It’s sweet like whiskey,
the aftertaste of your divorce,
and you force yourself to keep wearing lipstick
like the magazines tell you to.
Someday (you hope) soon, you’ll feel brand new.
It’s all just a second act, really,
and that jam-packed, steely feeling at
the bottom of your
sentences is meant to be discarded,
dug apart, and left unmentioned.
The phonebooths all hug in on themselves,
shrugging against the rain
when you pass by,
and the sky is always a schizophrenic grey
these days, clouds marching away
to an unpromising horizon.
You phone once,
after the papers have been signed,
to hear the sound of a newly parallel life
on a recorded track
to hear that voice one last time
telling you they’ll call you back.

She wanders at the edge of her existence,
her mind long overgrown with wild nettles.
Her heart’s lost in an opalescent distance

where the moon spins into cobwebs as she listens.
Her heart beats like a war drum, then resettles.
She wanders at the edge of her existence

and stumbles on a winding path that glistens
with blooming garden beds and bleeding petals.
Her heart’s lost in an opalescent distance

to reach a rose-gold sun that slowly christens
the day into a burst of blues and metals.
She wanders at the edge of her existence,

the willows bowing at the sun’s insistence.
While waiting to see where the shadow settles,
her heart’s lost in an opalescent distance.

She recites epics to her heart, but if it listens,
it remains concealed among the moss and nettles.
She wanders at the edge of her existence,
her heart lost in an opalescent distance.

princesses made of freckles, wild nettles, vitamin C
strawberry-preserve smiles, backdoor-screen
dreams, pockets full of pencils and pink jellybean
lip gloss, wearing summer and skinned knees
these types of princesses don’t practice their lives
in stone-and-mortar towers. they take dives
into lake-blue unknowns, sunflower skies,
break their falls on vanilla sunrises.
these types of princesses only build their
castles made of tarpaulin and filled
with oak-tree pillars and moons that tilt
into the soft iridescence of rose-gold winters.
these types of princesses conquer backyards.
these types of princesses catch falling stars.

she awakes.
her ballerina toes are poised, her nose is scrunched -
she is – what’s the word – alive.
her powder fingertips crease mechanically like a hydraulic press.
she has a beating chest with the calibration of cast iron.
her feet can climb Mount Olympus and higher.
she is limber.
she is – what’s the word – living.
her name is –
her skin has the swirl of a gleaming cantilever.
her head teeters.
she is speechless.
her lips are soft, her hands touch her face like it is a monument,
like she is a strawman.
is she a –
her spine has a curve, she can bend into geometric shapes, her arms are straight
but they encircle her.
galatea.
he whispers her name to her.
or maybe he names her.  
she can choose a name herself, maybe.
she is – what’s the word – a woman.
her hair can swim through the air, her curls have strands that brush her cheeks
and her cheeks can color in the blank space left behind
by words.
galatea, she whispers.
her tongue clambers in her mouth, for some purchase,
for some worthy noise.
she searches herself for a – what’s the word – idea.
you are mine, galatea, he says. i made you.
do not be afraid. i will bathe you, dress you, anoint you.
i will worship you, and i will save you.
he caresses her hand.
her palms are dry as sandpaper.
she is – what’s the word –
her eyes have the shutter frequency of a lens.
she bends.
she is awake.
she does not remember a before.
she does not remember a maker.
she hasn’t yet made any mistakes.
her name is galatea
but she is no longer milk-white.
he says, you are my wife.
she says, i am alive.
he says, i gave you life.
she says, yes, you are right.
you gave me life,
and i won’t return it
because you gave it,
because it’s mine.

"'I am half-sick of shadows,' said the Lady of Shalott."
-Lord Alfred Tennyson
…but half of her bends towards them,
these whispered tableaus, her spine tilting backward.
She carefully hordes them
like granules of opal. Her hands become lacquered
in half-dreams and dyes,
and her tapestry spins into colors so rich
even she is surprised
that her fingers have laced every cross, every stitch.
She is sick of half-shadows;
she wants the thick darkness to drown her whole essence.
These sparkles and dayglows
will stir her to madness in milky-white crescents,
and she will sink into nothing
without any name on the heirlooms she weaves;
She will fade into nothing,
and no shadows will weep on the day that she leaves.

God scans through the texts of Tolstoy
For the secrets of the universe
While the archangels at the table
Dispute loudly, who is worse –
Was it Van Gogh, or Picasso?

“I was far worse than both of them!”
Says a self-righteous Mozart
While Beethoven starts spitting.
“Oh, don’t you two start!”

Warns a tipsy-stern Gabriel
From behind a tall lager
While Plato scrawls circles
Like a half-a-dime auger.

“Silence!” God booms,
Though his eyes are quivering
With unshed tears,
And Dickinson is shivering
With the draft of early evening.

St. Peter is resting,
Feet propped on a chair,
Before returning to his post,
And God lets them all stay there

By his side as he thumbs
Through War and Peace’s last pages
While the fire burns low
And the storm outside rages.

