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 Sep 2015 Joanna Oz
meekkeen
I miss you every day, and some things can make me feel like there is nothing besides the moment, or that my blanket is still at home neatly folded and on the foot of my bed- unexpected ruby red gum drops, or gold chains in water drains- but then I awake, and I’m thinking- where am I? What is it that I am doing here? And I tell you I feel my heart reaching endlessly towards a destination that I cannot get close enough to- not now, not when I need it. And I tell you I feel you close to me somewhere in the vast ocean of my mind, but on land I am sinking and the pebbles are slowly falling down the sides of my throat- soon you can poke me and through the hole sand will steadily flow. Won’t you come to me at the far back of this coffee shop that I have taken a small piece of- the ****-end of this dining chair, or the scratch on the wall- but won’t you glide past the glass door and let me catch your eyes peering into mine, knowing that I am yours and telling me that everything’s fine; everything’s fine.
 Sep 2015 Joanna Oz
meekkeen
If I wanted to be exquisite,
I would be.
Hormones were not kind to me,
But I survived.
And here I sit,
Cross-legged and with nothing to fit
Into.
My black shoes were a choice,
And I am responsible for the death
Of an overworked, underpaid
Laborer
With red raw fingers.
But I do not see her.
No, I see only the luminescence of a store window,
Years ago.
I feel only the faint yearning to be known
As sleek-vicious-jaded,
Gone now.
But the shoes still fitting,
Lined with gold.
When I grow old I will
Break my bones
Building her casket,
Lined with silver
As are my ashes.
Quick-write (and edit)
 Aug 2015 Joanna Oz
rsc
dream weaver swinging a meat cleaver
sewing spells with stitches of fever
pitching fast ***** and low blows
to the sweating and eager
set the succubi on the nonbelievers
steal the dams and **** the beavers
heal the toe jam nightmare
with foot cream and elbow grease
press lilies into every open knee joint crease
call the landlord
sign the lease
the sole matron of the shopping mall
sifts flour in a sun dress
the screaming fire alarm goes off
breaking dishes
knocking down sprinklers
wreaking havoc
making a mess
let me jump down your throat
and swim in the abscess
infect your brain with chloroform and soda pop in excess
no manic pixie dream girl
no damsel in distress
a ferris wheel on turbo twirl
a gravitron programmed to make you hurl
your embarrassed lunch
pick me bunches of wild flowers
i'm open to sacrifice
scrape the back of your throat with a screwdriver
dutifully collect jars full of head lice
the meek mice of the holes in the wall
crawl out gleaming sweaty sheen
the expectant floorboards creak out mean greetings
the expectant backs preemptively remove their shirts to receive beatings
students scurry by
feet frantic
late for their meetings
through it all
the crows keep bleating
goddesses nestle in the clouds
and predators eat their young
rodents mumble songs unsung
and in branches where bodies once hung
dangle fruit and flower:
another season, come.
 Aug 2015 Joanna Oz
rsc
about men
 Aug 2015 Joanna Oz
rsc
He is the morning and I have turned into a walking cliché machine.
The sun could sap the day out of my skin and I wouldn’t feel it,
wouldn’t mind if I did.
I want to crack him open and curl up in his chest cavity,
exploring the dark corners with my headlamp and uncovering hidden majesties in geodes, making road maps.
~
Sometimes, I look at their hands,
moving in time to the beat or
engaging in some twisted alchemy,
making circles out of straight lines, or
coaxing the music out of guitar strings, or
painting the unknown like clockwork in due time,
and I wonder what they could do to me in bed.
~
And I still let him touch me when I'm drunk and he's drunk or when I'm sober and he's drunk-he doesn't want to touch me when he's not drinking-because he's like a cigarette and I've made a habit of inhaling deeply, to remind me that he’s cancer in my bones and I’m getting too old for this.
He treats me like the used tissues I crumple in my purse and pull out when my nose gets runny, there when he needs me, stroking my rib cage and covering me in a viscous slime.
He feels like a stubbed toe or a paper cut and mostly I'm a mouth to *** into.
His hands find the parts of my body that people have always told me to keep secret, but it's been a while since I started sending them out on postcards to strangers.
He can grab me with his eyes like a hand grabs the nape of a kittens neck, and I falter.
~
How can I unlove someone I used to love so much?
Mother may I-help me-stop loving all of them at once.
 Jun 2015 Joanna Oz
rsc
Pressure puckers &
a migraine blooms
parachute leaves looming
from my mind,
moonscapes of bare rock.
I've been waking up in a tomb again,
mouth mummified &
crusted over with drool as
my body jolts up at 6
6:45
finally 7:
I rise from the dead once more.
Yeats spoke to the Beats & he speaks to me,
feet creaking old floorboards
in a house with no internet.
"Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
'Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.'"
I ate artichokes for lunch on pizza &
lost a piece of my soul down
the toilet of the coffee shop bathroom.
I came out of the womb once & I think that was enough.
I cough up brown mucus
& I'm glad I quit smoking.
One of my ribs pokes out
& picks my lunch for me,
pointing rudely,
leaving blood on the gleaming glass.
People around me discuss
the value of places they've never lived
& a homeless man sleeps with his mouth open.
I drink an infinite iced tea
that refills itself whenever I get thirsty &
a prehistoric potted plant
belches dinosaurs back into existence.
I clean my teeth to become
the princess of the salad greens,
eating olives with the tips of my fingers
the way monsters eat eyeballs
in the nightmares of children.
Everyone shakes,
terrified to look at each other
mouths bleeding confetti & glitter.
A remedy to bitterness: simple syrup.
I want to write love letters
to the boy who broke my heart &
still has all the shards.
I found out yesterday
that I'm a woman of hard angles,
that my moon might always be fighting
to whole its halves.
My calves are sore
& I'm glad I quit smoking.
I'm afraid of empty bird cages &
waking up without a tongue.
My lungs do a dance under my rib cage
& shake my skeleton out of my body.
Hot toddy & we drink on Tuesdays.
Any available body will do.
Picasso's blue period never seemed more lifelike
than when I try to jump
head first into the nightlife.
Nothing can be proven true
but I think my respiratory system
is at least not false.
If I believe hard enough,
I can feel my pulse.
to my darling who feels she's not:
our separation is mere illusion.
truly, your pain strikes me as i write this;
your sensations of abandonment,
and the decisiveness they have caused,
bleed from my skin into the fibers of my clothes.
i am no longer clean.
i do not feel pure.

