Sweet-lipped Psyche's pale white skin
All the men in Greece dragged in.
And the poor girl's dark brown eyes
Led Aphrodite her to despise.
For Psyche truly was a beauty,
Reputed as brighter than Aphrodite.
If Aphrodite was a dark red rose,
Of which we've written poetry and prose,
Psyche was a pure-white Aganisia
For which they wrote a deep-sea saga.
But she knew it was sore unwise
To find herself level with a Goddess' eyes.
The only proof needed for Psyche
Was the sad fate of the maiden Arachne,
Who challenged Athena to a weaving contest,
And though her tapestry was judged the best,
It was she that ended as the melancholy loser,
For Athena punished her with the life of a spider.
And so it was that Psyche knew
Aphrodite wold claim her life too.
So Aphrodite sent her son,
The lovely, winged, holy one,
Whose golden arrows fly at night
And relieve bored lovers of their plights.
She sent Eros to shoot his arrow
And pierce it through to Psyche's marrow,
Then set before her a crocodile,
The scaly terror of the Nile,
With which she'd fall in love straightway,
And then she'd come to rue the day.
For crocodiles have no love to give,
So it would eat her, and she'd cease to live.
On the sleeping Psyche Eros descended,
Long before the night had ended,
In whose dainty breast to shove
A golden arrow poisoned with love.
He prepared to bury it to the hilt,
But a drop of love on him was spilt,
At the moment he saw her eyes, dark brown,
Look to him and stare him down.
Then Eros went back to his mother
And told her he could not wed another
Who did not shine quite so brightly
As his sweet-lipped brown-eyed Psyche.
So spiteful Aphrodite cursed
Psyche through her red lips pursed,
That the girl would find no husband
Among God, animal, or man.
And Eros this so greatly angered
He could no more with arrows linger
At the foot of lovers' beds
To foster love in their young heads.
The entire world then ceased to love
Whether it walked on foot or hoof.
Whether it swam or flew on wing
It could not love nor gain others' loving.
When love no longer circulated,
Aphrodite it aggravated
To see her temple lying bare
And to feel the gray growing in her hair.
She told Eros he'd have what he desired
If only he would kindle love's fires.
So at the mountain, Psyche's family offered her
And she was borne away on the back of Zephyr
To Eros' golden gay abode
That he and his ghostly servants called home.
In the golden rooms she wandered by daylight,
But she lay with Eros in the dark when came night.
She knew not who her darling was,
But called her ignorance a test of trust.
Never to look upon him by day,
She continued in this way,
Until she longed to visit her family,
Which her husband granted her gladly.
But he held her, and he warned her
Not to let her sisters persuade her.
"They may try to tear you away
By telling you gruesome stories." he'd say.
Then, trippingly, from Olympus she jumped down
To walk the streets of her hometown.
She told her sisters her whole story
And they turned it into something gory.
"He could be a serpent," they'd say,
"Fattening you up for the day
When he can pop you in his mouth and eat you"
Unfortunately, she took their words as true.
"So, when he comes to you at night,
Just gaze on him by candlelight!
If he's a serpent, use this knife,
And you'll no longer be his wife.
But make sure not to spill the oil,
Or his waking will cause great turmoil!
We'll find out about that young buck!
Use the candle, the knife, don't spill, and good luck!"
She walked back to the palace at their behest,
Butterflies banging within her chest.
Could the faceless man with whom she'd spent her nights
Be revealed as a serpent by candlelight?
She did not have to wait for long
To prove her treacherous sisters wrong.
As she lay in the great soft bed,
The instructions tangled inside her head,
And lighting the candle, she almost fumbled,
But when she saw his face, she truly stumbled!
Eros' beauty knocked her senseless,
Leaving mortal Psyche defenseless,
And causing her to spill the oil, which smoldered
On Eros' godly golden shoulder.
He, awaking with a start
Was disappointed to his heart
That Psyche cold be so unfaithful
And make a decision so egregiously fatal.
Then, jumping from the casing, he flew
Out of Psyche's lustful view.
And she, for her part, suddenly found
That from the palace she'd been cast down
To a field of which she had no memory,
Or very dim, if she had any.
In despair, she began to flounder,
Then resigned herself to wander
Until she came to a temple edifice,
Which was, on Earth, Aphrodite's face,
And begged the unseen Goddess hear her out,
Trying her patience with childish whining shouts.
Aphrodite, trying only to divert,
Cast a basket of grains down to the dirt,
And told the weeping lovely malcontent
That if she sorted the grains 'fore day was spent,
She just may see her sweetheart once again.
All she had to do was sort the grain.
But Psyche, though her fingers were dainty and thin,
To separate the grains could not begin,
And sobbing, lay upon the stony floor
That was as cold as the Goddess had acted before.
The ants, which had been drawn to the golden grain,
Bore her load and relieved her of her pain.
In their famously sure and straight black line,
They each picked up a piece of grain so fine
That it might with ease pass through a needle,
And into order they the sweet grain wheedled.
Then at the very setting of the sun,
Aphrodite found the task was done,
And though she praised the poor girl outwardly,
Inside she felt the bloom of hate for Psyche.
So she set her down on one side of a stream,
Where on the other was a field of green,
In which lived Helios' golden sheep
From which she was to obtain some shining fleece.
Then Aphrodite left her there to play,
And flew to Mount Olympus far away.
But Flumen, God of Rivers, raised his head
To warn sweet Psyche from his riverbed
That the sheep were so fierce, if she but pulled one hair,
They'd all turn on her and eat her then and there.
It was better if she waited 'til midday
When the sheep lay down to sleep the heat away.
Then she could cross where the river rushes,
And pick the wool that had got caught in the bushes.
So Psyche followed Flumen's good advice,
And for Aphrodite's cruelty she paid no price.
Aphrodite's blood boiled when she saw
That Psyche had survived it after all.
Again, she tried to send her to her death
And charged her to collect water from a cleft
Which mortal humans could not enter,
And in which serpents would surely spend her.
But now it was an eagle came to her aid,
Who stormed inside and flew between the snakes,
Then picked a pouch of water in its beak,
And back out of the cleft to Psyche it sneaked.
Aphrodite, at her dastardly wit's end,
Devised a horrible place for her to Psyche send.
"Psyche, caring for my ailing son
Has drained each drop of beauty, every one,
From my former glory of a face.
Therefore, I command you to that place
Where Persephone dwells. Then you must beg
For some of her beauty, just a tiny dreg.
Then you may have my son, I give my promise,
As holding him from you has marred my face."
Then Psyche, with tears streaming from her eyes,
Decided the only way there was to die.
In what she had appointed her fatal hour,
She climbed up to the top of a high tower,
But her melancholy was so disturbingly great,
All the Universe moved to it abate,
So that the very tower she climbed upon,
Awoke and spoke to her as if a person.
"Psyche, there is a way to the Underworld alive,
So that you need not from my roofing dive."
And to the Underworld the tower gave her
A route and some directions just to save her,
Then it sternly warned her that not of meat,
Nor of anything but bread in Hades could she eat.
So she followed the Tower's path back down
And disappeared into the heaving ground.
And when she found herself before Persephone's throne
She asked to take a parcel of her beauty home,
Which the emotionless Queen of the Screaming ******
Without word placed in Psyche's quivering hand.
The hardest part of the impossible task being done,
Psyche headed back up toward the sun,
And, reasoning that she was to see her beloved before nightfall,
Decided to use some beauty from the parcel.
Inside she found not beauty, but a stifling sleep,
Which forever in its clutches would she keep
If Eros had not chancely happened by,
And wiped Persephone's sleep from Psyche's eye.
Then, carrying her on his back, he barged
Into the Hall of the Olympian Gods.
He bade them let him wed himself and Psyche
And disregard the protests of Aphrodite.
Then Jupiter, indeed, allowed it obligingly,
For he was a man who greatly enjoyed a party.
Ambrosia she was given so to seal
Her immortality and place her among the surreal.
Then after many years of love and laughter,
Psyche bore Hedone, their lovely daughter.
This is how the beauty of the Human Soul,
Triumphed over the beauty of lust and gold.
All this Eros and Psyche had to take.
All this they endured for their love's sake.
They demonstrate the purity of love,
That is admired by Gods above.
In the end, it is the pure Mariposa
Who is more deserving of ambrosia.

