Poppies blossom like open cuts.
Ripe and red, they fill the air
With a cloying sweetness
So potent anyone downwind
Must shut their eyes and breathe
Through open mouths.  Tasting
The breath of flowers, they grow
Nauseous and afraid.  

The fields sway in the hot breeze
Until they resemble an ocean aflame -
It is here, among these poppies, I have
Found the blood of the Earth.  
It is moist and toxic, an acid eating away the soles
Of all that wade through it.  
How many gaunt, pale bundles of bone
Rest below these soft, red petals?
No one dares to count.  

People do not fear such
Lovely things - if they’ve only seen
Pictures.  How nice it must be
To know nothing of poppies
But their color, their shape.  
They seem almost beautiful -
But you know better.

You have stood waist deep in the
Malignant fields, breathing the air
That slowed your limbs -
Turning your arms and legs into pendulums
Swaying to the beat of the buds
That encircle them -
Until you knelt, weighed down,
Nearly submerged by saccharine terrors,
And cried, hoping the water leaking from your heart
Would put out the fires you find yourself embracing.  
After all, during the darker hours
Any light is better than no light at all
(Or so something whispers in your tired ear).  

You know the horror of poppies -
But  still you have yet to plunge
Past the black eyes of those red beasts -
For when the wind blows clean, cold
Air to you what do you do?
You raise your arms and let yourself
Feel as though you can fly -
And one day…one day
You will look down
And see yourself above
A ground free of poppies.

I am one of three –
Shadow, skin, and light.
A triplet split from the same egg and *****.
**
Make it 3 and you’ll have me
Explicit.
It’s so ****,
Being cleaved into thirds.  
A ******* with myself –

The shadow is morose.
A needy, demanding *****
Begging to be cut up.
I want to,
So I can see the blood wring around my –
Her
Wrists like shackles pinning her
To my bed.
I know it’ll shut her up
But I can’t bring myself to do it.
I’m not that *****.  

The skin is boring.
A virginal flower
Dreaming of understanding.  
She’s too wholesome,
Always waiting for the right
Version of herself to come along.
Saving myself –
Herself
For the right time.
My tastes aren’t quite so
Vanilla.

The light is adventurous.
A psychotic, brilliant ****
******* herself into the ground.
Necrophilia just got a whole lot hotter,
Bodies piling up thanks to her STDs –
Stupid, thoughtless decisions.
Protection?  Ha!
That’s for normal people.
There’s no need for me –
Her
To slow down;
We like it fast.

The skin doesn’t participate.
The *****, virtuous ******
Fidgets as the others 69 –
A disgusting yin yang
Of low and high.
The shadow drinking downers
Until she can’t remember
All the bruises covering her heart,
Too distracted by the bile
Smeared across her lips.  
The light popping enough uppers
To strip herself of her
Consciousness,
Naked and raw
She often wakes bitter
Of her restored senses.  

This ******* takes place
In a womb,
An amniotic ocean
Swaying toward the shores
Of existence.
Two will drown –
Vanishing triplet syndrome.
Only one may be pulled from
Mental waters and placed on the sands of reality.

The labor takes 33 hours -
Finally I emerge.  
Who survived?
There is no way to tell.

Gruff grouch griping
His words say bags
But his tone says blacks-
I'm a piece of slate covered up by white
Bars that shimmer in fluorescent lights -
He's just doing his job.
I went to a wedding
And now I'm having my bag checked
Just me, no one else,
For "contraband."
That white boy over there,
Yeah the one with blue eyes, eyes that make you
Comfortable,
He left his passport at home.  
You smile at him, it's okay you say,
Today is not your day, you bark at me.
It never is.

The thief, the usurper
She rides through the black
With her white robes
And dusty, pale hair.
She calls
Minstrels and men, vagrants and virgins;

Singing to them about light
That is not her own
With dulcet murmurs, lofty promises.
Her children hide behind her
Luminescent skin like moths
Hiding from the blue nighttime-

Mother!  They cry, their tears streaking
Through the sky onto the Earth,
Leaving behind iron and fire.
This vagabond, she does not suckle them,
For she is lightless, left with only
A hard, round face

Full of silence and fear
Leaving men and me to reach for her,
And she, she spins away.
Umbridged is the king
Who reigns bright beams upon those
Living on the blue skin of his sister-

Ah, his sister, a lady of green
Dotted with poppy jems and violet jewels.
She is forgotten when the larcenist shows
Her hair.  Lost and lonely, it is made fair
By the light of the king.  
The pilferer is made to feel whole

And beautiful.  The green lady,
She is wrathful, spitting fire, spitting ice.
Still the **** is unknown,
Unknown to all the land
And the lords and ladies that reap it,
And the king whose crown stays lit

And warm on his sister's rough face,
And the Lady Green who curses and weeps
For the capture of the thief that creeps
Throughout the cold, cloudless night.
A reward for any who can catch her,
A knighthood for any to tame her.

