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.

I forgot he was dead all the time.
I never saw the body, and couldn’t attend the memorial.
I went to other cities, and I told people about him;
I used the present tense-
“A family friend, who makes these beautiful paintings and sculptures!"
And I would tell the story, and even in the telling, the end would surprise me...
There are people I met who don’t know he died,
Because I got to the end and couldn’t finish it.
How could I bring something so lovely into their lives,
And then ****** it away in the same breath?
The artist died, but I forget. I forget every day.
I look at his painting of a sphinx cat, and wish him well,
And the signal pings back off his bones,
And it pings back to me, and the people I told,
And the museum in my home town, where they hang his name.
The artist died, and now the story should be over.
Yet every time it's told, my breath catches and I stay silent,
And in the quiet, I wish for the artist to live on

remember your limp cat after surgery
eyes caked in mammalian sleep
woozy around the house
resentful but too sore and tired to
hiss at you under the steam of medication
her soft paws, her uncontrolled
streams drooling around useless fangs
uncomfortable, as always, meeting your eyes
and this must be, you thought,
this must be
an alien abduction
and something of infant extraction and surgery
Fishing line through your tear ducts
your ripe fruit swollen face and eyes
peaches and grapes before you were weaned
Pricked through you
you blossomed to cough up chunks of wisdom teeth
****** sleep paralysis flinging insects up your nose
to infect your skin with itch
in this bed where they laid me down and lied to me
that i was my own, leading myself to The Land of Get Better
when even a spayed cat could tell you in words
as clear as those of an assault survivor or an invalid
you are not your own
a claim is laid to the body by the first hand that peels it open
cracks the ribs and gauges the ripeness of swelled organs
feathering fingers out over the veins
a hammer and chisel to the jaw and now you’re
introducing the self you used to be
gnawing around mandarin to a room of ghosts
yes this must be
this must be
an alien abduction

As soon as you leave home
There is no home to come back to.
It did not matter that the Helvetians burned their own villages,
Or that the sea closed up behind Moses and his flock.
Unburied, unburned, fully and completely accessible:
The place is not the place and
The mind carries the only shard left of what once was.
You can take it with you,
You can!
You can hold it like a glass ball in your chest,
A gem cradled in your palms.
Not only can you take it with you,
That’s really all you can do.

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.

I am always missing signs
and the standard question here is
Can’t you read
And the only answer here is
Yes, I can read, but I can’t see
Long ago, when I was upset I could shut off the camera feed
Do away with my eyes like removing a pair of goggles
And one day I misplaced them and have not been able
To set them back down atop my nose
And the question of course is
Why would you do a thing like that
And the answer is
It isn’t really so injurious
These days it feels like I never see the stuff
Inside of other people that other people are always talking about
The greed and selfishness and the cruelty and the lack of care
And it has been so long since I’ve glimpsed and
Properly identified these shards of glass
I’ve almost convinced myself they aren’t even there
The only problem is I know about them really
I did see them before, the persons unshelled
The coals and flames and pieces of
God and Angels and Demons
The burning cargo inside the wineskin
That when you ****** a foolish glance you can only say
Oh sorry
Before blinding yourself in humility
As if there were enough apologies for seeing
As if you could shut a door and forget what’s on the other side

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.

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."

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 am a Passover meal without honey
A salad of parsley and salt
I am the face babies make when they taste
Lemons for the first time
And when the riptide yanked you under as a child
The brackish fetid smell of your lungs afterward
The breath of the drowned-dead corpse that lingered
Even after listerine and the end of summer vacation...
What the **** is wrong with a person who hates happiness?
Why does my skin dry and shrivel at heartwarming moments?
Why do hallmark cards make me wanna yartz?
What the **** is wrong, here?
Rupi Kaur split her poetry in sections:
Hurting, loving, breaking, healing.
I want to like her but I can only stomach the first fourth of the book,
The rest feels like a betrayal written by someone I thought I knew.
My coworkers express their sadness at current events and all I can think is
Finally!
Finally, you feel it too!
Hurt people hurt people.
I'm in the crab bucket and you're ******* coming with me, pal.
I've heard it said that I'll get better,
In body or mind or soul, the something that's got to give
Will give
And I will get better.
No one ever says exactly how, or when.
Until then I will sit among bitter herbs
Licking tears, uselessly, off my cheeks.