Under a low-hanging branch of magnolia,
a foolish young person lay breathing his last.
He bled out his guts to the soft-stirring air,
Soothed as white petals, like ghosts, flitted past.
A foolish young person believed those around him,
A foolish young person left Mother at home.
While many would say that she tearfully warned him,
She was one among many who told him to go.
She told him of bravery, bloodline, nobility,
And of destitution, tables yet to turn.
Under the branch that snows down white magnolia,
He bleeds out remembering others’ words.

Under a spice-scented branch of magnolia,
He thinks of the will of a God he knows not.
God would not wish for the sins he’s committed;
This murderer is not on his way to meet God.
He thinks himself hero, and calls himself savior,
Conservator of all that his short life has known.
To keep others underfoot, deprived, and in chains,
He gives up his body, his blood, and his bone.

Under a low-hanging branch of magnolia,
His heartbeat an abacus, he tallies up deeds.
He fought not for money, he fought not for "rights,"
That reasoning is long since lost to the weeds.
He fought not for love of the branch of magnolia;
He fought not for dignity, the saving of face.
He fought for one thing, and one ugly thing only:
A life lived as if of superior race.
One could say he did not know his own motivation,
Because he so fervently deluded himself,
And many, thereafter, denied it as well,
Till they worshipped the rag that led him to death.

I used to stand, a little girl,
In the face of the mighty River,
And try my luck against the current,
Till my thin frame would shiver.
The River was a muscled god
Of milky Grecian marble,
Who'd swallow up the flotsam,
While the safer songbirds warbled.
My mother told me "stay away,
The River, he is hungry,
He'll twist you round and break your bones
And take your sweet self from me."
And, from then on, I'd heed her word,
And steer clear of the River,
Or throw in sticks to harm it,
Vainly, watch them be devoured.
And sometimes, when the rain came down
For long days at a time,
The River would rise from his bed,
To drown all that was mine.
So he got many over on me,
And I, nothing on him.
The River was so sly, you see,
The Devil, just too slim.
And then I grew up proud
And beautiful, and moved away,
To a moneyed place in the northern states,
Where the River stayed away.
But I met a man just like that Body
Rolling, roiling, wild,
That took and drowned all I did have
And left me with a child.
And my mother took me in again,
And told me just the same,
To shun the River, guard myself,
A man's worse than his name.
I took to daring, once again,
That arctic current down,
I'd dip my toes in evening time,
And smooth my forehead's frown.
I'd talk to him, my belly swole,
Confide in the River wild,
I prayed to God in the water's hearing,
That I did not need the child.
The River told me he would help,
That I could use his ways,
For he wanted only sacrifice,
And I wanted not the blame.
So I waded in, the hands of water
Cupped beneath my thighs,
And the River's water turned blood red,
And my eyes rolled to the sky.
Now I live alone again.
Playing mother was not my lot.
The River took my baby in,
Because my arms could not.

The screech-owl in the wasted tree,
Who blights the branch and smites the leaves,
She wails that she was once like you and me!
Hey Lamia, hey love of mine,
Whose banshee moaning boils the night,
I won’t listen, for I know that Lilith lies!

Oh, naked beasts, oh variegated lives!
Whose ribs You cracked,
Whose love You lacked,
For whom You cast two wives!
Oh, hungry man, that bites his keeper’s hand!
You mixed his tears,
Instilled his fears,
And taught him “Lilith lies.”

