there is a wasteland
the abdomen of a swollen sea watching precariously as i bite into bits of dark chocolate and don't stop until the entire package is on the floor like a drunken dancer or a torn best friend
a candor that i sold auspiciously for a pair of high heels that i never wear, they just sit in my closet waiting for dirt to be pushed into the canvas of it's sole
i'll only wear them indoors when it's raining and i can hear the synchronizing of the drops on the roof top with each step i take onto the hard-wood floor -tap tap tap tap
i'll do this until the sincerity is gone from the momentum
eventually next summer they'll be forgotten in a cardboard box that has "free" written with a red sharpie and perhaps it's next owner will be forgiving, will take the loneliness of the esoteric feeling of wanting to be worn and introduce them to the vinyl floors of a cheap club or the cold linoleum floors of an expensive resort hotel
i'd like for things that I've known to have a continued story even after it's out of mine, and they do

there is a wasteland
a woman that constantly licks her lips because they're dry but they're only dry because of the constant moisture forced upon them
the reduction of catch-22 as if the joke doesn't fall smack into your clothes
trying to find something underneath the bra strap, past the skin
but you can never get through, can you?
she pulls your hand away and you're left feeling rudimentary
lacking, like the lackadaisical manner in which the lights never hit you the way you wish it did

Guns are always next to the old television sets.
The kind that are called
“the sets”
“the tube”
“lonely night comfort and clean tooth money spender”, you know, your childhood gathered in small dusty screens.
I’m not sure where I’m getting at, something about violence being next to fishing equipment. Maybe that’s where Sundays are stored. That we’re all pawn shop children wasting away in places with  streets that are named after trees, the irony being that there is no life growing between the cracks of sweaty cement. On the driveways where skeletons are buried underneath like they own the land.
Where the living haunt the dead and there is no expiration date besides the milkshakes you refused to accept from that boy with the lazy eye.
I'm sorry if I sound insensitive when I say that these wars are always fought in vain.
That no matter how many people you save, there's always someone
drowning in the dark corners where no one wants to look.
Look.

It’s the telemarketer’s day off
he often calls customer service on the weekends as a hobby
he feels like a loaded rifle when they ask
“what can I help you with today?”
a jitterbug with a contemplative stutter
the jilted staleness of his apartment is suddenly
a garden of words
images of violence appear while he rips a hangnail
loneliness is a grown man’s burden, he thinks
“I don’t want you to listen but I do need to be heard”
he waits for silence and he’s spoon fed this attention
“I work with people and yet I do not know people
my mind waters for intimacy not in the sensual term of the word but in the
way hands accidentally touch on a crowded train”
2,000 miles away there is a woman with a headset
a chronic consoler at the tender age of 19
her hand trembles as she hears this man speak
she’s reminded of her grandmother dying in her tiny home
back in Kansas City, desolate like her location

under the algae
beneath the sedimentary substance of a sentimental
there resides the need to put everything into categories
organizing it by numbers on the top corner of crisp sun yellow manila folders with the messy scrawl of someone punctual but seldom in time for things

in the absence of sunlight i took to you like a lamp
the one with a warm glow and dust collecting on the folds of your body of ceramic
the more i got close the more i could feel myself burning from the inside like a watermelon containing meat fruit or the inside of a pumpkin spilling out onto your counter with audaciousness
sticking your finger in the warm gooey center only to dispose of the carcass without indulging

sometimes the left side of my chest hurts and i immediately think of heart attacks and a blue face

sometimes it's flood season and i see the bottom of bridges puffy with overflowing water and i immediately think of five years ago when i thought that if i laid down i could sleep forever and never wake up
my body slowly un-recognizing how to be the human condition

but then my lungs still move in my rib cage rhythmically
my chest expanding and contracting
the repetition of comfort inside my abdomen
and i know it's not heart disease but the fluttering of panic slowly dancing on the bottom of my collarbones

but then i get up from my bed and fix my hair into a braid
my hands remembering a pattern i don't have to think about
fingers nimbly trembling beneath handfuls of hair
and i know that despite everything

i would continue through and through
i would continue

It's like you're left with extreme paralyzing psychosis, or deja vu, or an epiphany that you greet with swinging fists and bouts of palpitating aggression that doesn't have any sense of direction.
It's like when you try unlocking the door to your house, but the locks have been replaced with new ones and there are people inside that you don't recognize but they're strewn across your expensive living room set that you bought when you were manic.
Then you realize that your home has replaced you. This always happens.
Maybe this is the plot twist to your life. You're the one that's haunted and your house is afraid of opening the door when you arrive.
See, perhaps it's tired of being inhabited but not being properly lived in.
You don't remember seeing an eviction notice but it feels exactly the same like the time he abandoned you during a thunderstorm.
Except it wasn't raining but your mind was already creating apparitions of puddles and floods.
You can't say goodbye to things, you can't let go. You claw and you scream but nothing ever comes back.
It's like missing the last train home. Like, forgetting about your birthday. It's like deleting a number knowing full well that you have it memorized but it's the thought that counts. right?

the television sings
the satellite dish keeps twirling on the rooftop with no signs of slowing
I think I've meant to catch it, keep binoculars close
in case it gets too dizzy and ends up on the front yard again
the neighbors sunbathe **** and the sun
hides behind the trees of second hand embarrassment

i once saw on television a man taking a bath while a woman drew nearer and nearer with a hair dryer that she dropped into the water
there were wisps of lightning bolts and my fear of electrical sockets found footing
flourishing in the air pockets of a hypersensitivity that harbored phobias as I deemed fitting
that summer the thunderstorms seemed heavier than usual and when the power went out your nose instantly gained sweat and my stomach tightened at the idea of a tornado coming to sweep us away
into uncertainty
towards another state that didn't seem so heckled by natural disasters but those don't exist and the barren landscape can almost eat you until you disappear
you're afraid of aging and I'm afraid of not aging gracefully
everyone talks about how time is eternal but as I declutter my apartment I realize time can be found and that the ending comes when things leave a space