Unbeknownst to her admirers the damnable ****
Is nothing more than a mere handmaiden
For the Lady Green.  A lonely *****
Hidden away during the light of morn
Til darkness descends and
The royals' house is torn.

May she continue to steal their precious
Gold and eyes and praise and skies
With her bright pale hair,
Long when the day ceases to be.
One day the king shall burn his sister, the blue *****,
Freeing the lonely handmaiden forevermore.

I've been painted pink the instant the doctors
Wiped me of red.
I looked like the boys I knew - our differences a
Color palette provided by Mommy and Daddy.
I was their little girl, their princess who wished
Her hair would stop growing,
Lest she be locked in a stone tower.
I didn't mind the dress so much then,
Not when it was the only difference between me
And them.

Magic mirror before me, is wrong all I'll ever be?
I shut my eyes, unable to stand my body bare.
My knight, your skin simply is not right.
I've read the mirror never lies.

Mommy and Daddy are yelling
About my butch haircut.
Our little girl the ****, they say.
I did it myself.
Mommy still buys me dresses,
Daddy tells her to spend the money on
Therapy instead.
Daddy asks about boyfriends,
Mommy tells him I don't have any because I
Hide my *******.
I tell them I'm all wrong.
They agree.
We're talking about two different things.

I don't change for gym anymore.
The girls are secretly relieved I won't be there
To cast a wandering eye in their soft bodies.
I'm relieved I won't be in the wrong locker room.

Mommy and Daddy don't like me
Telling them who I am.
I've finally found my way out of the tower and
The king and queen are upset because their
Princess never made it home, just the knight.
My little girl, Mommy cries.
I follow the point of Daddy's finger to the door
Until I'm on a bus bound for somewhere else.

I shift from Pangea into separate pieces.
Finally I have space to breathe.
Needles, knives, pills bend my body to my will -
It took Michelangelo three years to build David.

Mommy and Daddy believe me to be
A delivery man. They are expecting to sign off
On a television set, yet when they see me
Idle in the doorframe there is a hesitance, a hope.
But most of all there is silence.
Mommy cannot speak, her hand curls like a gasp
Around her mouth.
Daddy begins to cry, his eyes pale and blue.
I am hugged.
They don't say sorry, but I hear then whisper.
My little boy, they say. My little boy.

Damnably grey, I sink into
A lightless sea.  My breath falls
In gasps of air, my eyes
Shut as gas rises.  Dear Pity

May you have my lungs fill with
Cold, watery iron until the
Sharks carry my pieces like
Prayers to fishing boats.

Stuck in the colloid
Of my wasteful life I create
My own shadow - malachite jaw
Swallow me before I am

Forced to burn the belly of
A whale.  Moon thief lends
My paper body a dapple of stolen
Light to dry my soggy skin.

If only the black water could
Clean between my numb ears -
Instead it sits tepid and full of
Mosquitos leaking with eggs and blood.

All I wish is for a wind to
Uncloud me, for air to inflate
Me.  I breathe, I breathe -
More fool I.

I peel,
Lazily.
My little feet dangle
Off the second step,
I have ***** soles,
So I do not go inside.
It’s better that way,
I can’t hear the yelling,
Only the mosquitos,
But they cry –
Like my father.  
I only taste salt
Upon placing a wedge in my mouth,
And my father,
He finds me
Soon after.  

I peel,
Carelessly.  
I’m staring –
Again –
But I can’t seem to
Help myself
From watching them,
All of them,
From my lonely table (I alone
Keep it company).  
I whisper a slur
At my shaking fingers,
I clench
Until my body is a fist,
The juice runs past my palms
Onto the linoleum.
I think that must be
The color of the Sun’s tears –
I am the only one to laugh
At such a joke.  

I peel,
Methodically.  
The flat line
Where my lips used to be
Curves downward
As my bitten nails begin
To fill with acrid skin –
I immerse myself
With such an infantile task,
Ignoring their buzzing
As it swarms around me
Like white noise
Trying to out scream
A sonic boom.
The fruit is rotten,
I throw its flaccid body away
Without even tasting it.
There will be flies.  
For 24 hours
A fly must feel like God.

I peel,
Slowly.
I don’t even
Bother looking,
I’m too busy
Laughing (the kind
Where you’re quiet and shaky).  
I throw my rind
At another heaving chest.
In tandem we take twin slices
And place citron smiles
In between our teeth,
Tiny grindstones that pull and press
The sunset flesh
Down our echoing throats.    
It is the sweetest
I’ve ever tasted.