I fled before you were brought forth
And spread, you race of sons of ******!
Oh children, you are mine, and I am yours!
Un-furred, un-feathered, and dull-toothed,
How the Almighty forsook you!
So sick and weak, you all can barely move!

Oh, teeth and bones, Oh heaven-wide applause!
Come Oneiroi,
Support ‘tcha boi,
The ape without no claws!
Oh, sticks and stones, oh desperation’s knives!
Come Seraphim,
Sing us a hymn,
Remind us Lilith lies!

“She lies, she lies,” you cry “she lies,”
But I have wings, and claws, and eyes
That pierce the dark, and to all schemes I’m wise!
Yes, I obtained these claws of gold
That keep me safe and fed and whole!
You can’t condemn what hasn’t got a soul!

Oh, life from mud, oh mare who bucked the stud!
Who sits on beds,
Perched at the heads
To drink the dreaming’s blood!
Oh, owl’s eyes, oh man’s dread realized!
Come talk at length,
And show your strength,
And show us how you lie!

Beneath the Earth, bequeathed to mud,
The soft pink worm there nobly stood,
And in the muck ahead did gnaw
A path with well-accustomed jaw.
Thus having made himself a place,
He felt the light shine on his face.
For though every worm's stone blind,
He has the sharpest animal mind.
It's what mankind will never know;
It's what the worm will never show;
It's how the meanest thing that lived
Received God's kindest natural gift.
For man will never understand
the lowly worms on which he stands.
Each thing that you have never noticed
Holds in itself some higher office.

I know you always saw yourself a knight
But I did not realize for a long time
That I was a page.
You were my sparring partner
Who taught me to come at the world
Gun drawn
So no one could out-shoot me.
You told me,
And I know,
That Justice wears a blindfold because
She slashes her sword indiscriminately,
And looks at that scale
Never.

You always saw yourself a lawman
I always saw you as a fool.
I never realized I learned law
At your feet.
Fallacies and ways of
Drawing out argument and diatribe,
Loopholes of morality through which
We spin.
You taught me to be technically correct,
The best kind of correct,
Always exploiting but
Always within my jurisdiction.
I only know now I was a deputy
To a sheriff of ridiculous stature.

You taught me THE ART OF WAR.
It was engraved in stone for me
Like an all-caps Roman monument.
THE ART OF WAR
Is sprawled across a stone archway in my mind
Where you came, and you saw.
It marks your conquest.

You made it my way of loving,
Of relating to the world and the people around me.
You made me a martyr and mercenary,
Standing atop a hill in golden armor,
Sunlight behind me and wind in my hair,
An avatar of Durga,
A disciple of Joan of Arc,
A four-year-old poses in chainmail
You wrought for her.
Illusions of grandeur such as your own
Come with this territory.

You taught me
As your mother and father
And grandparents
Taught you,
THE ART OF WAR-
That love is just begrudging words of sweetness
Issued only after ruins lay all around
And both parties are sufficiently vulnerable,
Their bricks having been pried away with crowbars.
Love is only an apology given to mollify
The wounds you have already wrought.
The only privilege loved-ones are afforded,
Is the bandage that covers up the customary
Destruction
That is your normal face.

You and I only ever knew love as
You clipping my wings
And I breaking free to spray
The shrapnel of those chains
Into your face.
We added to each others' pile of scars.
It was so rare for us to run into battle together,
On the same side,
Voices as one in a battlecry.
I don't even know how long it's been since
Us soldiers-for-hire got hired
By the same team at once.

You cast me out of steel
Like a sword.
And now I am the legendary blade
Destined to clash against you for all eternity.
We will only ever know ceasefires
Of a day in length.
We will run through the flame,
And we will practice the art
You taught me.

The old broken sack
Rocked in a chair.
Deep within the wrinkles of her face,
Past the fractures in her arms,
And in the bottoms of her blind black orbs,
She smiled at the children clustered round her deathbed.

"Do you remember," she said,
"The story which once I told your parents?"

"Yes." said the many children.
They were children of all sparkling colors,
Of all different faces,
And the Lizard Matriarch noted this.

"I was wrong," said she,
"Partly wrong.
I am no different from any of you."
And they gasped in astonishment,
And looked at each other's faces for any sign of her.

"Each of us is strange,
Each of us has a structural idiosyncrasy
And a basic different core.
It is not I alone who is evolved,
Nor I alone who is a step in the experiment,
But it is every baby born.
There is no normal."

She cried strange tears from her wrecked eyes.

"Nature has chosen all of us
To be her Freaks."

Sweet things, Soft things:
Fingers brushing clean counters.
A skirt spread neatly over a lap.
People dreaming together, in a morninglit room where a fan blows,
And riffles papers.
Closed eyes.
Cats' paws.
Quiet steps mindful of a sleeping house.
None are important,
They are hardly original.
But often I close my eyes,
Let soft light filter through the capillaries,
And dwell on them so that I may
Escape that which is bitter,
That which is hard.

The freak of nature tossed her hair in the sunlight
And bent her neck at an impossible angle,
Tilting her already-crooked face in happiness.

"How can you be happy?" They said.
"Do you consider yourself whole?"
Implying "We don't."

She smiled
In her wide, glass eyes,
Like the eyes of ancient dinosaurs,
Like a throwback to the time of giant insects.

"I am more than whole" said the Lizard-Queen.

"Nature makes her mutations
In hopes of a good one, that will stick.
This is how we came to walk on our two legs.
We began to talk.
We gained the ability to love each other."

"Am I good or bad?" She asked.
Some shouted good, and raised their hands to her.
Others murmured bad, and stared at the ground,
For the ground, unlike her eyes, did not meet them
With such eerie consciousness.

"I'll tell you," said she,
"It matters not to me.
If I am good, then I am evolved.
If I am bad,
If these bones of mine have an unfortunate propensity to break,
If these eyes of mine grow weary and blind in old age,
Then I will be more than good or bad.
I will be a part of the experiment
And the process.
I am honored that Nature chose me to be
Her Freak."