I act dumb in the dirt
In the soil, in the middle of the flies
that lick their wings, bat their tongues
in the dirt
I act dumb
for all the reasons that I’ve had to keep my back straight
at dinner tables
with narrow chairs that clip at the side of my thighs
for the party tricks that leave through the door
I become the punch line
in the muck, in the slime
I behave grotesquely
for the crowded silences in rooms
the friends that mistook my alienation
as a stab wound to laugh at
all the fireworks that exploded inside
this head, this brain, this basket of fruit
nothing like retaliation with a kiss
In the grime, in the earth’s decay
I act like panicked swords under anesthesia
drowsy summer swarm for
the times I’ve had to be a mother instead of a child
where walking down the street meant carrying
your weapons close to your chest
but remember enemies closer
I act dumb in the dirt

In the dirt everything is sublime

i feel like a tight string stretching or pulling
at times just going
into a single direction but the horizon isn't clear because
i'm watching everything from my peripheral (turn around)
days when i stay awake too long and my head begins to move around shakily, unsure and always unassuming
inside my head the dazed knife seizures into little misfires that guide my hands (hold them)
like in those Saturday cartoons when a finger is pinched between an electrical socket and the entire body turns into static, like a lightning bolt personified
but this is real life and what seems so pleasant sometimes leaves my tongue blue, like too much color
too much starch, saturated until your eyes water
and you have to walk away
your back was always the most beautiful to me
but i follow because this is what you do
because this is what i do
because i know you'll always turn around

there's a bed-frame with names carved into them
slightly-askew and frail
a heart at the top of every 'i'
all my underwear has blood stains on it
it's a lovesick reminder of everything I can't control
I yearned for my mother to put my hair in braids instead of a ponytail
so I got a friend that could
my hands would sweat as I wrote about her in my diary
the one without a lock
the one that was covered in DIY glue glitter
there was a summer that I wore all pink
my strawberry ice cream melted all over my polo dress and no one could tell the difference
it was my secret, sugar sweet on the lapel
beating heart for all the Lisa Frank I didn't own
a boring folder with all the scary stories I had memorized
until I myself became the ghost girl
sucker punch me in the last bathroom stall
for neither liking leather or lace

I keep wishing to be in Nevada
that we would chase the sunset all the way to Florida  
and then you'd talk about your clinical depression and
I'll tell you about the time my father kissed my mother's knuckles
on my birthday
You'd tell me you're in love with the way I always have a story to tell
and I tell you I wish you had something better than a storyteller
I don't speak about browsing through my parent's wedding pictures for days after their divorce, or the way I couldn't push my bully off their bike
But I wanted to, how I wanted to
Instead I tell you, god has been playing hide and seek with me since I was a child and I keep winning because he hasn't found me yet
and I'm beginning to lose faith
You tell me about the poplar tree in your back yard and writing an angry poem on it's bark and that's how you knew it was fondness
I say all I'm looking for is a slowfuck under the sun
and you tell me it's okay  
because at least for once, you'll want the same

When my hands were the size of apricots
my tongue always jumping through hoops
as I read words that were dusty
a book covered in pretty plastic
from the local library that smelled like a grandfather
if I had a grandfather
I read Corduroy, the story of a stuffed bear
in the Laundromat
the sun sweltering outside
melting the story with me
like a swirly ice cream cone on the side step of an apartment
or the slushy ingested combined with
the acid you were so prone to tasting in your throat
reflux, like a memory that just won’t go away
leaving the residue of remnants you wish your brain would just spit up
this ordinariness of abandonment
feelings washed away like the mud stains on your uniform shirt tumbling in the washer
the soap bubbles punching the glass window in unison with all the rest; a cleansing of spirits
a lot of people go to church
but for those that can’t afford it, the laundry is heaven with a vending machine
I felt for the stuffed animal rejected for missing a button
because I knew children with trembling knuckles
turned into adults that got lost in the escalators of the world’s mall
wandering ghosts with perpetual uncertainty whether they should
buy the coffee set or the patent leather shoes that will balm over the calluses of their feet
in the loudness of the fans redistributing hot hair
I was in limbo, the rigid seat sticking to the back of my thighs like caramel
sweat almost hard to ignore if it wasn’t for the luster
of all the women inside, their shoulders broad like those I
only thought of in lumberjacks
burly burlap sacks over their shoulders
swapping stories of childbirth as frequently
as they ordered a pound of red liver chunks from the grocery store next door
like animatronics that learned to harvest a genuine laugh
their nail polish never fading despite the gruesome biting teeth of Clorox bleach
staining the skin on their hands
they were warriors, lost and unsure of in a world that didn’t look them square in the eye
much like those camo toy soldiers you won if you gave the machine a quarter
unwrapping it from its’ plastic cage, growling for the neglect of their maker
who decided not to give them pupils at all
senile wrestlers sometimes forgotten by children in the middle of the walkway
so that they could be stepped upon, accidentally
these women with their chocolate complexion and romantic gold hoops, accidental
unrecognized by their country, banished by their family
isolated in a land that shows mercy to those that only help themselves
no refugee whose blood could compare to oil
these women who weren’t missing any buttons
would congregate inside this Laundromat hoping to remove the stains
wishing that their clothes would stop smelling of unpaid labor
that they could stop calling home a box inside a closet of more stacked boxes
they can hear those around them, elbowing the walls like multiple hearts in a rib cage
the world glimpsing in for a second, just another spin rinse cycle
repeat until all color fades
I too find myself  stuck inside that Laundromat, I realize
except I know that I can leave, I know I can walk out with my book in tow
open the door and become another spectator if I wished
which is more than that poor toy soldier can say

my belly grows the size of a bag of apricots
there is a will at the bottom of a lake that needs retrieving
the car sank but the body made it to the shore and changed her name by midnight
come springtime the ice melts and the water is back
crawling upon shy ankles
there are growing pains who find a home between nettles and
the hives of adobe wasps
i never could cohabitate with nature
when they ask at parties where i've been
things that are at rest stay at rest

a man of conversation
like a typical neurosis that's linked to

la machina de mi corazon
como la manzana de mi ojo

i'm a bug and the magnifying glass
is my mother and the hand that holds it is god
and as he picks me up from the pebbled ground
he gazes
but i'm too busy feeling the inadvertent heat
emanating from a palm that glistens
and carries me into a nightmarish comfort
of both unknown and like I have always been there
there is no start or finish
and i'm happy
and i need it to last forever

