They say we are strong,
Sister
What do you think of that?
I laugh.
They say we are lucky,
Sister
What do you think of that?

They say we are survivors.
I smile.

I glance at my sister, balancing her beer
precariously on the edge of the couch cushion.
Her brows furrow.
She knows how grief worms its way into your
Heart and makes a nest.
They stole our souls and ****** on our innocence.
No amount of change, distance, time, love, therapy
Or pharmaceuticals
Can ever replace what was taken from us.
She looks back at me with knowing eyes.
We laugh.

No one survives.

We work our fingers to the bone
For a pitiful paycheck.
Our clothes smell of chlorine and bleach.
We stay up all hours to study.
Our futures are bought with our sweat.
Women like us don't wait around.

No time to be idealistic.
Sure, we dream of a better life.
But we're not afraid of the means
To our ends.
Women like us have ***** hands.

Soon our grinning skeletons will come all unhinged and slide out of our feet as the casual chunks of so much worthless debris. Contagious laughter can be rather gruesome. Blocks upon blocks of television viewing containers echo entire cans of it into increasingly apathetic orbs. Growing loud without purpose, it deafens all who will listen. There is, to date, no cure for this cancer. We don't even really know what we're dealing with here. It is recommended that all civilians tie their shoes tightly, with double-knots if possible.

Rage magmatic in this the cavern of your deepest doubt. There can be no patience here between the moments that make up the seconds that measure your heated mind. Snap-blue volts currently amplify the surge to resist. The glass will wait for your reaction. Watch yourself spring, soon, quiet to the flank; shatter and reform as expected. Touch it now with your cool palm.

Turn, camera, follow the sound of footsteps, nervous in the dark, echoing away down the fogsoaked street. The night begins to cool and it starts to rain beneath the lampposts. Glance, only briefly, at the clerk who pulled the graveyard shift, curled on the floor under the register, clutching at the bullet in his belly. There is a gentle kindness in seeing the world how you want to. Show me the money. You watch the fog.

Fire suns out of canons of old and decay in daylight. There might not be blood under your fingernails if you'd refused to laugh. Don't doubt it though, you're being watched. It thinks about your thoughts in thoughtless ways. Dance, pony, humor it. Fail to see the source. Research more. Someone else already answered your stupid questions. Go home. Go broke. Go on as long as you go away. Get a job, you idiot, and make sure it's a good one. If it isn't, fire yourself out of a canon into the Sun. Morphing is addictive. So is heroism. Go, sally gently forth. Froth. Growl low in the gut. Yeah, breathe the fear; die ******* mad about it.

I have not looked out the window for weeks
weeds will break me to pieces,
they seem too much like weddings I’ve escaped
where the groom and bride are useless
to everyone but each other, then pulled away.

I think they look beautiful. I do.
The way females palely grow tousled with
tree limbs, cautious not to snap one with weight
and go tumbling from hilltops
dead blades of grass penetrate their kneecaps.

Neither are quite green or brunette
but in discernible loveliness when falling from
a girl’s skin, a satellite rained in cherry beads.
I must say I am in love with the gore of it
needing a heart to pump, but I cannot watch
               as their minds dive within.

Gauze on your arm –
reddening, the skin a shadow you
call after and summon home.

Like sunrises, the big half-moon
has its purple flab melted.
I humanize everything.

I make it all warm
even death piercing a door hinge –
where children hide safely.

Ink is the blood of another being
not like us, but you write
with your own on a pillowy peel.

Scruffy thing, livid from washing
with the tip of my tongue
found hair in places I knew not existed:
it gave little track-marks, a buried belly button
sprouts in the radius of your private parts
and I scrambled your fur like eggs.

Matted with saliva now
but I find small locks in my ******* from
time to time, ones that did not stick
and were plucked from your pants-line.

They slumber in a box or are wiggled
between your comb’s teeth on my nightstand,
I want to find the torn follicles
and replace the black stems again
compose poems on you with my wet mouth
hide my name in your body hair please.