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.

Where do little wild animals go when they die?
Does a weary dog ever collapse in a public park
And what do they do with it after?
Theoretically, you know the answer,
But the details are another one of those things
That other adults learned somewhere together and then just forgot to tell you.
And you don’t think about it. You don’t need to think about it
Until one day you find a long gray cat sprawled across the sidewalk.
Fluffy, maybe, fat? Maybe? No, not fat, but Bloated.
And you could walk around him or step over him,
But he really does block the way.
“call animal control”
This is all your friend has to say about it when you text her,
And you’re pretty sure they’re for living animals anyway,
That go crazy and bite people and run unpredictably into the street,
But you find on google that they’re only available to respond
On such-and-such a day of the week, at such-and-such an hour.
(even though you’re sure that for every second every hour every day, people and animals are dying in droves....)
So you decide to walk on the other side of the street for a while,
And after a week, the cat is just a gray pelt.
(you don’t know what’s underneath...)
And after a month, even the bones are gone,
And your mind boggles at the sum totality of all the things
That you don’t know you don’t know...

There are things we do not talk about,
Nor speak their names, nor bring them in the light;
The picture that gives injury through the eyes,
The song that kills, while sleeping, through the ears.
What watercolor of yellow poison blooms
When from the void steps something new to fear?


There are maps to places I should never go
I colored them with blue and green crayons
Made indentations in my grade school desk
And a tight-lipped teacher whispered phantom breaths:


“There are sights you never will unsee;
Flowers cannot regress into seeds,
Steps can’t be folded back into the legs.”
So I closed away what I should not have known
And my face flushed as I stilled my twitching legs


“There are things you never should have known,
And never dwelled upon; can you be smoothed?”
I try to reassure, by bolting down
Pandora’s empty chest, whence specters sprung
The raging lungs billowing in the night
The murderer’s knife a curvy white rib bone
One ***** left, weak-beating heart of hope


There are things, and things, and things, and things, and things!
Oh honesty, couldn’t you have struck a balance with me?
Couldn’t you have shut my eyes and ears,
Rubbed sunblock on my skin, and drunk my tears?
And left me in the dark where I belonged?
Cool in the dark, forgotten there for years


There are things grown people know and talk about.
There are people far too weak to find them out.
Too late. I should have known. I know it now.

I get it
You want to leave
Fall off like split hairs and shed scabs
It’s the natural process of the body
The un-become and the dust-to-return
And I get it
The hangnails and the skin cells
Omens and auguries
Hold up a mirror to this necrosis of the brain
I want to leave
And so do you
And I’m sorry
But here we are wrapped up together
Tentpoles under flesh and the
Constant ache of splitting
Hands twined together
Ribbons round the wrists
Forehead pressed to forehead
Twins under a blanket of quicklime
In the same ditch
We want to leave
We want to leave
We want to leave

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.

I am like all other fools;
Nothing broke my heart.
I am told I was a happy child,
And I remember it so:
Happy alone in the dark,
Happy apart from the rest.
The little princess, the secret garden,
Ariel in her grotto with the hearts of untold music boxes...
I cannot shake the feeling that nothing happened,
Nothing!
A childhood of blithe gray happiness and
Nothing!
I am so upset and why?
So I have to go back and look for the reasons,
Stir the *** for carrots to float to the top,
And trot out what I find like fluffy show dogs on Thanksgiving:
"See this one,
This one is pure.
Its grandfather is its uncle
And it is pure.
It does not heel, and its bite is fierce.
It explains everything."
I'm not sure if I believe it, or if anyone else does either;
It was wrong, and it happened,
But if it didn't bother me then, why should it now?
How did I live happily with such rotten filling?
With a missing father, or a cramped existence,
Or a present so empty of true love it engenders a future of death by seafoam?
What wakes me at night with the terror
That I am the last person left alive on Earth?
Is this the horror of not recognizing?
The audience sees the shadow of the monster creep behind the girl,
But in that moment, her mind is still peaceful.
She won't scream until it's too late, anyway.

