I am betrayed by the agency of womanhood

a perennial lie; a shackle; a scythe

I am ‘want’ and I am 'pine’ and I am

most importantly, by myself


sisterhood, they cry sisterhood, and I am an echo

I am the clearest resolution

I am a hunting party

I am a dog at a tether; at a bone; at the point of a knife

my love becomes violent, because I torture what I do not understand

pockets filled with rocks and still she rises
absorbs sand through pinkish skin and still

she rises

january fire and a clean mother -
regret can't bury pets but can it bury

our clean mother?

in the place where women go to drown
i take myself there and lay her down

where was it that i saw a catfish hanging
drying

where was it that i dug beneath the silt and found
bones
rusted metal
broken glass

my memories are abscesses;
from what depths do they come?

my memories are experiments in rage,
salutations to the sun,
the axis of the earth                              and they

ground me,
lie for me
allow me to believe in resolution, restitution

other words beginning with r

your mother sleeps with arms outstretched,
tomorrow she'll take back what was hers

your sister waits in the marsh
and the leeches are calling her deeper

after all, didn't the apocalypse start in your back yard?
didn't hell reign on your house first?

if i had of known how far i would have to walk to find this
there's all the chance in hell that i'd be right back at the beginning,
sharpening my tools on upturned stones -
making excuses not to go

if i had of believed in the power of my own two hands
i don't think i would have ever gone looking
for somebody else to hold things for me,
as if it were unbearable to think myself whole

which night is best for burning?
how clean should my be skin be?

tell me how I fall apart at the bone
I'm interested to see how this plays out

i fail to understand myself as a whole person and by this logic nothing can happen to me. good or bad, i am imune to it

I am laughing all the way to the front door where I make myself vulnerable; extinguishable. I ask to be taken out - to feel the weight of something feasible; something absolute

I ask to be put away - I am tired now.

i think about the things that i have come from and come through, and i don’t remember ever being so hungry. i think about childhood, girlhood, adulthood. i think about stages and revolutions and rotations of memory and how there is not so much left to discuss. there were canines at the back door and the skins of leather jackets draped; there was a storm that dissolved my infancy and one that left me running. i could want to know where it is that everybody goes, but if i found out i might just go looking. i could open that back door and let the dogs in; lie down with them on the floor of the kitchen and absorb the hum of momentary relief. i could eat my words and i could chain you down. i could grind my jaw less and, yes i could annihilate my own indignation with the back of your hand. it is these words that make it so simple, but they are only suggestions of a feeling i had when i was twelve.

A bee sting in the back of my neck,
like moral oxidation or a change of mind

I am satisfied and then     I am not
I am truthful until I learn to lie

my grandmother watched the crime and investigation network every day
and we would joke that if you needed to get rid of a body

she was the person to ask

what weighs heavy on my chest, on all of my limbs like tacks or stones -
I'm held down, held back, held together with spit and top-soil
bleeding out I filled the bath and could only laugh
no bad left in me,
only things that are sweet and unnecessary

like folds in sheets or stained carpet, I'm there
like an incision I exist to remind you that it does happen, will happen

you're not so alone that you cannot catch fire

I want to glow in the way that a burning house does       but
I'm afraid to lose my foundations;
I've kicked them out from beneath myself so many times that I've stopped blaming god and since then, also, stopped asking him

who wants to be the pacifist that allows rot to turn to decay? I want to be the annihilator that turns lust into impassioned regret.
I will announce in the hour of concession every ill thought I've held, turned to glass beneath the pressure of my own resistance

I am powerless to act upon my desires,
I am sick in the same ways that i am well

She's talking about the cloth we're cut from and the scissors she used
but I'm only half listening, because
there is this pain in my jaw that comes from dreaming
and outside the house i can hear somebody speaking

She's asking about the axes I've ground and the wounds I've licked,
I can't tell her a thing and in this dream
my mouth is sewn shut and I am not strong enough to change anything

in the morning I will wonder why she comes to me,
but doesn't stay

The barren woman has the last laugh
like a blow to the back of the head, a knife through butter
these things are simple
I've seen a grave that belongs to me, and I've walked with men who comb the streets

here I lay, here I sleep, here I propose aloud the mystery of my position as I am both now and never;
she who hunts; she who burns
she who does not unto others but unto herself

and I am the weapon and I am the wound

and I am a visage of un-reality - the snake that writhes in circles to devour itself;
a kind of destruction, a kind of re-birth