Her hands were so sticky and started to swell
Ugly, red, burgeoning paddles
convulsion nervously at her sides and then at her mouth as she held back a whimper
(The neighbors were still fighting
so no one would have heard anyway.)
Anyway
Her eyes bulged
as heart heart felt heavy, then light again, then heavy
When her eyes began to swim, she tried
she did
she tried to get to a telephone
but instead she collapsed
like an egg from the carton
and laid there
until the neighbors stopped fighting.

God, are you there
or are you listening from behind my own eyes?
Watching, waiting for me to sin
and shame myself.
Do you hear me?
I have sinned.
Do you have it to do
to strike me down, to burn me?
Or are you too lazy.
Or are you a hypocrite.

Or am I  merely screaming into a mirror.

If that is the case
I will be an Old Testament God
one who devoured ***** and Gomorrah
and who will drown herself
her sinning form
in blood.

The only orange on earth
grows 3 days by train, 7 hours by car, or 30 minutes through the air away
many years it had spent wasted,
yellow and bitter
too sour for any girl to kiss.

But when, by chance, I stepped into his orchard
I found him, not rancid,
but ripened
and sweet, full of western lights .

Now I'm dying for you, my love.
My skin falls off in great swollen swaths,
and the chill from the biting rain cuts to the core,
melts my bones better than any heat wave.

State lines as fences?
Well.
I will simply find a way to jump them.

There are nights when the only things that interrupt the darker portions of my discontent
is the heavy drone of insects
around my single bare bulb.

I do not live in poverty, nor could I claim that I ever have
but the tiny souls still dance
around that single bare bulb

It hangs down from an empty rafter where plaster demons creep
like a little necktie party for one
lucky bulb.

It makes me furious to see it's glowing corpse so teased
laughing monsters around it
you're with me, bare bulb

Those who mock you, I will end.
For in my room, you are king
(I could never turn you off)
Forever yours
Bulb

My name is Haley Gilarwald
and I am a force of nature.

                                          Not too long ago, the stink bugs invaded our city
                                               Unlike aliens or the usual sort, these were just
                           plague.
Like swarms of locusts they came, but they never seemed to eat, rarely seemed to die.
They just clustered.
And wings, sounding like B-52 bombers, they rattled around the bare watt bulbs and roared, and I
Swear
to Jesus God
Drove everyone here mad.

                                                                          I hate the little *******.
                                                                         I sit in my room, typing a dreadful paper for a dreadful class
                                                                         when that hell sound shows up.
(my floors, they are hardwood!)
and so I stood
notebook in hand
and skivvy clad
I played tennis with the swarming thing
they do not die!
like men, they only keep coming back
little war machines
buzzing at my discontent


                          NO MATTER HOW MANY I FLUSH, THEY ALWAYS COME BACK
                                                          THE                               SAME.    
                                                      (I am certain that they cannot die.)

Miss Percival's famous jell-o molds were
the talk of every summer block party.
No one was sure where she had come up with
exotic shapes that adorned red benches
robins, and faces of famous people
they really were a thing to be envied.

One Memorial Day, though, there came a shriek from Miss Percival's kitchen
and the flowery curtains shuffled as they did so

The first ones in (the couple that brought the waldorf salad every year. It was good, but it was nothing next to Miss P's jell-o molds)
were Mr. and Mrs. Carroway
Mrs. Carroway almost fainted when she saw what was on the counter

You see, Miss Percival was fond of one site for her molds
and they shipped them in every month in big brown crates
there was a big brown crate, to be sure
but no mold inside

It isn't proper to gossip, but I heard that it was a bowl full of eyeballs;
A medical school had put the wrong address on their order.
I bet that there was a confused batch of medical students
being stared at by a jell-o model of Walter Cronkite.

Uncle Bruce writes sermons and gives grace at the Christmas table
his family bowed their heads
and listened to what they thought of as
"quaint"
"old time-y"

Most of them there were atheists
or maybe Catholics
(it depended on the side of the table)
and even Uncle Bruce was not sure what he believed in, not yet, not yet
after 53 years, he wasn't sure
(he had always been a smart man)
even after debating how many angels could dance on the head of a pin
and preaching for years behind the pulpit

What Uncle Bruce does know, he does
He gives us all faith

I tried to bake
you cookies but it seems like
I am a hippo

I live
In America,
in a suburb by the woods
where the city is just a sneeze away,
but just too far to touch.
And the fireworks at the baseball games rattle my windows at night
and the 10:15 train rattles by
on time
every night

She lives
In Japan
in a little town by the sea
I was there once, among the rice and water
and we both biked to school.
And the cranes that loaded the massive ships loomed over our lives
and the hush of a small town woke me
ever
single
night

she was so lazy
that the bed swallowed her whole
"Netflix! Come save me!"

Ah, Jacob
I love you
(look! I have personalized my poem! But alas, that means I have isolated
the audience.
By mentioning your name-
such a wonderful name, it reminds me of church bells
Doritos
and a good shower after a long run-
by mentioning your name, I have ensured
that those not in love with a Jacob-
and I pity them, for if they do not have one, they should seriously consider finding one-
Anyway
By mentioning you name, my love
I have ensured that those not in love with a Jacob
will never understand the soaring
joy
sorrow
trust
security
never understand what it is they have just read).