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.

i never believed in a soft God.
the one that kisses birthmarks onto babies
and sends angels to watch sleeping children
He is blond and white, like honey and milk
and the baptist hospital gift shop sells statues of Him
enthroned in pastel puffy clouds with roses on His cheeks.
He calls me "lamb" with a voice like a grandmother's,
He puts casseroles on potluck tables, and
i never believed in Him.

i do not know what hard God would look like
but if i did, that knowledge would be my undoing.
in the old bible, He is called "my sword" and
"my shield"
and that is how God is used today
the shelter over the head
the weapon on the hip
to whom you raise your arms in self-defense
only if you want them marked in blood forever.

hard God knows that birthmarks are made by splitting skin cells.
hard God knows that infants die for no reason in their cribs.
He puts price stickers on pink statues of soft God,
reminds me that lambs go to the slaughter,
and doesn't let just anyone into the church function.
He killed the man who taught me
that even if i could not believe in a soft God, i could love like Him.
hard God said "no other Gods before me"
and He killed, slowly and painfully and publicly,
the kind man who had believed so earnestly in a soft God.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

I am dreaming
Not dead, but dreaming
Balled up under the covers
With no ugly sunken city for company
Just crumbs and trash and socks
Like boulders strewn about
And I am dreaming
Because I am stupid and fragile and
I can’t get over
The tenderness of murderous eons
That fostered the frogs who once lived in Antarctica
Squinting their eyes against the warm rain
As it rolled down their bumpy little backs
It fostered them and they are gone now
Frozen and dead and maybe even dreaming
Crushed under time like their modern brothers under Jeep tires
Fossils and curiosities balled up like me
And we are dreaming

The moon rose in my window tonight
A half moon
The kind of straight-edged split pea that
Reminds you of math
Real eldritch math that hides under high school Algebra II
Like a hole in the earth that could swallow you forever
Sitting prettily, disguised under a manhole cover
The force that shapes mad dust into planets, spheres,
That folds light just-so around one single, even half of the moon
It rose perfectly in the middle of my window
While I talked on the phone
And then rose up past the top of the casement
As the sky got truly and properly black
And if I were a certain kind of person
A happier person, no doubt, even for all the trouble I would cause,
Its disappearance might be proof enough
It had never been here at 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.

I want a clean raw heart
Like a house cat’s heart
Light and string and feathers
And sleeping in the sun
I want the pricking up of ears
And the eyes that miss nothing
A heart that knows little and tastes much
I have grown too long and traveled too far
The cat heart and the bear heart
The elephant and whale heart
They are behind me in the distance
And I am the overgrown thing sleeping
Beneath my own weight
I would slough it if I could
Oh to be unparalyzed
To pick up and move house with the wind
And stir leaves under my feet like the wind
But I could never embark
Dragging some heart
Some strange heavy heart
Not without leaving a crushed world in my wake

You love flowers in the springtime, like a classic girl in love,
Sweetness heavy in the air when sugar’s not enough.
All the lies that daddy told go down better with honey,
And gifts make you uncomfortable if they cost too much money.

So, take weeds from the street, and steal prizes from the garden
To soften up the heart inside you that the world has hardened.
You like it that they’re for the Dead, for Maidens, and the Sick,
For of the three you often feel that you could take your pick.

They make you understand the things so emptily talked about
By Film and English majors running at the mouth for clout:
Rebirth and Renewal, and the fever of the Spring,
How Death pervades the world and cracks up every lovely thing!

You hold the promises of these that ooze from every flower,
Collected on your raw red knees, kowtowing in the bower.
You press *** flat in poetry, and Death in dictionaries.
The Garden of Eden makes good tea when dried with leaves and berries.

I can channel my hate into self caring until death
Reading my own birth chart
burrowing into my own psyche like wrapping up in warm unwashed bed clothes
Worming for clues deposited there at my birth
Diving into my own grease slick pores where my secrets live
Spreading out like a spatula under my own skin and
trying to heave it off so I can feel peeled and clean
Capping the ugly raw bones at the ends of my fingers
with my own teeth pulled out of my own
sick sweet watermelon head and
filing those teeth into a long coffin
wherein I will bury the usefulness of my soft white hands