Worry is a talisman
That I touch and count
Like a rosary
Every bead is every thing
That ever might go wrong
And every touch wards it off
Worry uses up my hands in
Counting beads like an abacus
So swift is the movement of my fingers
That they are a blur
So involved is the action that I am
Paralyzed to do anything else but worry
It is common that we are told
Not to fear making mistakes
That each mistake advances experience
And confidence
And brings us further from worry
But having made the dreadful mistake
Whose birth I counted over and over
Whose bead I held in my hands
Sweating
And seeing what it held for me
I want you to know that the things you worry about
Are as bad as they promise to be
And as much as worry is paralyzing
So is every thing you are trying to ward off

Someday when you want to find me
Look for someone whose patron is inborn adversity.
I will be Angkor Wat whose foundation rots,
And the temple still stands.
Look in the oasis for an arrogant rider,
Whose horse strives to throw her off at every turn,
Yet she is still clinging on,
And thinks herself a rider of Dragons and scaly lizards.
In the reflections on the surface of her eyes,
I will be there right now,
And she will be a different human,
The kind of icon I always thought I would become.
Look for the specter of madness and fatigue,
There you will find my fully-fledged self.
When we look at babies
And tell them they will grow into beautiful young women
We don't even know what we're saying.

At three in the afternoon in mid
Autumn the light is nostalgic,
It is honey that pours into my jar to
Preserve me.
Malformed as I am, I will be
A perfect specimen of my peculiar and
Time-specific condition.
The setting sun opens up old wounds
Like scurvy,
And sets you firmly in a rocking chair
To reminisce.
You grow old with the day,
And the two of you mumble
Back and forth
About the bed time stories
The moon read you only yesterday evening.
Weary sister of the sky,
I put one foot in front of the other and
Dwell on the futility of positive thinking.

Take my hair down from its braids
Take the jewelry from around my neck
Take these bracelets like golden shackles
And take me back to my mother’s house

Take me back to my mother’s house
Where I was happy as a girl
Lay him in the ground facing to the sunset
And I’ll rip my hair the whole way to her door

Break my china, throw my dowry in the river
Rip the curtains from the windows
Strip the floor on which I made my marriage bed
And take me back to my mother’s house

I am an animal, not a girl
With sharp teeth and a spine
I am not fit to eat the scraps of men
I am not fit to be a wife

I have been touched by death
He has run his cold fingers through my hair
He has claimed me as his prize
And he wants to wed me at my mother’s house

sugar, sugar
crunching subjugated under these bootheels
the Diamond Dust on whom I Cut my Teeth
sugar, sugar
sand between the raw fingertips
i am a ***** now
salt swatched on the flesh
that tenderizes the meat
that dissolves the snail-heart
the dull slug-eyes
Pink Salt
Pink Sands
sugar, sugar
Oh you said it would be sweet, but son,
It was rough
Rough
Rough

I am like all other fools;
Nothing broke my heart.
My spine of brittle woven sticks
Cracked under nothing.
My lungs gave out under
Years of whistling
"Shu-Shu, Xu-Xu,
Xu-ni-de."
They had breathed in too many daydreams
And real air calcified them with the shock
Of finding it all had been delusion.

A life of smiling at babies and dogs and buttercups
Left me unprepared for their destruction
And my own ruin.
It was my own fault that I was abandoned
In the face of a tsunami of stormclouds
Barreling out of the Western sky:
The last sigh of a sun that goes there
Each day
To die.

The weight of four years
Of sleepless nights
Is heavy.
It brings the sickness.
There is no certainty of death,
I cannot say
"I will die tomorrow."
But I know a feeling,
And would not think it foreign,
If a cold hand came to rest on my shoulder.
If the crow lit on my head,
I would not find it strange.
I did not pack the bags,
But all the same,
I'm ready for the trip.
I cannot say
"I will die tomorrow, the day after, or in a year."
I can say
"I will die someday,
And already I know how it would feel."

I loved being me,
I liked knowing where the boundaries
Between myself and others were.
Lord Apollo has no boundaries,
Especially not with women.
Can you blame me for running from him?
Big game hunter,
Bright like the sun,
Widely praised as having
The most fabulous hair?
When he met me, he said
"I'm Apollo,"
And that's it.
He looked at me expectantly,
I barely knew what he wanted.
He was trying to bleed over into me,
And I'm not into that.
Yeah he knows what people think of him,
And he agrees,
And I don't know if I want
To hang out
With people who don't know others' worth
As well as their own.
Lord Apollo doesn't,
Cause he's chasing me like I'm a deer,
Worth a trophy,
Like the ones that line Zeus' banquet hall.
No thanks,
I'll have no part of
Motionlessly
Watching over others' happiness
For eternity.
He's still behind me when I turn to look back,
And he keeps shouting out the name of love,
But it's Ares' eyes,
Not Aphrodites',
That I see leering at me through the trees.
This isn't courting,
This is a War of Attrition.
He'll chase and he'll chase even if,
At the end,
He'll only have caught up to my dead body,
Stretched out in exhaustion,
Tongue lolling out.
No matter, he'll just
Hoist me up by the antlers
And take a picture.
I call out to my father,
Because who else do we trust to
Run off our unwelcome suitors?
He says there's little he can do
To curb the lust of a man who so outranks him.
Because that's all that matters among men, right?
So I say "what's the little you can do?"
And he says,
"Fight fire not with fire,
But with the things that grow plants:
Water, time, and patience."
And I feel a seed sprout in my stomach.
Yes!
Trees are notoriously unfuckable!
I still have to outrun Apollo for a little while,
But the transformation is already starting,
And what's a better way to evade ****,
Than  just not being a woman?
It's getting hard to run,
My lungs are already wooden,
And when my knees bend, they creak.
I have to stop now or I'll certainly crack and break,
But it feels lovely to take root,
Feet pushing down into the soil and
Becoming feet no more.
Oh, but here comes Apollo,
And he melodramatically sighs,
"Oh! To behold the transformation that now
Ends your lovely life!"
What a stupid person,
I'm not ending,
I'm becoming.
He's finally caught me,
And for a few seconds,
Flesh touches flesh,
But, thankfully,
I become a tree before he can get a ***** in.
I settle into the bark walls I have made part of myself,
And get ready to eat sunlight for a near eternity.
If I still had a face, it would be smiling,
That is,
Until Lord Apollo,
His most highly unsubtle deer-mangler,
Rips a ******* limb off of me.
Now my consciousness is split
Between myself the tree,
And myself, the laurel wreath trophy,
Which Lord Apollo wears,
And Heroes, in his name, wear.
Oh, I should have known that to
Him
And men like him,
Whether I was a woman or a tree did not matter,
They only wanted to use me,
And they were Hellbound to find a way.

