brooke Sep 2015
I will love you
they seem to think I can heal you



they seem to think I can heal you,
but the truth is I can only be there
and when there are cracks in the ceiling
and the mountains are frozen or gently
rolling over mustard seeds, I will hold
fast to the one Mainstay and encourage
you to do so too--because I can't walk
with your legs or talk with your words
nor can I delve inside your dark waters
and know how to navigate your thoughts
that so often I won't understand--

and I won't change you because we will
be a team, a single cog rotating in a royal
body, bearing the heat and blows so that
when you are away and toiling, or burning
the sheets with newfound anger, I will
stand by and let your battles rage until
we meet on middle ground and grasp
each other's forearms in the dust, heaving.

with you, this will not be a game.  You will not
be a piece, a checker, a player. I will not move
you or take mallets to your foundation because
it will be mine too--I will not hate you because
that would be hating myself and I will not hate
myself because that would be hating you--

I will not question your love for me like I have
questioned the masses, because this love will
not be antiquated but fresh and ripe each
morning, anew with our combined inquiries
and issues of heart, barrels of quinoa to sink
our fingers into and count ceremoniously
each grain a celebration, a victory poured
over quiet nights shared between whispers
and hushed prayers

and though your initial compliments and flattery
fade away, when our first meeting has worn off--
no lit suppers but bowls of hot oatmeal on the
couch, when our voices have failed to address
the day and time has only built between our hips,
I will quietly say that                                                 I have missed you
because though we are one there will still be
wedges---doorstops, rocks and boulders and
great things that drop and slide between us
that find their way into fissures in our flawed
surface  


but

I will love you through that.

I will love you through each fight and missed
opportunity to apologize, every door closed a
little too hard, each cold dinner or syllable too
harshly spoken, when I send you
to the supermarket and you arrive with only
half of the groceries, when the world is splitting
in two and we are fleeing from city to city and I
can hardly recognize you through the grit and grime

I will love you.
this is a work in progress.

(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Sep 2015 · 517
5:24 Pm
brooke Sep 2015
5:24 Pm
i have this romantic notion
that I will fall in love each
autumn that rolls around
and cools the sidewalks
every time I find the wool
socks in my closet and
let the snow in through
the screen-- like a cat to
milk the winter finds
me but

never

him.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

Minute Poems.


5:25
Continue reading...
Sep 2015 · 566
8:23 pm
brooke Sep 2015
8:23 pm
you stopped talking to me
because you landed yourself
a girlfriend, but didn't tell me
so I went three months wondering
why you never responded to that
one text, after weeks of hearing
you talk about how you were
going to move to Colorado
and, I dunno, I'm kind of
mad about it because
her name is Joy
and my name
is Brooke and
she falls in blonde
tendrils and, well,


I don't.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

can't escape instagram.
Continue reading...
Sep 2015 · 407
Drop by Drop
brooke Sep 2015
Drop by Drop
today i read aloud to
alyssa while she cleaned
the machine, between the
purge of the steam wand
and the loud grate of the
burr grinder, I welcomed
a strange catharsis expended
into the shop where my words
filled up the sinks and found
sanction in release, most of all
when I read about Chris--who
has long since left my heart--
but that was only a lie, he
is still there, these poems
are still here, still in the
thick of my spirit,
waiting in cracks
waiting to heal.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Sep 2015 · 506
wet ground.
brooke Sep 2015
wet ground.
she doesn't deign to think
the sunflowers are beneath
her, because she's part of
the earth too--her mama
says. With corn rows in
her hair and fingers too
adept for snap peas, she
might be queen of her
backyard and the land
below the bridge, far as
the river can be seen from
4' 3", but her long legs tell
her that they'll grow, that
no cupboard will be too
high, no horizon that
ends, just open lids and
cucumber perfumes
butterscotch lozenges
in every coffee table
bowl and Somebody
along the way whispers
that she'll have it all.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Sep 2015 · 354
Jesus Christ
brooke Sep 2015
Jesus Christ
cold brew without the cream or
sugar, took all the blessings for
herself and never made that
pour-over for God, but she
still feels like she could do
something right, in her bones
and banana shakes and when
she falls asleep not knowin'
who she's talking to.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Aug 2015 · 1.1k
Hawks and Shrikes.
brooke Aug 2015
Hawks and Shrikes.
men touch me
like auctioneers--
with moist, fleshy hands
sweating for a bite, grazing
my scars with excuses, *******
the succulents on the coffee table
all under the rug with their
dusty presumptions,
hawking beneath
the skylight
with a hunger
for the bedroom
seventyfiveeightyeightyfive
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

i hope this poem sounds as gross as I feel about this
Continue reading...
Aug 2015 · 616
Conservation of mass.
brooke Aug 2015
Conservation of mass.
am i so wrong for wanting to feel right?


am I so wrong for wanting to feel right--
to go without an ounce of distress, to feel
like the corner of a couch was a cove and
not a prison, or that the ***** of his nose
were the side of Humboldt and not a cliff
edge I want to throw myself off of

because i feel trapped.


because I feel trapped--
i alluded to a rabbit in a cross-hair
when my mom asked. The rabbit knows.
The rabbit knows it's been caught, it doesn't
feel right.  She freezes. She tenses. She's unsure.
She's grounded amongst the long weeds and bulrush,
is he waiting? is he watching? When he touches her
shoulder, what is he saying? When he stands between
her and the door, is he a threat?  Is it presumptuous to
think he can enter without invitation? how many
doors in a house require a request to entry?
just the front? the bedroom? the heart?