Wilde laughs uproariously
At the news while he cooks.
“How was it?” Michael asks
As God closes the book.
God takes a moment
Before his answer, confessing,
“It wasn’t too bad, I think,
But far too depressing.”

She is prone to bouts of hysteria.
She smokes on her front porch, eyes fixed on the drawling, dipping sun,
kicking at clumps of her wisterias.
She is getting hysterical. She is waiting for a miracle.
It finally arrives. She signs for it, waves off the deliveryman who offers to help bring it inside.
“Never mind,” she mutters to herself, to her future self, lugs it in, box and all, across the threshold,
old cigarette tossed forgotten by the road.
She unpacks it, checks for cracks, dusts it off, brushes down the Styrofoam packs.
“Hmm,” she hums, thumbs brushing across her forearms. Her fingers drum against the table.
Finally, she sets it on her mantle. She tilts her head left and right –
Maybe it’s the light. Maybe it’s the angle.
It’s the furniture, she decides. It doesn’t match, it clashes terribly. There’s really nothing she can do about it, there isn’t anything to be done.
She picks it up once again, looks it over, sighing deeply. She never keeps her receipts, never really returns anything, but with this – she’ll admit that she’s sincerely disappointed.
And she’s disjointed, she wants a Camel. She is certain the enamel of her two front teeth has started chipping, and then suddenly her miracle is slipping, tipping down out of her hands,
and there’s no way she can stop it
dropping down onto her tile, cracking out in violent pinwheels
smashing cleanly into a pile of useless shards on hard ceramic
and she can feel the teardrops starting; she doesn’t think that she can stand it –
because her miracle was precious;
because she thinks she would have kept it.

The glen where felled men slept
Where the creek’s deep bed trembled, reeled
Where the green ferns, restless, crept
Where the breezes blew, flew, wheeled
Where the trees, the sweet elms wept
Where the gentle red wrens nested
Where the elks, when freed, then stepped
Where the fleet, serene deer rested
Where the scented bells were kept
Where the jeweled, fresh dew met green
The glen where felled men slept,
Where men were never seen

When I was young, sometimes I’d forget
to be afraid of the Jabberwocky.
I’d skip along beside his emerald-wet
scales, on the sun-strewn sidewalk, me
prattling on about apple ciders
and Lucy Maud Montgomery,
half-humming boats and spiders
beneath a pale sky, dry and summery,
and he would lumber, unsteady, by my side,
trudging heavily through wild glens
till the dusk at long last turned to night
and I remembered his name once again.

This is the story of a box
and a girl.
And this box –
and this box
was like no other box – No,
like no other box that owned its existence.
Eons of history lived on its walls – I mean, moved on its walls,
I mean, carvings of history played out on the walls
Waves smashed their own heads onto ocean floor dunes,
The lightning swung fierce on the clouds into squalls,
The engravings – the caves shook with war, the volcanoes,
They spat and they hissed, and the nymphs in their watery mists
Danced with haloes on graves of the fallen.
The lifeblood, it pulsed through the veins of this box,
Through the veins of my palm as I held it, the carvings,
They danced with their raw, starving ardors, their bloods and their stardust
And lifeblood, it seeped, lotus droplets, it leaped onto grooves of my skin
Splashed as sparks on my skin and spilled into my palms,
Till my body was filled with the life of this box, with the thrums of this box, with the force of this box
Till the sweet little voice called my name through this box
Whispered, “Open the lid and release me. This box
Is my prison. I’ve risen through hellfire and sunlight and war-blood,
And isn’t it time for the earth to revere me? I am Hope,
I am weary; I am tired of Death and Despair huddled near me
I yearn for the taste of the earth and the Furies
Release me, my vassal, unchain me, release me.”
This is the story of a box
and a girl,
and a thrum, and a voice, and a palm, and a life -
and a war, and a choice, and a hope, and a price,
and a voice that implored me to open the lid
through the trembling, quivering walls,
and I did.

i’ve become star-flooded.
my mouth’s overrun with sunk stars,
stars studding my cupid’s bow hollows,
dripping onto my hands and the high pile carpet.
their waxy-hot gloss is scalding and sharp,
white rust still engulfing my tongue in unpolished
supernovas and sparks
sparking metal-doused cinder and oxygen darkness.
i’ve become star-glutted,
my star-clotted lungs are heavy,
stars twine through my breathing like the sweat of a
cigarette-blotted miasma,
eroding the chasms, the veins of my shivering fingertips stretching
tips reaching for stars, for star-bellied galaxies,  
fingertips stretching towards cavities, onyx skies flashing,
for stars with their clashing and golden-scorched glow,
for a star-buried secret
i lost long ago.

Forgive me, for I have since forgotten.
I have traded in my inkblood for parchment
I have starched the graffiti from my walls,
Ignored calls from long-dead poets,
Because I never quite quoted them the way that I was meant to.
I have bent to the divine quill, my fill of pretty words
Has overflown into untouched urns and silent monasteries.
Forgive me, for I have banished my sword-drawn histories
I have untangled the vanquished threads of my revelry.
This verse is an apology.
This verse is my best memory.