My Aunt Sue would strip violently in the back yard especially during a thunderstorm.
She said the flowers were watching her so they could learn how to live. I just remember scribbling madly into my sketchbook the weird contours of her; the pale ***** that was her skin coming into close proximity with the mud in the field. Each page was cluttered with the switch of her wrist, the scream of her torso lolling in drip-drip weather. This obsession led my lips to bleed and I couldn’t stop biting. The blood that streamed down the side of my mouth tasted like lead pipes.  Just like the ones in our house that creaked every time the wind whistled. Like a man who sold his manners at the gas station for a pack of those cheap cigarettes, one on top of the other so the roof of his mouth became the chimney that soothed him on cold nights. Rain droplets becoming shower sprit in a damp basement-like locker room where men stepped out of steam like in dreams. Feet sloshing on wet tiles and all I could think of were reptiles swimming through swamps, tails slapping the humidity for that sweet scent of coastal ****.
Laughter penetrates through hot breath.
“My favorite dreams are the ones where I wake up in a sweat. The ones where the sheets are as wet as the hand that I use to achieve success.”
The eyes all around go up in full swing and there’s handshakes tossed about.
There’s a secret here that’s reserved only for the ears that happen to hear it and it’s doused with pride.
This circle of jerks, this atmosphere of a citrus kiss laid upon only for masculinity.
This shrine for men that I’ve been so accepted into, so inclined a seat I’ve been given without even a glimpse makes one feel like being inside the small intestine or living inside the bladder.
I am disheveled nervousness as I think of women in a house full of men.
The condensation blurs the mirrors all around and another one finally speaks again.
“One of my biggest sins is not realizing that I only went to church to see the preacher’s wife. They sold peaches out by the highway but all I remember was the gooey goodness I imagined she tasted like.”
The torrent of wild shrieks that undulated out of the Adams’ apples of this congregation would have made Adam himself proud. An avalanche would surely follow as I stared up at the blinding lights of
this sweltering hell that was more a mother’s breast than a place where muscles flourished.
As the halls began to empty the door revealed yet another sunny day. My corneas unable to handle the brightness that was denied to me sitting there in the deluge of delusion I was reminded once again where I was. We walked to the parking lot all in line like a dam not yet ready to break.
There were women everywhere now and my cheeks flushed reminding me again of Aunt Sue slapping me in the face for recording her indiscretions inside a yellow notebook wedged underneath my bed.
Shame was not there with me that day though and neither was it today.
Until someone in our group bellowed “those legs could make a bad man good” to the lady walking on the sidewalk.
Except her response was not one I would have imagined or fantasized about. There was no girly giggle or ****** thankfulness. Only unapologetic annoyance and a slit of fear stuck between her teeth.
Everyone immediately felt the humiliation that came unannounced, felt the ferocious attack of a gratitude that was expected and yet not received. I can only imagine the hot steel of this man’s clock grinding bone to bone and the excruciating betrayal of all he was promised.
His brows furrowing together into his face that I thought they would get ****** into his brain was replaced by a stoic neuroticism I only witnessed in films and yet here it was just a couple of feet from my face. This remorse I had seen before disguised as indistinguishable fastidiousness.
“*******, lady. I bet the only way someone would ******* is if you were *****.” He pitched, like a frenzied cow in a pasture of green and as he proceeded to follow her we followed him. His disciples in
a war not even declared. I began to feel the trickle of what was to be a tropical storm. The rain here making the sound of our boots more echoed while the woman up ahead began to walk faster but not fast enough for the fist of a bruised ego; his hands making contact with beautiful features that did not deserve an audience of sadists. The sound of skin against skin in water is the most painful of all.
Like a shark feasting on bait infiltrating the waters with the sound of music. The atrocity was not in the crime but in the art of not being able to look away as something is turned into nothing more than mysterious meat.
I skip the deli aisle in the grocery store every time but
boys
will
be
boys.

you took me to the natural history museum
the one next to the flower garden
you didn't hold my hand
or you might have
my hair locked in an abrasive ponytail pulling at my ears everytime
the ceilings were like giants
making me feel meek and important
in a forgetful way
the way you don't think about the leaves coming back
in early March
one day they're just there and you're opening the windows again
the way you're meant to
you walked the spotless corridors and I trailed behind
always fearing the immense T-Rex at the front of the room
that followed you with its' eyes
one blink and the head could swivel
the knees would buckle and the colossus
could devour you in a dignified gulp
ending at the bottom of a salacious belly
full of tender body parts and terrifying things
like men pretending to be gods
trapped at the bottom of a well
no invention of fire could extinguish that darkness
reaching into my pocket for binoculars
when I finally look up you're gone past the ancient artifacts
there's a grin and a woman attached to it
and I can see that you're nervous because your feet are dancing back and forth
from their heels to their toes
and the laughter echoes through all the rooms
poignant and full
each room has a theme and I swim from
one diorama to the next alone
I can feel myself melting
with history sticking to my clothes like gum
cotton candy falling into a puddle
gone before you can even taste it

I'm sitting under a canopy of dark green leaves
I don't recognize the breed
You come forward and tell me that a new law has already been discovered
What goes up must eventually come down
The first time I recited one of my poems aloud I drove through the page leaving skid marks shaped like tongue twisters
No one paid attention and when I stepped off to catch my breath I threw up a mouthful of apple seeds that I later dug into the backyard
I moved out before i saw any growth but I promise something rose from the dirt, crooked and shy at first
A medley of anxious nail-biting and approval-seeking
I once knew the secret, the all note worthy testimonial to a meaningful life
But the soup has grown timid and uncertain of where it will go when it no longer holds anything
A toothbrush is born from underneath my skirt
is this cleaning the slate?