to my severed arm and shortened tendons:
destruction is merely another side of life.
out of disappearance comes all things-
without space, there would be nothing to contain us,
nothing to allow and enfold our beings' spirits,
and they would sputter and cease like my love's flame.
i am no longer yours.
i do not feel full.

to the farthest star that my eyes can see:
your light reaches me- i glimpse you!
in the perceived emptiness between us
there is no distance to be found;
around us exists the infinite potential for
further connection and deeper growth in closeness.
i am no longer alone.
i do not feel sorrow.
 Apr 2015 Joanna Oz
rsc
With brain bashing into head cavity,
the gelatinous mass of neurons screams out
to white blood cells swimming in eyeballs
to evacuate before drowning.
"Quit clowning around in there and
save yourselves!"
The moody mistress creates her own hells:
congratulations!
Sleeping alone in a sweat covered bed,
she spins saccharine thoughts and pollutes her head
with taffy, thick like molasses,
cooking sugar in the kitchen with
the wrong end of a spoon in her mouth.
Dried up *** stains litter her couch
as she wakes up to turn the cushions
and search for loose change
to fill up her coin pouch.
"Ouch! Ouch!"
She calls out, clean
sheets on a new day,
his fingers firing in a frenzy
and introducing the fusion of
pleasure and pain.
He smells of benzene and
she's afraid of burning,
stomach churning and
using gasoline as lubricant.
He hit her, she said, and it felt like a kiss.
She misses him at her day job
when she runs around town
robbing banks and
picking up handkerchiefs
that grandmothers drop on the ground.
He would pound
his manhood into a brick wall
if it moved like her,
but the skin-and-bones combo
woos him to coo at her
as swarms of sparrows
nest in her ***** hair.
Spit shined shoes and
riding leaves blown on the air,
she dreams of him awake,
listless eyes alive and pulsing
behind a film of glassy, viscous mucus.
She makes magic potions out of the scents
left over on one of her
mismatching pillow cases.
He tastes like roasted red peppers
and lingering mace:
her eyes water as she
chokes back ***** daintily,
like a queen.
His eyes gleam mean as
he steals her breath to
add it to his bursting bank account,
releasing her to give her back only gasps,
the 2% interest.
She crafts road maps of his back bone while he sleeps,
but he sees her as a phantom,
creeping through the floorboards,
a faceless specter with an ace up her sleeve.
 Apr 2015 Joanna Oz
meekkeen
You get to a point where, swimming and spinning you land in the nearest-p-universe, and you’re laughing your chair back, inhaling comforting scents of flaky pastries in some outdoor café on another continent where it’s summer and the sun is making love to the water. Your toes are polished red and your cigarette head buzzes like the bees harmless-floating above the flowerpot adjacent, your conversation is lovely and the sky is endless. Urging your conscious mind upward, you lift yourself out of the quaint wrought-iron patio chair and evaporate into one million whizzing molecules, finally weightless.
 Mar 2015 Joanna Oz
meekkeen
I tried to act confidently,
but it came up like a faux bouquet,
presented steadily with bowtie fixed,
yet shoving,
“here!”
“take them- what are you waiting for?”
And no reply.
(And no reply).
And-
Why is it so difficult to be myself?
Do I not love myself?
Is this some sort of congenital disease-
some inertly cyclopean phenomenon-
where I am victim to my own constant surveillance?
Hyper vigilance- or vanity?
Which is worse?
Would that I could break all of the mirrors hanging on all of the walls-
all of the windows with all of their reflecting-
Would that I could kiss myself, feel myself, touch myself, know myself,
then maybe I could know you how to love me.
How to love me?
With that inquiry left unsatisfied,
am I left flitting from void to void?
Though in some spaces I stare into the Quantum Sea and say,
It is but the stuff of me!
And,
I shall never die!
But that is not the same-
it is not the same
to know thyself in a flower
as to know thy hand-
one is weightless,
the other is responsible.

I fear the mirrors.
I want to fluctuate invisible.
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