The roses are blooming and cloying
The vase on the counter is new
I find it acutely annoying
That one of your rugs is askew.
I know from your eyes you’re enjoying
The very same wine I can’t stand.
I spend the entire night toying
With the ring sitting on my left hand.

You say, “Is there anything sweeter
Than kissing a lover goodbye?”
The creak of the puttering heater
Absolves me the need to reply.
You make a drunk toast to St. Peter,
To reaching his heavenly vault.
I wonder how badly you treat her;
I wonder how much is my fault.

The night has grown frigid and waning,
I stare out the windows and smoke.
You yawn and begin your complaining
On how she is running you broke.
Outside, it is sullen and raining,
I’m heavy with secrets I keep.
I know there’s no point in remaining.
When I leave, you’re already asleep.

My sweet little mollusk,
You polish the sea-tangy sand dollars smooth with the soles of your feet
You fill up your sweet siren lungs with a sun-sated breeze and submerge your bare fingers
Until they can sweep the slippery silt of the seabed abyss. I can’t sleep.
Your anemone fingers trace watery ripples through the ebbs of my dreams, trailing streams
Of fluorescent-blue algae sunk deep.  Your barnacle tongue shatters ships
Into ruinous splinters of treasure. I kiss
The cerulean ocean that hides in your lips.

My sweet little scallop,
The galloping waves break the curves of your shallows.
There are flecks of unpressed sea salt brine in your irises, tireless riptides of foaming-bright promises.
Your skin has the silvery sparkle of scales that effervesce endlessly, bending beneath the fierce tides of your palmprints.
I’m dropping. The current caresses your cheeks’ fishbone hollows, rethreading the necklaces strung out of seashells.
You bury your face in the swells of the tempest. I envy
Your azure, I worship your lapis.

My sweet little mussel,
Your tussled cyan-coral hair is unbleached, unleeched and resplendent
I am rendered transcendent by the green iridescence of your silk seaweed whispers. I have drowned in your splendid.
I can still hear your aquamarine through the white roaring waves cracking onto the shore.
I want more. Your crustaceous sand whirlpool has nestled below the soft curl of your chest. You press the world’s oceans in the dip of your palms
And drink deep from the waves swirling under.
I’ve drowned in the water-spilled seas that are cupped in your hands,
I have drowned in the pearls of your wonder.

The taste of slow tequila, sharp and sour
That vinegar-acidic, honey-bitter
Brush of fingers, always marking our
Time together. Now, you say you fit her
Much better than a blanket, warm and lilac,
You call and say, “I think you have my blender
Still at your place.” I never said goodbye back
When you first left. Sometimes I just pretend her
Bed is empty. There’s nights I’ll cry, then bury
My head inside your pillow and your vinyl.
Don’t worry, I’m still laughing at When Harry
Met Sally and at kittens and that final
     Time I saw you dance to Beatles’ Getting Better
     While I was making breakfast in your sweater.

I think that love is an old wives’ tale,
Whispered low to suckling babes
Beneath the glows of grapefruit firelight.

I think old women sick of pails
And endless spools and groaning crates
Sat by the sinking smoke of twilight

And made it up, like ancient hymn-songs,
To ease the creaking of their hips
And the dusty clink of emptiness.

I think they spun it from their wool-threads,
From the creases of their lips,
From the shadows and their heaviness.

I think their youngest daughters listened,
Then wove this teeth-and-murmur myth
Into the folds of cracking tapestries

I think they painted, whistled, christened
This hallowed folklore into gifts
And all the while grew its majesty.

I think these tales turned to scripture
And the scripture into ballads
And the ballads into diction

And now all these many winters
Since that single haggard crone-wife
First dreamt up this wind-swept fiction,

And that first pink-****** maiden
Spun beside these tales and heard them
And repeated them anew -

And now, we murmur these same fables
To our teething, blushing children
And believe them to be true.

The honey venom strikes quickly
She sinks into the earth,
into embraces of the sickly
sweet blankness, the dirt-
clotted lilies, the trembling musk
of the wind in her nostrils
eyes quivering with dusk,
with the moans of her apostles.
She thrashes through her blood,
through the smother of sunlight
through the Byzantine flood
of amber and honeysuckle,
         of nectar and twilight.

And she forgets her own name,
so she wails out strangers’.
She’s Eurydice. Persephone.
She is no one’s. She’s nameless.
Nails scratching at the soil
at the buds, at the symphony
of the viper’s tight coil.
Her name is Persephone.
And she sinks into the earth
Into the deafening silence
of the heavenly pyres
of petals and honey
        and dirt-clotted violets.

She tastes the remembrance,
She’s Cleopatra. Persephone.
She tastes love, her own fragrance
She is ready for death as she  
releases the breath
that she drank from the flames.
Her name was Persephone,
when she still had a name.
And the sweetness of pale
rose-perfume that lifts from her
is lost on the exhale,
on the glittering dawn,
         on the first breeze of summer.