It always starts with the  looking of  bouquets of dying flowers in the grocery store
they're always by the entrance and they're always wrapped in cellophane
Moody lilies, doe-eyed star daffodils, ******* lace-leaves
My grandfather's name was Hyacinth
It's symbolic somewhere, somehow
My family's name is buried neck deep in floral epithets
not that you would notice or care
There's an attraction to be named after beautiful things
From the side of my shoulder I hear
count your hands, they might be missing fingers
I look abrasively counting in rotund continuity
one two three four five
one two three four five
when I look behind me the speaker blasts John Mayer and I go home feeling nauseous
manic begonias, sultry sweet-tooth hydrangeas
you pick a rose and it stabs your finger so you set it on fire and take a picture of it, you call it art and the leaves wither
when I sit at my dinner table eating salmon
I cannot stop thinking about mercury poisoning
I lick the table salt off my hands
I wait for cardiac arrest but while that happens
there is that friend of a foe, that voice tickling the back of my ear with it's summer tongue
telling me, beckoning that the tap water I'm drinking is laced with LSD by the government and that I'm going to have a bad trip that I won't be able to get out of. I'll be stuck in that endless loop like a record player that keeps getting scratched by the needle and won't play anything but static noise now.
I go to bed biting my nails until they're raw and touching skin making sure that my hands are still my own
Moonflowers bloom at night and marigolds remind me of the sun
In the morning I dream of driving out to sea in a car that doesn't belong to me and wait for the coral to overtake my brain
When I wake up I do 20 laps around my house instead

my spine was assembled clumsily and with an erratic precision of a hand that knows the premeditation of everything
the swarm came in the shape of an air conditioner
it's the characterizations of overgrown lawns and memory foam on the side of the curb
like going to the laundromat instead of church on Sunday
I've said this before, repetition lives inside the brain that continues to step over it's own feet
foot slowly inching towards my mouth
i could kiss you with my ankle if you would
the air conditioner buzzes all night like i did that night that i couldn't find the entrance in a place that i wanted to leave
take me home in a Chinese take-out box
i'll sit in the back of your fridge until you forget
i'll grow my own colony, mold malformation on the creases where the warmth should be
Sweaty container and you throw me out before Monday's pickup trash along with the expired mustard and mayonnaise
oh the missed opportunity, the dedication i could have gone to have given you a stomach ache that leaves you at three in the morning dry heaving your memories
that electric buzz stays until it's unwelcome and still it persists
so the bees have started to congregate, digress and drink the synthetic honeysuckle it spits
they take off, wings of woolly yellow into a breath that i consume by lungfuls
i don't know where they're going but that's okay because they keep coming back
and it's the permanence of something so flighty that calms the hum

tuck me into bed
leave the restless leaves
i know how much you hate crumbs
on the mattress
but please
feel the unpleasantness and kiss it goodnight
i can tell you the stories i harvest inside myself
like they were only yours to hear
and they are
my experiences are for you to bump shoulders with
covered in sweat in the train station
pardon the loud lights
these make up the skin that will eventually
hold me intact when the weather turns and slaps me again
over and over again
i could sing you to death

girlworm, you grab a wrist like you've known modesty in the shyness of a bare feeling gripped tight on the one offering it
tightrope fingers falling into the spaces of unspoken territory, slipping into familiar qualms like the worn lipsticks that fits the grooves of my lips like an object of my affection
knowing the contour of what i'm never aware of
anxieties creep like an overgrown lawn
these fears personifying into antsy women invading my kitchen telling me that there's not enough ventilation and the stove is on leaking gas into the baby lungs of a young smoker
and when i begin to argue they give both a look of sympathy and disgust as they say "oh child you drown so easily"
so i sit chewing my nails as i count the birds outside flying back and forth from their post as if they can't remember where they're going towards or if there's something that could possibly pull them elsewhere
my mind swirls in the smoothie of a plastic cup that sticks to the coffee table, the rings of different bottles painting circles for me to memorize again
my paradise sits with the roughness of his knuckles and the ambiguity of eyes that could know everything and i would set fire to the stars inside because of the jealousy that grows from pretty things being smoldered under skin
when i begin to lose my person, pale and shivering i go towards it
empty stomached and ready to be buried in the clothes of her
that i can imagine becoming the consistency of yogurt in my lap
kissing back my tremors as i lift up her hair from curious shoulders
dry-heaving the importance of the cheeks that feel warmer as they settle on hands that are brought together as if in deep prayer and i know i will collect myself again one day
girlworm, you're a swarm in my chest and i am me

3rd grade, chipped tooth from swinging on the monkey-bars that were still wet from the rain. I held your hand even if you were a girl, too. How everybody teased. You kissed me behind the stacks of books in the library. I thought about telling my mom. I wondered if god saw.

2. 13 yr old stealing eyeliner from the drug store across the street. You blowing smoke into my mouth after-school. I was spell-bound. You taught me words like "****". You forgot my birthday and I gave myself a bruise punching you in the face.

3. he was in the hospital. I couldn't sleep for three days. I never told him about any of this. We spoke only on the phone and I wish he were sincere when he was sober. I realized then that people are revolving doors. I still love him. I think about him often. He's a best friend.

4. You made me lose so much blood. I thought we were more than child's play. You showed me your favorite artist and I showed you my soul. You took your coffee dark and I tried so hard not to smoke in front of you. He stared at my legs and I told him I took three different types of pills that are supposed to make me happy and he just kept on staring.

5. loading.....