I feel small.

I feel small, like my body has shrunk and consists of
significantly less matter, less much, less stuff
which is scientifically impossible, matter can neither
be created or destroyed--but I can certainly be rearranged
in space, so I melt into the backboard, become one with
the paisley pillows, find solace in holding my own hand
solace in my unassuming nature, in my rapid bunny
heart--
and
therein
lies
the
problem.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

boldness. I'm looking for boldness.
Continue reading...
Aug 2015 · 529
All at Once
brooke Aug 2015
All at Once
i am so much like
the tide and sand--all
there and then not a trace
each grain pushed up and
dug in, washed away by
a smooth hand, pulled
up and dredged out,
separated by skilled
fingers from the
muck and ****
swept out of my
hiding place where
i clung to the rocks
and crevices with fervor
only to be cast upon the shore
water-logged and soaked in salt
i am each mote of feldspar and quartz
drawn and then flat, riddled with color
and grime, pulsing day in--day out to
the heartbeat of an ocean, to a master
as a servant--fighting the flux where
it doesn't go

all the bits and none at all, against the
water then all at once, all at once, all at once
out into the sea, into the furious evening
to weather the storm or weather myself


all at once
all at once
all at once.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015


i might rewrite this later.
Continue reading...
Aug 2015 · 618
safety rug.
brooke Aug 2015
safety rug.
i stop dead in my tracks
when referring to their
house, because it doesn't
seem like mine anymore
but I'm confused as to
what really is a home
in the truest sense of
the thing because
I feel like a molecule
in a widening bubble
the farthest from claustrophobia
that I've ever been, there's nobody
that I want to see, and everywhere
I want to go, but like a machine I
seem to require the right environment
to function, so i'm canceling all my plans
ripping excuses out of the cookbook
missing the sun when it's right outside
my window, sometimes right above my
head--and this rug beneath my feet feels
more like the only safe place in Canon
everything else doesn't belong, everything
else doesn't          fit eve
                                        rything
else can't           be in the s a me room as  



me.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015


where are my designated people.
where is my designated place.
Continue reading...
Aug 2015 · 836
twisted peppermint throat.
brooke Aug 2015
twisted peppermint throat.
my anger has manifested
into sore throats, the perpetual
swallow, even while you sleep--
that no saliva, cotton ball in your
chest soaking up the living, leaving
me high and dry, contemplating
the meaning of every idiom,
every moment, every customer
that orders five 20oz mochas
and doesn't leave a single
tip but works on the block
and complains about local
business.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Aug 2015 · 642
Rain and Chicken Tenderloins.
brooke Aug 2015
Rain and Chicken Tenderloins.
it's raining outside--
out of no where like it does
here most of the time, sometimes
without a single flash of lightning
just a few raindrops on the frigidaire
and then the whole lot of them echoing
in through the vents and seeping through
the crack it leaves beneath the window, soft
wet drops pulsing in onto the sill,

that's when the thunder come, on page 167,
sounding something like truck wheels in
that thick snow during the dead of winter
punching lines through the driveway
rollin' out onto the street, not too
much like it did last week when
all of 15th St North was flooded
up past all the hubcaps of every
church-goer and The Daily Record
posted pictures in the following day's
Shopper of grandmothers waddling past
the post office looking dismayed as ever--
but they didn't catch them teenagers
swimming in the ditch of a parking lot
at Taco Bell.

And it's a little too hot in here, but i'm not too privy
to open the windows, because the pitter-patter is all
too deceiving, we're still in the mid-slump of summer
when it gets to be 82 degrees by 9am so the best I can
do is sit still and not turn my head too much---

Sunday's on full-force, already cooked my chicken tenderloins for the week and I'm busy watching #103's shadows shift behind the door
ever'time he leaves his apartment for who-knows-what just that
it makes me real nervous when his thin silhouette lingers or his
jacket buttons brush the door-**** an' make me jump.

but it's alright, living alone. Me and God got loads to talk about but he knows that sometimes I'm just quiet and I'm tryin' real hard.