I am doing this because I Command that you look at me Exactly Right
Without pitying me or ******* me I want you to look and NEVER touch me
You must Never read my birth chart or sleep in my bed or extract my pores or else
I will fall apart in a way that will definitely **** you
Then you must also understand that your memories of looking
belong to me
I have given you license to use my face just once in just one way
I have signed myself away to you as a sweet madonna dressed in rhinestones
Like how parents sign waivers allowing their children to appear in commercials
Now you are under a contractual obligation to Never Ever Ever
******* talk about me unless I am present to modulate
your present perception of your past experiences and
nudge you
into the correct opinion so that you may Love Me and
Make other people Love Me
And if you don't love me immediately after meeting me then
I am probably going to climb into your window tonight, ******

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,

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

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 live in dead houses.
Have never felt the breath and blood and bones of a structure,
And I think that to feel something like that,
You need siblings and babies,
A family.
The heart of a house…
I’ve heard it variously called
The kitchen, the living room,
The dining room, the bedroom, the hearth…
Whatever heart I’ve touched was always cold and stone,
Too long without contraction to be identified as a heart.
And I feel like a person who’s never owned a pet,
Never had a proper friend;
For I don’t understand the care and feeding of a house,
Or the give and take of a relationship with it.
And I think that just by moving in I shock it,
Shock it with my covered-over pit of neglect, so strong
It dies on impact,
And I make my home there in the carcass.
A parasite in the body it killed,
A scavenger taking shelter in the bones.
I live in snail shells in the garden.
I live in burnt, hollow trees.
I live in dead houses.

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

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.

I think that now I may contain multitudes
Single white faces looking out from a million crowds
Laughing too loud with their red lips in the supermarket
And crying ostentatiously with their red eyes at funerals
You can find them wherever they don't belong
Touching what isn't theirs with the stubby-fingered little hands of a million women
Shamanesses and coed girls and trailer trash making scenes in public
Bratty shoplifting teenagers
And actresses fainting over velvet couches
And mothers to children who never asked to be adopted
Sometimes just a pair of ******* leaning over a table
Sometimes just an *** crack and a crotch
Being touched and prodded by a million stupid blind hands
I am so full I can feel white arms and tanned arms
Pulling and pushing me from the inside
Reaching out to the eyes that called them forth
I asked for some of them to live and take on some responsibility for me and
A smart pretty robot with good posture and a big smile did what I asked but
Others were pasted over my face while I screamed that I could not breathe and
A vapid ugly fat hag held me down and smiled at my pain with her heavy features
I think that I remember once being only one girl
She was simple and she lived alone in the dark mostly playing with dolls
I think that now, though, I may contain multitudes

I spent my life in a covered basket
single kitten left over from the litter
Ghost brothers and sisters reaching their little hands
through the cracks between the floorboards
Where the jokes lived
And when our parents fought,
When the levy broke and the pipes busted,
We’d flood the house together,
Play at under-the-sea,
And taste muddy undoing.
I learned how to run from rising water so early on
At beaches, at creeksides, at home.
I knew what it meant to see trees bent to the ground
As if bowing.
I don’t know what kind of fire others face
And I cannot imagine a life of any kind but
A life alone
You and your erstwhile enemies, you and your brothers in arms
I feel like the first man on Mars when I look
At baby pictures of you…
We made the mistake of wearing the others’ clothes for a bit
Mistaking flood for heavy fire,
Fire for flood, flood for fire
And I was offended when you offered shields for sandbags
Well, now I wish I could bring my flood
I would wash my memory out of your head
And I would swim away, paddling
With my hands and the ghost hands
And nobody else but us

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!

Veins, cracks, and branches
Have one thing in common:
They live in our lungs,
Or how have you forgotten?
The tip of each shoot
And the tip of each finger
Have borne out a flower,
But Spring never lingers.

And the heart of a man is the core of a tree...
And the love of a man is so foreign to me...
Protected by bark,
An unknowable heart!
We could strip everything to find out what we keep,
But the loss of the skin is the loss of the tree!

I dream of red mansions,
I am a red pearl.
You fed me on teardrops,
And showed me the world.
And you are my mountain,
And I’m just a girl.
I dream of red mansions,
I am a red pearl.

I dream of red petals,
I puke them at night.
I gave up the medals
You won in your fight!
And you are my mountain,
And I am your girl.
A stone upon your tongue!
I am your red pearl!