The walls are slipping, in your mind that apartment is ever a reconciliation of forced adulthood and early realizations with the faux french ceilings and the off white walls, everything from the closet you trapped that cat in because it dug it's claws too deep into your skin and where's the line between affection and possession. The Cortez Apartments, like the last name you will never be able to claim because it doesn't show up on your birth certificate, not that you ever much cared about birth. Would-be apartments once hotels, now stripped at the turn of the century, my mid-century nightmare. But it never loses the gusto to haunt you in its corridors and I think I could have learned to love that but now things are less glamorous and I only wear dirt-stained jeans.
I should have used that fire escape, I should have climbed to the rooftop and absorbed the city into a jar that I could look at when I felt empty of blood cells. A defiant permanence, I can still taste the lead paint chipping and the exposed pipe but you aren't supposed to know that and why would you.

Beginning with the swagger of my palm to the squeezing sensation in my ribcage
I realize that the modern woman is alone among everyone else
from the creative orthopedic doctor whose joints resemble that of an
air craft plane your father designed in 1953
to the zany business owner that counts their own steps and
watches the calorie intake of the television dribble
there’s a bit of resentment on her polished fingernails as
she watches feminist prose on stage of a bar with no name
and she drinks cordially, the same intake that a midnight taxi driver
takes to keep his sanity, just enough to recognize street signs
and forget people’s faces
she sits in her dining room table and admires the lump in her throat
never feeling at home with dinner guests so she invents
party games that freefall off her legs into the carpet
that used to belong to a woman with no legs and a smoker’s mouth
but she doesn’t know this because she got it for three dollars
from her neighbor who isn’t alive anymore
and the blood stains of the old woman’s breath have long
disappeared and it’s appealing, yes very appealing
the modern woman is alone among everyone else
that comes foremost, thus the shy boys become isolated women
and the cycle of who is who begins to spin but the laundry won’t stop
piling in a corner of a room
and as soon as it stops the clothes drip from gender to gender  
between the tiles of the convenience store, between the
local gas station where men sit in their pickup trucks staring
at the spit on the ground and wondering whose mouth
it regurgitated from
and the lights become more fluorescent, more menacing  
so the solitary companions start coming later and later
until the sun sets and the lights are off and the only way to
know if another heart is beating is by crawling on the floor
hoping to find a pulse instead of an unsteady table, or a broken
chair or window howling but one acclimates to such conditions
while the modern woman is most intellectual of all
there’s a primitiveness, a strange longing to look behind her
to continue with watchful eyes darting long glances at the past
and sighing with relief that this is now and the future looks down with
convincing not conniving glares but still she falls into the
pit of her own stomach and memorizes the world upside down
the words jostle about,  the approaches of curious hands
become welcoming and the universe that once was an oyster
melts into a pearl with a sharp edge, a tooth made
out of pretty godforsaken, the speculated
creation of something eternally ****** will always be ******
but you don’t have to agree with it, there’s no reason to
shimmy into a container of shouts when you could
easily assimilate into a vat of unknowness, to
belong to something so you don’t have to be anything
yes indeed the modern woman stands alone in these dark ages
but the swagger has been reduced to a soft calamity, the
squeezing sensations in my rib cage have been swallowed to a
slow pull, grasp, released clench of a heart

There was ink in his mouth and it was Monday morning, doomsday morning.
The comparison of both these seemingly random attributes could mean nothing at all
to anybody else but they came hand in hand for a man that always walked with his shoes untied
and while the rest of the world chewed tobacco; he chewed cinnamon sticks that he would grind
to a fine powder in his mouth spitting it out at nearby ant mounds and by the nests of bumblebees.
This nomad’s of nobody’s business would wander the streets of his hated town, the world’s armpit, the city of fire and angels and whatever the hell else.
He would walk Pico Boulevard all the way to Wilshire Ave., towards Venice and then crookedly stumbling to Van Nuys but he didn’t know his bus routes and his mind was always swarmed by imaginary bugs that he picked up from old soda cans.
What he loved most of all was stopping by the bridges of highways and looking all the way down to
the cars below swimming past in a hurry; the sky dark blue and the headlights like light bulbs
almost running out of their batteries. He saw this as cathartic as most people saw sunsets or a pianist
shaking his head violently to his own tune and it was true. This simple man was born, some say, out of dust, car exhaust and the lost ID cards of peoples’ whose wallets were stolen. However intriguing this could be it wasn’t so.  He was born in a hospital in Chinatown and his mother had gold teeth that glistened whenever she drank too much and how often they shone.
You see, I knew this man long ago when my hair cascaded down my back in fine strokes and my lungs
weren’t yet tired from the things I chose to inhale. For all my purposes, this was the only person I wanted to talk about, to spit and screech whenever I heard his name and I didn’t even exactly know his name; The poor imbecile. He went by different pseudonyms and I suppose I did too but I had a name that most knew. Carmen and Leopold. They chose to remember it because it rolled off, it clawed at your teeth as you said it.
But Monday mornings were a specialty. It meant that he could go and see his brother who lived across town, the one who sang at fancy pubs and refined restaurants, where people didn’t have to yell to admire you, but slowly clapped, a soft hum in a room where everyone understands and doesn’t have to make up for it in the way they whistle your name. He always shook his head at this profession.
“You’re an animal to these people, an exhibit they can safely see from their auditoriums and then go to sleep without having to take you home. Your last hurrah will come soon and then what will you do?”
He didn’t understand Leopold’s hostility. This art he was drawn to. This voice that could have been
given to anybody but it was given to him. Deep down he knew he would never be a big star, he would never leave the place where he born. He would die close to where he went to elementary school and what a big sham, the whole big world so big and he would never see it. Never unfold, instead slowly
crumble like the crust of cakes he stared at through shopping windows.