The Lizard Queen is a punching bag,
A doormat,
A sadsack,
A figurehead.
What even is a Queen of Lizards
Anyway?
No Queen who ever commanded respect,
Nor learned any grace,
Wrecked limbs grasping in the air for
Balance she will never know.
Wrecked feet flailing out from under her,
Akimbo, unnatural, untrained.
When they jeer at her,
She lets them.
And she calls herself Queen.
When they demean her,
She is a thousand times patient.
And she calls herself Queen.
To be Queen, unrecognized,
Is to dole out watered-down chicken soup
To one's own stupid soul,
That thirsts for solace.
In the end, they will push her further,
As far as she can go,
Bending her back to the limit like
A blade of yellow grass.
And when they've forced her to the edge of pain,
They will be incredulous and tilt their heads,
And as always they will ask,
"Doesn't that hurt?"
And she, meaning to say,
"Not yet,"
Will instead say,
"No."
And smile.
And call herself Queen.

I went out looking for flowers for you
When even the daffodils hadn't yet peeked out.
I imagined myself finding three white flowers,
Pale maidens, quiet and starchy and stiff.
I imagined them singing you to sleep,
And it kept me warm while I looked.
I found none on the cold brown forest floor,
Covered in moldy ice and
Leaves transformed into ugly panes of glass.

The trees' branches were so thin,
Just curled and knotted black rope
Against a clean sky, white as a hospital sheet.
The boughs tangled up in bows,
And I wished that I could take them
And gather them in a vase for you, like flowers.
Like any picture written in branches,
If I shifted slightly,
They tangled at different points,
And I could never have gathered those new pictures.
Not in a million years...

Everything around me was the blank white of things asleep,
All bones and marble and the cotton at the top of a pill bottle.
I stood in that white so long my face felt red.
I went inside.
It felt wrong to abandon my quest,
But I knew it was thankless, fruitless,
Stupid to look for flowers in winter.
I knew, too, it could do you no good,
Whether you had flowers or not.

How like you it was that you should go
When the flowers did
And leave me with nothing
To offer.

Thick-lidded, thick-lipped, rough-skinned,
Lush clusters of shining leaves like black wavy hair...
She was born before love was gentle,
And took heavy beetles and scurrying lizards to her bed.
They pulled her hair and chewed her skin;
Tough and thick, the waxy skin,
But paper-pulp-tearable, all the same!
Now when she lies back and gives herself
To the gentle ministrations of bees,
They whisper to each other about their work,
"Does this thick-ankled gray statue
Feel anything at all?"
She sighs, and they, thin-fingered handmaidens,
Scatter from the heaving trunk.

I can run my tongue over
The scars in my mouth,
And taste the names of a
Thousand useless sacrifices.
Somebody show me how
To turn a profit.
Somebody show me how to achieve success
Without having to reap penny after penny
Just to make up for the ones
I've lost.
Somebody show me how to win
Without only breaking even.
Somebody show me how to be successful
Without leaking blood and spinal fluid and sleep
Into the final product.
Somebody show me how to save my quarters
Safely in a jar.
Somebody lift me out of my addictive string
Of Pyrrhic victories.
Someone do these things-
Please-
For me.
Because I'm weak,
And I need leading,
And I don't know how to do them myself.

The world destroys the smallest beautiful thing
each puff of perfume
and spoken word of compliment
will fade alike in submission to the nature of air
which is harsh like a jar of knives
Every period of sanity in which the mind grows
like a flower out of a crack in the cement
is razed with prejudice and leaves only blood
every room whose windows are open
letting the curtains billow out into the middle
was once mud
will someday be
nothing but
rot
ruin
neglect
and mould
My eyes are tired
they feel like stone mountains whose crags nestle hearty windblown trees
(someday they will die)
and my feet are the calloused paws of an animal running from a predator
(someday he will die)
who is there when I wake in the morning
(someday the sun will die)
and spends the night-time catching up to me
(someday I will die)
I cannot bear the cycle of the seasons
I cannot bear to watch the world
destroy
every
tiny
lovely
thing
I cannot build
even a single card house
nor have even a moment’s respite
that I do not fail to appreciate properly
and I know what happens when sleep catches up to me
for even the bliss of unconsciousness becomes another wrecking ball
to yet another flimsily stacked architectural tragedy of responsibility
my arms and legs are not connected to my self like they should be
they are tethered by belts and strings that I must constantly keep taut
and should I lapse I’ll fall apart onto the floor
like a stack of dropped papers
like the mess that I am
Like some
wretched
flowing
puddle
of
goop

Walking along the side of the mighty sea,
In the shady overhang of the cliffs that ever hem it in,
I came upon a pool of black blood,
Which spread infinitely far out into the water,
And touched the sun low at the horizon there.
Looking up, my eyes found a crucified man,
Upon whose shoulder perched a fearsome eagle,
Its beak stained with brown and black crusted blood.
His torso was cratered, nearly hollowed out,
Bleeding as hard as a fresh wound.
His head lolled, and sweat beaded on his pale brow,
But when I went to loosen the chains that held him there,
His eyes snapped open, and he said to me,
"You will find if you go out of your way to help
In matters like these
That you will be worse off for it."
He closed his eyes again, and waved his chained hand at me to go.