He knows.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

changing it up, reminds me a lot of how how cd writes.
Continue reading...
Jul 2015 · 1.1k
love letters from portland.
brooke Jul 2015
love letters from portland.
write me a letter when
you get to Portland, about
the coast and graying ocean
how the fog doesn't burn off
till late morning, your walks
with God in the forest, you
had a revelation at Voodoo
Donuts in front of the gloss
and icing, this is where
the wax melted off in
broad daylight, you
found yourself amidst
strawberries and cream,
orange nectar and peach


Write me a letter when
you get to Portland, tell
me how much you love
it--the greens and grays
and barely-there-blues
off in the distance in
mellow hues


write me when you get there
and leave the letter in the sun
let your evening tea hold the
corners and ring your coffee
between the lines, let me know
when you get to Portland
let me know
let me know
let me know, love.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Jul 2015 · 461
going back
brooke Jul 2015
going back
let's go back, you   &    I
for a momentwhetherwe
are who we are or who
we were then, with your
scotch bones and my hair
in the wind like a hundred
p a g e s out of the bible,
you               &                 i
and the parts of you that
loved me then come out
to play, to feel my two
years on your two years
as thin as breath, thick as
all the words we left
unsaid, that fall like
spoons in empty cups
lost in the chatter of
apology after apology
in smiles dropping like
warheads, but our silence
overcomes the ancient fights,
strings and tangled veins
all my lies are in order
all the things I only
sort of
told
you


i have dreams about confessing.
written in april.


(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Jul 2015 · 535
Jets.
brooke Jul 2015
Jets.
earlier this year I said something like


i used to drop people
which is half true, but more of a buffer
in case things fell apart and Jetsper told
me that he didn't care if I did, it was worth
getting to know me or something that sounded
that nice and I imagine he has the sort of new
car scent, or fresh laundry, something wholly
generic but pleasing.  I went about that
all wrong, i should never preface
friendships with my past
i don't drop people
i just peel their
names out of
my notebooks
afraid to confide
in any sort of
k i n d n e s s
because i know
they won't like
my secrets.
I wrote this last December. I'm never sure how I stop talking to people.
I like this poem more than I did then.

(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
Jul 2015 · 629
ode to mike.
brooke Jul 2015
ode to mike.
we have no mutual friends
but you pop up under suggested
users. I never look you up because
i never want to know and I never
remember your last name because
last names mean aquaintances and
i'm not sure we were even that.

but you're in that little rack, a black
and white photo, you and a pretty face
she must be fantastic, she must go down
on you on the first date, promise to put
it in her mouth without even knowing
your mother's name, she must have
been swift at giving in, going under
submitting to your wrath hidden
under nice-mormon-boy-with-a-soccer-ball


or maybe those were just your standards then.
I'll admit to checking the social board and pretending I wanted
to be an English tutor, waiting for you to come out of Math 101,
a chance to talk tacked up with the rest of the pamphlets

And, I dunno, you seemed normal.

under the guise of study-buddy, math ****, in the name of grade A +,
we started with kisses and you made a beeline straight for calculus,
and I realized i didn't know how to say No. No. No.

No.

No. No.

Mike pins my hands above my head and tries to unzip my jeans.
it's dawning on me that for the first time in my life I am not as
strong as I thought, but I play my weakness off like a champ.
Have you ever not wanted someone to touch you? You feel it
in your spine, in my spine, in your ribs, in my ribs, the sanctity
of a body barring the doors and cowering in the temple, little
girls scattering for the edges and becoming shadows, engravings
and hieroglyphics.

He never gets there. He kind of gets there. You have things you want to preserve and others you don't mind sacrificing in order to be loved
or maybe just

prized.

Prized for a quarter until Mike is absent the last three weeks of Math 101, supposedly sick with Pneumonia. You offer to bring him soup,
heating pads? Bribes, on bribes on company. But you're just a towelette, not even full-blown dish rag, not even sure why i'm trying
not even sure how to say no to

Suggested Users.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

I've wanted to write about this since 2012.
Continue reading...
Jul 2015 · 786
Give and Get None.
brooke Jul 2015
Give and Get None.
i feel raw


i feel raw and hinged
dry and soaked in
oil, stretching through
day-old honey-left-in-the-
sun-part-of-the-earth-type
feel, closed in protest, open
for only some business, that
only some kisses business,
only this company business
with some Iron & Wine echoing
like they full'a cotton caught
in the dense brush, far off
in the night or in a body
that isn't my own
(c) Brooke Otto 2015

this is all over the place
I am all over the place.
Continue reading...
Jul 2015 · 716
6:37 pm.
brooke Jul 2015
6:37 pm.
9th and main wasn't
busy but I still wondered
how my bike wasn't beneath
me anymore and if I really
screamed when the back
wheel went up, because
for a moment I thought
this isn't really happening
I don't really get hit by cars,
this is something that only
happens to Anne Hathaway
but i pulled out this morning
after a night of of maybe being
afraid that I wouldn't wake up
struck by a new fear of the ways
i can't see around buildings like
i used to--and maybe i'm being
a bit dramatic but i pedaled a
little slower today and my head
hurt with all the ways my leg
was bruised

it wasn't that busy on 9th and main
but I still wondered how my bike wasn't
                                                                                               beneath
me


anymore.
(c) Brooke Otto 2015
Continue reading...
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