watching the same collage video on a loop of
leaves drying up
snow melting under the surface of a sweating floor
you leap up to grab me but there's only a cloud of moonlight coming through your window
you feel the arresting tackle of all the butterflies leaping out of your chest with rapid eye movement like the eyelash kisses you would give the mirror
the fluttering turning their wings into  heavy blades that leave a pinkish glow on your chest

my name was worn out that spring and you never learned to turn the light on at night

can you hold it in your palm? I can't stop talking about hands.
I don't remember the last time any other body part was that important but the one that slept next to you out of necessity instead of loneliness.
There's a problem, like a rock skipping into my neighbor's pool but it's not my neighborhood and none of the houses remind me of home. A solitary moment shrinking in shrubs when you know that the cars are passing by and you have no idea what direction anyone's going. Where's the destination and will they get there like you?
Muddy lawns and soaking sidewalks is everywhere you've ever been but you don't talk much about that anymore. Some kind of selective mutism that gripped you when you were too young to make decisions, just a bad joke played well on yourself. Drifting from window to window to see if my fingerprints stay there, if the future will break down the door and trip me with shoelaces that were worn by me or my best friend or by nobody and I think I'll understand then the most significant rule, you can't be in two places at once.

There’s a horror in the city
but it’s always Halloween in someone’s basement
in the suburbs the closets are inundated with skeletons
each dressed in friendly attire
but never opening the door
the neighbors always watching through sheer curtains
binoculars at the ready
instead of candy on doorsteps
there’s signs of beware of the maniac with the pistol
locked and loaded watching the 6’oclock news
no apocalypse is breaking into our windows tonight
there’s a hum and it’s making all the locals go mad
they still haven’t figured out it’s the cicadas
not demons in their trees looking for a discount lunch
the desert is a harsh place when the sun is
drawn sloppily on the right hand corner of a page
the houses all uniformed for the drought to come
each manicured lawn is a haunting for the
unemployed drunk in the nearby trailer park
the ghosts of those whose Christmas
doesn’t come in stockings but stalking
and restraining orders
the spookiest part is not the
slasher hotels or the creature feature
shows at the bars and clubs
but the calm, serene and unsettling
manner in which everyone congregates
on Sunday morning to be cleansed
of impurities, each smile stretching farther and farther
until the seconds drip into communion wine
until the hours dissolve in one’s mouth like god’s flesh
reinvented, resuscitated, resurrected

Arise, my brothers
for the pastor is watching
there’s a twinkle in his eyes
and there are boys missing after every ceremony
but no one questions why

i am a blade tucked safely in Tupperware
my lonely teeth hidden under clammy pillow
feel these nightmares like they were yours
i could blush with you all night
when my mouth feels dry
it is not from the absence of presence
but from the rotundity cascade
that your hair ebbs as it collides with mine
i'd like to think this folly is something
i can put on the centerfold
a gift too pronounced with an utter
of my masked gravity inside all the
beer you pour into a proud papercup
days shrink into nothingness

a kingdom of rotten tomatoes
they spit their seeds for the harvest of tomorrow
one over the other they topple
waiting for instructions
"i'm waiting for the day to live"
one says over the other
one over the other

a red pool of friends
everything's my favorite
in between the cumbersome vines they hear
of the escape
the hand that reaches up into nothingness and picks the chosen one
ripe for plucking, into a palm if you're lucky
a unexplained romance to be devoured
don't leave us here to fall, they cry
berry of the nightshade come closer
their potassium-deficient king
is lifted from his ill-ridden bed and fed
feast into the sweet juice of a fruit ready to die
'a milky embrace between the tomato queen and i'

silk blouses and cotton underwear
the nights merge into a sticky soup that falls into the pocket of a sweater i was wearing when they said that death is permanent
the voice echoing into the receiver of my first cell phone
the wavering tremble of someone in the middle of realms
sleep and consciousness turning the other side of the pillow
wondering if the smoke in my lungs felt comfortable
wonder if the moon sinks lower into your backyard
i was never good at distinguishing shadows and when i found myself on the dark side of the mattress;
my feet cold and feeble i wondered if you could hear my heart a thousand miles away
the fluttering of a drowsy bird, lethargically dragging it's clumsy wings into the plummeting stifle of open air
you said my lips were like the halves of a plum
i bit them until they bled but it was never as sweet
it was never as sweet

-I've learned to take the sheets off of the bed and wash them and if my hands were big enough I would curl them into fists and call you to tell you that your ghost no longer resides in here but I don't have your phone number anymore and I don't miss you quite as often.

-You're white flag, your war-rage reverb inside a rib-cage and there's no microphone to mutter into. Slam poetry isn't your thing but ******* sometimes there's an itch, a scream half-muffled that wants to talk about your hair raining down on their cold pillows just before the lights go out.

-I've never owned an ashtray despite the chimney that mimics my mouth sometimes. It's telling your mama you made it for her birthday because you don't want to see her face every-time you check in once again for the last time into a hospital. Even if making it is keeping a plant alive.

-The scattered light rays that travel into your room in the afternoon when you're getting drunk alone again and don't you dare call me bad because baby, I was raised that way. You can't put a band-aid over a broken bone. There's a fire in my palms no psalm can actually pronounce.

-your writing career has plummeted so now you sit in a bus stop as people tell you their life story and you feel like a priest but there's never any relief and the confessions get more heavy so you write about it but there's never anyone to hear, and even if there was would it heal the bruises?