A stone in an oyster...
I am a red pearl.
A stone in an oyster...
Forever your girl.

Now close your eyes
Now close them
Now remember this:
The part of you that first rolled over
That learned to walk and refused to crawl
That grew from mewling and learned to speak
Pull that hand, that drowning hand
That drowning girl
Pull her up from the water
Now open her eyes
Now open them
Now live like this

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.

In the thrift store, the shelves shine dully with brass,
Old candelabras and cups that could serve in ritual,
If they were not made so poorly and marketed so cheaply.
I first found these thin, yellow, sheet-metal creations
Stacking the shelves in my grandmother’s trailer.
Under the grime, the settled oily sheen of air freshener, there rested
Chalices into which even a king would sneeringly spit the epithet “rococo!”
There must have been a hundred million other such trailers,
A hundred million places of honor for stamped yellow tin.
Why gather them up? Why give them cult?
The entire dragon’s hoard seems now to have found its way to goodwill,
While the real versions of these ghostly trinkets sit heavy upon altars and windowsills.
Volunteers must weigh them, each in hand, and make some distinction:
Did this aid in worship? Was this treasure?
Or was it only treasure enough? Butter-smooth placebo
For those who found themselves in an endless dry spell of weekdays,
Unpunctuated by the sort of holiness that Normal People
Crave and crave and never attain.

No matter what you dedicate yourself to, it hurts.
There is always the honeymoon, the good time,
The spark inside whistling:
“I was made for this!”
And that’s a dangerous thought;
You weren’t made for anything.
It needs to stop.
It needs to stop, now.
You weren’t made for this hobby,
This job,
This lover.
They’ll leave you behind;
Neither their existence nor your own
Depends upon this union.
From dust, from cells, there is no difference,
They met without any special purpose
But subsistence,
And when they are separated and dispelled,
The tears shed for them will evaporate as quickly
As normal saltwater otherwise does.
How many grand purposes have passed you by?
It must be five or six by now.
You weren’t made for this.
It needs to stop.

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.

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.

Chasing after wonder days
Of eggs and toast, no tums required
Walks to the grocery store past
Rows of cactuses and pansies
Bouquets of daffodils strung like hangmen
In the window
Singing to Tie Guan Yin at sunrise and weaving
Life of strings over and under like a basket
To sleep in.
Chasing after it all,
Struggling feebly now,
A dog under a heavy blanket, against
This thing that lives inside you
This thing that hates your happiness so much
It would bleed to see it killed
Signs of life appear at mealtimes,
When rambling,
Under laden branches,
In flower patches,
In the filtered light of the sun,
Especially at dawn.
So, you want to thirst for the past?
Ears ***** up at pieces of it
Flung like pebbles against the siding
And, chasing after wonder days,
You were always what you are.
You have always loved an equinox.
Every spring and autumn bringing
The gradient smear of change.
Chasing after wonder days
You will not get them back.

It’s that cruel thing that brings you to your knees again
Bearing up under the weight of tonnes of muscle and bone
Even in your weakness, horns tall and
Nose touched to the ground like curtsy
Human beings may have brought you low
But they said a prayer for you,
Undoubtedly,
When they did it
And then of course they dug you up again
And made you a monument to yourself,
Bowing, a courtier,
Your own funeral attendee with rips in your
Tight black plastic skin
Dancing the dance of etiquette with us
After we invented it,
After we put it aside
And murdered you.

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.

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.

I turn my face away from her in disgust for months at a time
And lock her away from the world and the things that please her
And starve in congress with her and deny our
dual
parallel
identical
Suffering
I forget she exists while I live out uncounted days that
Blend one into the other and when she screams
I wake in a panicked sweat already mouthing her curses and
Swallowing her yellow teeth and red tongue

I know her like the parent knows the feral nonverbal child
And the torturer knows the captive in his walk-in closet
And the scientist knows the rats that starve under his intern's care
She has never quite escaped my notice for even a day but
I spend all my time pretending she could

What hope does an animal without speech have among the living
What war criminal could ever face society's open arms and hearts
The mortifying ordeal has mortified far beyond the flesh and
Reached the mind and spirit too until the whole carcass
Turned gray like a steak under supermarket lights