I do not want something sweet.
Not just any flower, not just any thorn;
I want things no one can give me,
Not out of love or admiration,
Let alone traded carelessly with cold fingertips!
I ask for easy victories and braided bread,
For cinnamon and oranges;
A piece of fruit, my purple name
Carved bruise-cruel into the flesh.
I want it written in birthday cards
that it grew on the tree that way,
That memories of my eyes and smile
Burned warm within the splitting cells!
And at this late juncture? I barely care if it’s true.

Now, I’m afraid of death.
Was never afraid before, but
Learned the metal taste by comparison with
Honeyed, watery accomplishments, and
Realized I couldn’t bear to die
Like stars died before we charted the sky,
Some soft-bodied nothing passed over, unfossilized…

Grasping wretch, ugly stilt-legged and waving, begging,
Signaling for statues, hallowed trees, and candied fruits…
Well, what can you ask for?
Nothing if, without spoils,
You retire quietly to premature old age,
Some undecorated Cincinnatus wrapping up, for good, in bed.

In ashes, in ashes,
My family in ashes.
I took for myself and built my world,
I refused only to light the scene of others' stories,
And He, who behaved the same and worse!
He spited me for it!
Wrecked me for it!
Why must I suffer marriage to a wasted insect,
And give birth to the unspeakable blot of blood?
Where once I was great and winged,
Now I am a wet bird too bedraggled and matted to fly,
Dripping my tears over the grass
Where my lover's thin-legged voice echoes,
Singing "Locusts! Ashes!"
And where my baby's silent bones lie.

When I speak do I sound like decay?
I spit the shredded,
The crushed,
The drenched and tattered
Pieces of high-cost academic language,
The old fashioned phrases with which I
Dressed my words in dignity,
The symbols of all that I attained before I stagnated and regressed...
Did I pluck truffles from the mountainside?
Did I shovel them in me,
Greedy like a coal furnace,
Only to heave them up later as wretched slime?
Now, for the stench, no one can understand me,
No one can even try

I don’t get hungry in my stomach anymore.
I think it’s in my legs,
Or in my armpits.
It’s like an itch I can’t track:
Now on the back of my neck,
Now on the knuckles of my left hand.
A poison ivy spreading over to parts of me I didn’t know could feel want.
“What did you do?”
I have to ask.
I have concerns.
But bottomless pits and voids do not give answers,
Only echoes:
“What did you do?”
What did I do,
What did I do,

Other people are getting love letters
Through my mailbox,
But I'm writing in cursive on ruled notebook paper
In a language of one.
Can this week's new health crisis
Please identify yourself?
Will you frame everything in illness
Until your life is only messy buns,
Cardigans, slippers, and frozen pizzas?
Where are my shoes and earrings,
My mauve lipstick, and milk complexion?
Where is the baby powder I used to use
To reduce the chafing of my thighs?
People in hell want ice water and
I think I get it, *******.

I have taken alcestis’ place many times
Sighed for her and said I’ll go instead
Moved heaven and earth
Torn death screaming from its place
So others might walk once more in the sun
And so I might what?
Ah, so I might.
It would be good to stop living and dying for someone else
To quell this rhythm
“Do it for them, do it for them,”
That makes such an irregular heartbeat
Too strange to straighten a body
And would they understand what I had done for them before?
Ah, so they might.

Here lies on the bier
My sanity
My baby
The gate on the edge
Of the precipice
Has given way and
I'm keeping the pieces in the refrigerator

There came death
In the middle of a two month period
Designated for mourning many things
Bookended by my crying
Alone
In the dark

If the well of life were reachable
She would be the first thing I'd throw in
Even if I knew she would not love me
Even if I knew she'd come back sick
I never imagined I could not make someone immortal by loving them

I have never kept a home for long
When push comes to shove
I can part with anything to
Lighten my load
I was always afraid to test this with her
It failed as I knew it would

Give her back to me in exchange for any promise, any favor, any fortune

I need too much
I lean too hard
I want a pale white apple
With my name bruised into it
Offered to me by the hand of Saint Peter
Near the end of June
Anything to soothe the sting of these
Too dry, too long dry, red lips

I want a shawl as light as dragonfly wings
Warm in winter and cool in summer
Weaved of spider silk
With seams of straight lightning
Pulled down from the sky
Anything to wrap this
Too naked, too long naked, white frame

I lean too hard
My arms pressing into the tops of heads
Into the yoke of another man's shoulder
Hold me up and stuff pillows for me
Can't you see that I will fall into ruin?

Eat the skin off your lips,
You bird starving in winter.
Pluck your hair, your skin, your nails,
Let nothing grow from the dirt of you,
Harvest time and time again,
Knees in the black earth,
Hands tearing up leaves,
Slash, slash, slash,
And forget to burn until the earth is infertile.

How long will you chase yourself around
With a raised broom in the tiny cavern of your skull?
When will your pitter-patter feet,
And swish-a-wash straws,
And bird heart,
And mouse voice
Fall to rest in a silent pile
In the middle of the floor?

Your bird heart and mouse voice
Are like Joan's lion ones,
Should you ever manage to fall in a pile,
They will still whine like coals in its center.
They will thump and sing and harmonize
The unkillable refrain of your panic:
SLASH, SLASH, SLASH,
And forget to burn.

I just
It makes me feel like
You've been
Avoiding me.
This echoes within and without
And I am leaving a message
"We're in hot water
Nice if you could call back
Love you
Bye"

On a couch
And somewhere inside
I turn corners to scream a name into the dark
I hear my name from far away faintly
But I get no answer
And I do not answer

I wind through to search
And I stand still waiting
And there is her back
And someone is behind me
"Move"
I am still
She is still
"Move!"
I am still
She is still and I lose control and I am screaming
And my ears are ringing and my face is burning
And I am screaming through tears "Turn around turn around turn around"
And I do not move
And she does not move but strands of hair ride my frantic breath
And I feel the breath on my back
And I lunge forward to shake her
And I am clawed by the tiger

And in my hands are sand
And I kneel down
And she's running through my fingers
And there was never anyone to blame
I just
It makes me feel like
You've been
Avoiding me.