I got braces when I was 16
that year I never kissed anyone
but I made boys steal things from pricy bookstores
I measure time by my teeth
every year they get more crooked
the older I get they seem to shift back to old territory
old habits
old

now even smoking cigarettes feels boring
when I walk into bookstores
I leave sticky notes with advice I wish someone would have told me then

they did
but maybe if I had found it somewhere I was looking
I might have paid more attention
my retainer sits in a shelf collecting grime

a decimal of time
wedged between a tile
of a room - unknown
it could have been a kitchen or the delirious floor of a bustling shop
down to the tedium of banter and the slow trickle of something like
a cultural shift
inside a downtrodden window she stared too long until she was
unrecognizable by her and those around her
disappearing from picture frames and unable to remember
what it was like to say something of importance
her tongue now a foreign agent unsure if it still served a purpose
other than being in someone else's mouth
her shirt pocket always containing something of a thrill
like pearls or cigarettes
but now there was nothing in those pockets
tea bags were now placed in jars and her nails never veneer various colors but the same **** that had enthralled her years earlier
now blending in with the canvas outfits she wore to be reminded of a hobby that could have meant something
if only she believed in anything

Suburbia greeted me with pale hands in my late teens.
She was a wasteland in a mini skirt; in its’ own right it could be called a Cave with Plato egregiously driving his brand-new Prius 90 miles an hour saying “this is really living as long as you don’t look back” and all you can do is nod your head vigorously because the twisted **** that had settled surreptitiously in your baby lungs was giving you daylight hallucinations. My endeavors didn’t end there when they should have.
There was something uncanny about the way streetlights gave you the eternal glare. Of creating ordinary neighborhood streets appear like you’ve been there before in a dream, in another body. In a dazed stupor the sounds of a television and a light coming from a garage is forgiving in your misguided attempts to be comfortable in a foreign space. It could almost feel like home when your repressed trauma keeps resurfacing while you’re trying to introduce yourself. Almost.
In these polite badlands with everything uniformed the people I met were always trying to stand out from the serene landscapes. Sitting in plaid couches I was giddy playing the nihilist. Rerun episodes of Portlandia playing but all I remember from that smoky room were brown pants that looked extremely crisp to the touch and I wanted to reach out my hands and see if they would crunch under the paperweight of my heavy palms. I didn’t but I’m sure they would’ve emitted the sound of potato chips being eaten in a frenzy.
When I wasn’t walking through dark rooms feeling through what could have been hallways, a family’s living room or the cool gates of hell I was meandering my way through drowsy parties where boys with the names like Dusty and Slaughter were prevalent. Each with their own bizarre story about how they stole their parents’ money one night and took off spontaneously. Driving all the way to Nevada with nothing but half a tank of gas and one pack of cigarettes. You could almost pinpoint their personalities by the type of cigarettes they smoked. Most of them holding different colored American Spirits. Had I been smarter I would have asked for a light and a smoke. Never mind that I was always deadly afraid that I had some undiagnosed lung disease and that asphyxiation was my biggest fear or that I had a pack of Marlboro black menthols in my purse that were over a year old. I found my corner sitting in a worn outdoors chair. The ones where the armrest comes built in with a cupholder. My beer ice cold sitting awkwardly sideways while I tried to consider why the host of the party was wealthy yet so hostile. My favorite party game was the one where I took hit after hit of joints being passed around until I was crazy glued to my chair and my brain started to feel like a lagoon that continued to melt into a Campbell’s soup I once had as a child. Everyone completely unaware of the horror that the house had become to me. Somewhere in the distance I was acutely aware of who I would go home with, why my ventures into the suburbs had sparked my intrigue in the first place. The only reason why I had endured feeling like a spider watching a **** film and why I had lost my virginity just a day before. I was a displaced specimen thinking about her ***** in a room of 30 people or more.

the sun rises out of your pocket
that's how I've always known it
you empty the lint along with the golden threads
and weave them gently into my sleep addled eyes
when I wake, you're gone
but I know you've been there
I can tell by the way the chair is facing the opposite wall
the shoes on the floor have taken the shape of the last step you took
and your ghostly perfume still lingers as a full figure of air
dashing through the vents just to come out the other side
full-fledged and yet fleeting as I make my breakfast
you rattle the walls and that's how I know it's time to take out the trash
the black vinyl plastic bags seem to melt under the heat
just as I do when you tell me that love is problematic
but you've always been resourceful

some people are born anxious
a tidal pool of dry-heave and spider bones
a conundrum whirlwind of seared tongue not tasting anything for days
i think there's a nausea that hides under my shirt sleeves
there's an unproven cluster of nervous cells waiting for my elbows to
suddenly start fidgeting
a dehydrated vocabulary of what to say
and is it appropriate to say it
autumn is forever around here

there's mud on the front steps
the pools in other people's houses always seem much cleaner than yours to you
when you dip your toes into the chlorine water you think that only the extremely lucky can be devoid of dirt
the thought lurches away from you with each tide your body makes
and you forget what you're really arguing about in the first place
like a band-aid that unsticks when you're not looking
leaving an exposed scab and an embarrassing gravity when you think of whoever will find it next
when driving through houses that all look alike and the expanse is nothing but dry look-alike lawns in the middle of lush trees you can
imagine if you really try that at the end of one of those roads it will eventually lead you to the beginning of the ocean you admire so much
the gravel road kissing sand for miles until you can feel the salty breeze lick your eyes
and once again nothing can hurt you
and once again you're pure in your actions

eating fast food as I watch you wear your old Hawaiian t shirt you adopted from the bottom of a bin at the local thrift shop because everything has always been comfort over style and you can't change now
a fry falls onto the lap of my thighs and you ask me when the last time was I used my kitchen floor for dancing instead of pacing around but my mind falls short into the drops of condensation sweating into a couch that I hate sometimes and admire for the sturdy way it always manages to **** up my back
I'm already what I want to be but I pretend that I throw around my identity like a knick-knack hacky sack and I'll always blame you for the aftershock effect of feeling like I've been spun in a tumbler and left to be drunk by the gnats you breed by never throwing old fruit away

i'm standing pale legged at the video store
the Friday's all coming to meet at this exact location
like a montage ready to collect and gather information
and then parting ways, moving into the local subways
crossing the veins of the city in vain waiting for an optimal stop
that allows them to step off into the sunlight
and greet fate standing under the crowded street light
ushering an invitation with sweaty hands as they collapse fully drenched