I will burn you in effigy
with all of the hate welled up inside of me
watch and smile as I watch you burn
(maybe I will bring a camera! and some hot dogs!)

This is what they took from me
watch as the remainder of my sanity
float upwards of tendrils of spiraling flames and heat

Oh! Prison box! You hold me no longer!
Tis, by my admission, less than I deserve
But still! White walls! Stretching infinitely stronger,
you have met you match in me! And I shall be gone!
Old enemy of mine,
you are not merely plaster.

He did not come prepared to dance
but then again, he never does
and suddenly finds himself
in the same tux
as always
that is pulled just a little too tight
that was starched just a little too much
and the scratching of the cuffs
reminds him

He always has the same partner
though he never learned her name
some times, he hears her whisper
'Hal'
but that is his name
maybe it is hers too. He never knows.

She wears a light champagne dress
with an iridescence about the aura
that keeps changing
he can't
he can't quite
wrap
his
head
around
it
but she grabs him before he can figure it out
this strange girl
and begins to spin
feet thrown wildly
spinning
she rests one hand above his crotch
it is almost nice
and then he feels the blood
of a stab
to the waist
he can't scream
her lips muffle it
the kiss melts his bones
sets him vibrating fast
she has him tight; one hand wrapped around his intestines and her tongue ****** down his throat and they are still spinning
spinning
until
until
until

The swing set was an old thing
like the brittle bones of an elephant
so worn that it had started to forget;
that's what her Gramma said, at least.
But Calpurnia Gray loved it
sat in it
till the seat sagged before she sat down
inviting her to rest.

Calpurnia Gray preferred the city
but the suburbs were what she got
and the swing set looked over some deep gulch of the woods
where even the suburbs ended.
Wilderness.

It filled her with such strange fantasies
of leaping through the trees like an ape
tearing off her clothes
and chasing down game
like some odd Tarzan with cobalt blue painted toe nails.
That would be the life for her if only she could go back
back
to the wilderness on the other side of the suburbs.
To the place where concrete monoliths lit up the sky at night
and rivers of asphalt carved always changing paths
for some intrepid explorer
to find a new bookstore
or museum
or something strange.

But Calpurnia didn't have either.

She had the suburbs.

And the swing set.

The swing set that always sat there, that never got away
the swing set that was crumbling with time and stagnation
but at least it was what she knew.

Seventeen
still a baby girl in the eyes of my mother
who remembers my blue eyes fresh and wild

I look more wild now
hair shaved off with one streak leaping across
eyebrows always lifted
like an ***, really

To tell the truth, though
I have become meek
and she knows it.

Ballerina's feet
are calloused
twisted
bruised and ugly from far too much use

My friends and I used to compare the carnage
which we called, forgivingly, feet

I was never much a dancer
Flexible, but ungainly
I could lift my leg over my head and hold it for a minute
keep time to music
but there was something about the rigidness of it that I never quite-

I loved it
sweet passion of a not so distant youth
and my feet were always the most battered

It was just one of those days
when the haze of summer had just started to lull the suburbs
into a sticky heat
of grills and lawn mowers
of air conditioning
(everyone pretended not to use it; windows! barked the mothers, windows!)

and the sweat stuck to the brows
of the life guards
napping in the sun
above an empty pool
the Dawson pool.

No one ever swam there
and the lifeguards knew it
those teenagers, sunning themselves lazily on hot days like this
(and the mothers! They complained about the tans. Cancer! the said.
In a way they were right,
but really.)

The waters were clear but the fences were rusted
the diving boards were falling
throwing themselves off the deep end

Katydids
lawnmowers
those lazy days
and the mothers! the constant nagging of soccer moms
lulled around the pool
on the day
Cassandra
took her
last
swim

Her face was like shoe leather
tanned by no fewer than 98 summers spent on porch swings
plodded slowly,
like  her feet were considering
every
last
step
this woman presented her 5 dollars to the girl at the gate
(some surprised lifeguard, because, you see, no one ever swam in Dawson pool)
and pushed inside.

Cassandra never left her porch.
and the mothers! how they scolded their children for teasing her
(even though they had done the same thing at that age.
That's how old Cassandra was).
Decades of the suburbs
and push mowers
and world wars
stayed like photograph around her face.

The lifeguards stared.
Cassandra kicked off her flip flops and shrugged off her mumu.
In a pink bathing suit she sank into the water.

The age melted off of her as she danced through the water
graceful
strong
the strokes were slow and deliberate
and the lifeguards watched as she pulled herself from one end of the pool to another and back.
She made 16 rings
remembering her childhood
23 more
for her marriage
and then 60
60 rings!
before she stopped.
60 years old, the year her husband died.
The year she had stopped talking
aside from the hushed prayers in church
but she was talking to him; that didn't count.
60 rings.

And Cassandra just disappeared.

No one found the body
no one found anything
aside from flip flops and a mumu.
The lifeguards were nearly scandalized
for letting Cassandra drown
but soon she went from a news story to a ghost
and the mothers! sniped at their children
for whispering
"Did you here about old Ms. Cassandra?
They say she found God."

it got to the point
that all she could hear was
the fluttering of moths