Leather shell, harder, harder, brittle!
Take care to sit lightly where lies the treasure.
And I, red haired and sharp nosed,
My soft paws hiding hard nails,
I have come to sop up the yellow yolk.
Warm and steaming I have Disappeared it!
And somewhere she sighs for the wasted labor,
The calloused farmer's hands that will steal the rest.

I will cut off my nose to spite my face.
I will take my own eye for my own eye,
My own tooth for my own tooth,
Until I have none with which to see, to chew.
I will rip my hair to mourn myself.
I will suffer.
You will suffer.

For every time you fed me too much or too little,
You will **** fire,
You will ***** and breathe it in,
You will hold fat to your bones,
You will suffer.

For every time I thirsted by your will,
You will **** yourself in front of others,
You will **** floods,
You will **** oceans that
You did not even drink for me,
You will suffer.

For every time you, as a child,
Jumped from a high place and landed on my straight knees,
Or kept bad posture,
Or sprained something,
You will fall and bleed,
You will lose control of your legs,
Your feet will ache and blister,
Your knees will scream,
Your joints will pop,
You will jump and shiver with pain,
You will suffer.

For every time you did not clothe me warm enough,
You will sweat naked,
You will sweat standing still,
You will sweat until you are drenched and
You will stink, stink, stink,
You will suffer.

For every night you did not let me rest,
And every morning that you allowed me to languish,
You will fall asleep sitting straight up,
You will never feel rested,
Your eyes will live in dark hollows,
You will not be able to fall asleep at night,
You will not be able to sleep longer in the morning,
You will suffer.

For every time you shaved my hair away and cut me and left welts,
You will grow coarse fur,
You will leave infected cuts no matter how sharp the razor,
You will watch the hair on your head grow lank and thin,
You will suffer.

For every time you picked at my skin and nails,
You will grow zits,
You will grow boils,
You will grow infections,
You will host parasites,
You will break nails,
You will suffer.

For every time you strained my eyes,
Denied me sleep,
Did not drink enough,
Drank caffeine,
Drank alcohol,
Your skull will split,
You will be blind,
You will ***** from the pain in your head,
You will wish to tear out your eyes and teeth,
You will suffer.

For my ***** that you broke,
You will be too tight and dry to enter,
You will bleed uncontrollably and
You will clutch at your womb for its cramps,
You will stink worse than other women,
You will have sagging, aching *******,
You will have urinary tract infections until you are scarred,
You will suffer.

You will suffer because
I am not your vessel,
I am your jail.

You will suffer because
You do not pilot me,
I drag you.

You will suffer,
You will suffer,
You will suffer.

I never wanted this body
That rebels against me
It's too big
Too heavy
Hard to carry around

I never wanted to have to eat
To have to void
To have to cure sicknesses
To have to accept pain in my joints

I never wanted to know youth
Only to grow old
And I don't want to know
What's going to happen next
If I already feel old

I would be willing to skip to
Death
And commandeer the wispy vessel
Of a ghost

I would not even miss sleep

Pills on the table,
Burnt toast abandoned on the counter,
Dregs of coffee in a floral cup;
Someone's been here.

If you look in the mirror and
See her blue-bruised eyes,
****** Mary about to
Go out to the bars for the night?
That was once my mirror.

I haunt everywhere I choose to live,
And you can't sit at my table without
Drinking the wine I've drunk.
Get ready to feel.

I don't find myself here often,
Sugar grainy under my nails at the quick,
But something bitter sleeping under
The corners of my tongue.
Chasing myself through dark rooms
And thinking,
"I miss something sweet.
I must be an oyster."

Whose floor did I sleep on
And leave a shadow behind?
In what grass have I vomited,
To leave myself standing there greeting strangers?

"That's my house,"
She points into the darkness behind her,
Or out of the mirror and into your room,
Or at a lightning-struck tree trunk on the side of a fast and lonely road.
"That's my house."

Don’t think about it.
The last place, finish line, pedestal, podium
The idle dreams of athletes whose sweat you’d never touch
Not even the bridesmaid, light-years from the bride,
Not the pity-**** flower girl,
And certainly nobody’s first choice.
No, don’t think about it,
Because there will be time enough
In that infinite second after you’ve spoken ill
When you do think
And think it for the thousandth time
That you, you crooked thing,
You are alone even in a crowd
That that was always your talent
Raised up for it like veal
Alone in a crowd
Alone even among those who love you
Or claim to
Or love some strange idea of you, half-made,
Rendered of your spur of the moment ramblings and
Whatever fancies cloud their own eyes
Yes, you belong to some circles,
And dance in and out of them like smoke passed mouth to mouth
You nominally entertain the idea of having friends
And then, in truth, are never there.
So, don’t think about it.
Don’t think about it
Until your face is up against the wall of the truth of it
Until stone scrapes the soft flesh of your cheek off the bone
And there’s nowhere else to go.
And when you do think of it,
Do it like you always do-
Look at it out the corner of your eye like a basilisk,
And then, lazily, avert your gaze
And go back to dreaming.
You weren’t strong enough to think about it anyway.