I can feel the air conditioning escaping the room
can tell from the way people are passing by, that this pause won't keep and I inch towards the old case that holds the movie Thirteen  
the girls with the studded tongues stare back at me and I am a mutant, unrecognizable in that gaze but still there's something that makes me bite my fingernails like trying to de-understand
the floor is gum stained and the lights are so neon I think I can fall in love forever
my shoelace is untied and the man behind the restricted area with the dark curtains coughs twice and I think
that the aisles continue even after you leave

Wash your hands before leaving.
Every afternoon the television would have a woman in tears
Spanish dialogue, pastel colored sets
Tongue in cheek, modern romance sipping iced tea by the pool
The antagonist wearing a suit and three rings on each finger
Pause.
Soap bars are made of fat, the grease found in
Breakfast diners and sweat off a teenagers face
The lipids turning gelatinous and all I can think of is
Jell-o; the strange colored dessert that doesn’t taste like anything real
My hands begin to itch and I stand up
Wash your hands before leaving.
My hands have become open desert, dry animosity
The skin around the knuckles is delicate, one clench of a fist
I am sure that it will tear, like the skirt of a girl I once knew
But there are creatures lurking everywhere
In the handle of the bathroom door, in the shake of another hand
In the touch of a frame, in the grip of a key
Wash your hands before leaving.
The scattered murmurs on the screen remind me its 5p.m
The women are arguing with their manicured hands
Their eyes all having the same spidery lashes, spiders
I feel insects crawling under my bones
Termites clipping at my heels as I sit in this couch of horrors
I didn’t know the last time it had been washed
It smelled of the 1970’s and I want to go home
The babysitter is on the other chair reclined
Snoring, letting out bacteria through her mouth
At 8 years old I should be on the floor with a coloring book
My lips are dry, the screen is too bright, I can feel the filth everywhere I turn
So I stay
I hear the door knock and it’s my mother picking me up after work
My lungs sigh of relief
Time to go
But first
let me wash my hands before I leave

An artist too lazy to make any art
So what am I?
The sleepy commitment holding your hand in public places
An enormous gratitude lounging in between spaces with a stain on her shirt
Always seeking to be the next big thing

A stoic
Unable to process any other philosophy
that doesn't kiss me when I'm nervous
Lights turning on in the afternoon
And the warm glow of knowing people are inside
There
Ready to open up the door and invite you into the individual smells that occupy their reality

I am I-don't-remember-the-city-anymore girl
Sterile buildings and antiseptic coast
Are both memory and fiction
I am everything's-sort-of-familiar and yet exactly obscure
A contrarian careful to never admit that everything
Will make sense with enough persuasion
In the corners of my mind sits a woman
Smoothing out creases of my brain like the folds on bed sheets
Or the wrinkles in a shirt
And I allow her to because I love her
And I believe that what she does is affection
And maybe I'm right
Or maybe I'm wrong and I was never an artist
But something else entirely because that's so much easier

my favorite girl is honeycombed
a heart of bitter jelly locked
the ants crawl but dissipate
amidst, i blush coquettishly
i am her prince, blue and fond
stranded in abundance of wild grass
somewhere in Texas
my throat is dry and my mouth lingers
on the sunflower seeds i spit aimlessly
into the dirt
Waiting for seedlings to crawl, a spurt of
"this love will grow someday"
i can taste the spit of the tongue
that knows my name by heart
and wouldn't have it any other way
no i wouldn't have it any other way

I am alive in a home-made dress that was bought for two dollars at a yard sale
there is domestic bliss in routine
in the inching of my hand on a knife that will be used to slice the
tomatoes growing outside
there in no harm in loving you eternally
I think about everything often
about the way I tried for years to soothe my fathers’ psychosis
and my mothers’ sadness
I think about the temporary loss of my body and the way I absorbed it in sweat
my bones constantly caught in bushes of bramble thorns  
and I wish you could see how far you have to go to come back home

i often think about the people that go hit by meteorites
how space shrapnel invited itself into their homes
took its' shoes off and shimmied into the floor
asteroid junk, hold me closer
tell them they're not alone
that one day they'll burst, or be swept
all just soot in the end
this dust, this sand
can fill up a city
i can be that city

how likely is it to be struck by lightning?
and will i be the lucky one
tell me, will it shake the truths out of me
will it burn my hair like it did when someone got too close and their cigarette got even closer
the way it sizzled and made the air hard to breathe
will my veins line up with the electric as if i were part of something greater than a body of earth?
in times like these i hear the word aha!
Geronimo calling from the light-bulb, brazenly jumping to enlightenment
a tiny revolution starting in every little thing that can line up with the other
a thousand circuits jump starting and brashly telling me to
step out of the dark
i could use a little time

my shirt barely fits over my stomach
my belly is a bag of granny smith apples
**** and plump
misleading in their sweetness
underneath growing ten-fold each week
all the different fruits for growth
leave me anemic for heartier things
tenderloin heart, blood steak
there's a biting pain on the side of my hip
that feels like what I imagine a dog nipping at your heel
could feel like
and I hear it
the small squeak at the bottom of a storm drain
a miniature kitten trapped in the middle of concrete and hot cement
it hasn't rained in months
and my mouth starts to water imagining
the dehydrated lungs of an animal
that's destiny has been sealed

soup in the spring
I can taste again
there's a photo of me riding a horse
but I wouldn't be able to describe the feeling to you
always the horse
never the horse girl
he kissed my hand like a gentleman
and I fed him an apple
coming back home they ask why my knuckles are bleeding
I say I got too close and a kiss sometimes involves teeth

I dream that the frogs in my backyard have wings
and they fly up to the trees
in the dewy light of dawn
to meet their maker
and kiss under the canopied shade of listless leaves
grazing their backs
and reminding them of simpler times
down from the watery swamp they came from
their webbed feet leave prints on the bark
muddy and cumbersome
but innocent in their doings
a flash flood of lightning  awakens me
i'm laying in damp earth again
time to go back inside