Bury me under the chokecherry tree
Then they won't forget how and who I was
When life is done retching and spitting me out
Plant me with the kindred roots like a little cyanide seed
A hard and bitter pill in the wet black maw of the earth
Remind the little children
Of the red ridged fingertips that pressed my taut skin
They gauged that I was valuable and ripe
And bruised me

Of course I’m selfish
What else would I be
Kneeling on bones and shielding them
With my body
With bared teeth
Well where else would I be
Does anybody not build this sort of monument
I want to know whose fridge isn’t covered
With crayoned blueprints
And then I want it to be me
Who told me to think this stuff
And when did I start listening
When did I stop fighting the hands
Pulling at my shoulders and waist
And turn inward instead
But also
Where the **** else would I be

I don't wanna talk anymore.
I said my piece.
I said it in cut flowers.
I said it in puddles of *****.
I screamed it in your face
I knelt it at your feet
I hugged it at your knees
I cleaned it from your wounds
I brought it to you in a band-aid box.
Get outta here black wolf.
I lit candles for you and said prayers.
Stop hanging around for more scraps.
I don't wanna talk anymore.
I said my piece.

Here is one easy trick to get back something you've lost:
Put the broken pieces in a *** of milk and boil it
And then let it sit in the milk as long as you can stand it
And once your entire house smells like putrefaction
Pull out that Ming vase or whatever the ****
Good as new
Stinking of cheese
Definitely 100% the same as it always was and
Nothing
Lost in the process
And I know you'll do it too
You'll roll your eyes at me while I give you my good advice
But later when no one's watching
Well, the only one to see how embarrassed you'll be is you
Broken china and filthy hands and house to match
It was so easy and you missed it so much you'd ignore the milk
You'd ignore the smell and you'd even dip your hands in it
And you'd smash the seam together like a stupid child
And you'd sit on the floor covered in the slime and trying and failing to hold back tears because it was supposed to be easy and you've lost more than loss, you've destroyed more than broken, now you've desecrated something precious and debased yourself to boot, how
STUPID

Here is one easy trick to save time and money:
Throw the **** thing away.

White women's eyes flash in
Trickle-down smiles,
Outlined in nacre and kohl.
The fact that she turns forty once every year
Is not why she never grows old.
They won't die, they won't die!
By the skin of my thighs,
A new crop pops up every year!
With an antebellum name
And a draped-in-lace frame,
They grow up with poison in their ears.
Where am I going and where have I been,
And where do I find myself now,
But that same debutantes' court of white sin,
Wiping white tears from my brow?

No one is ever going to know you.
You will die with your soul achingly untouched,
And you will not be special for it.
Every day, we come in and out of the world together:
Doctors cradle babies out of the birth canal,
Hand them to their mothers, wet from excision.
Grandchildren hold the hands of dementia patients
As they lay in their beds flickering like candles.
Yes, these are good things. Yes, they are done together.
Yes, still, we are all alone.
You don’t really need to be accompanied,
You don’t need pure wordless understanding,
Your soulmate never did and never will exist.
It is ok.
You will not be special for it.

What ergot prophecies existed in the past
of the coming of dead black suns and starless nights?
Some love affair with tragedy, ten millennia long,
that resulted in us all writing
"kindness and love and rest and holidays" in red ink.
I am tired of saving grains of rice for the world to come,
but the bandages my grandmothers wore around their arms
keep me from putting the *** on to boil.
I have dreams about the future, and only believe the nightmares,
And so I suppose that nothing changed after all.

I lost my mind at Lascaux
Where I spied the red ochre handprints and understood
Why trace the arc of an arrow through the sky in red
Unless you understand that when the shaking hand misses the mark
Dry mouths at home will cry out in hunger
A hart makes no expression when its life is spared

When his wife came home sick, he said
"This isn't her."
And together with kin and neighbors,
He sought to beat the fairy out of his home.
He burnt her in the fire.
He wrapped the black fairy in a sheet and threw it in the river.
They found him in the church, whispering,
"It won't be long now.
It won't be long."
Before the altar, he had knelt
And pressed his soot-caked hands to the floor.

Some things must be allowed to die.
Like pruned branches and withered annuals,
You can’t sustain all of it, nor should you…
So say goodbye to some parts of yourself,
Wrap them up like baby teeth in an old handkerchief,
Fertilize the yard with them,
Watch them decompose and brew beer with them,
But you can’t keep them around.
They’re dead, they’re dying, no matter what,
And holding on can never change that!
Let them hang around too long and one day,
You’ll reach for it,
Some lost piece of yourself,
And only close your hand around soft putrefaction.

I do not know how to reconcile love with experience.
The people of the past buried their children
Wearing wreaths of ceramic flowers,
Armored greenery stiff enough to last whatever journey
Lay ahead of the child’s thin bones,
And every petal must have been shaped with love and only love!
For what else could convince an aging back
And aching spindle-fingers
Into laboring over finery like that?
This is one of those things that makes young women want to die.
Awake, alive, poisoned with the lust of others’ eyes,
We stare at the coins resting on the tongues of mummy women:
Just enough to pull a little something from the gumball machine.
Our fingers twitch,
And we want it.
We can only want it.

You sleep on a bed of broken eggs and spilled milk
In the town square,
And no one's sure if you're unashamed
Or disabled.
We liked your red shoes until we realized
They were stained with your own blood,
And then when you left your foot prints everywhere,
The janitor set down a trail of yellow signs in your wake.
Can I spare some change?
Am I headed your way?
Would it be too much trouble?
I can't really tell which of us is selfish anymore,
And it seems like you don't want to be anywhere in particular anymore.
Don't want to crash on my couch.
Don't want to go home.
Don't want to wander.
Unable to fade away into the night,
Marked by your trail of oozed calamity
And signs that claim none of the liability.

Every time I speak, I hold a crystal lens in my mouth
And the light of who I am and what I say refracts through it
Blasts my innards onto the walls as sure as I’d been shot
Point blank range, and every drop of blood a slide in a projector
It’s an unbearable burden, and it’s the curse of hindsight
To know who you are to others only after the splash of rainbow light
Only after you’ve burned some Rorschach on their retinas
I’m so ******* upset all the time about it, it’s pathetic,
But I would hold your face in my hands nose to nose
As if I were about to kiss you roughly,
And I would open my eyes their widest and shine into you
Pure white floodlight high beams of absolute truth about who I am
Only the trouble is, really, even I don’t know.