"fingernail" poems
I cut the middle fingernail of the middle
finger
right hand
real short
and I began rubbing along her ****
as she sat upright in bed
spreading lotion over her arms
face
and *******
after bathing.
then she lit a cigarette:
"don't let this put you off,"
an smoked and continued to rub
the lotion on.
I continued to rub the ****
"You want an apple?" I asked.
"sure, she said, "you got one?"
but I got to her-
she began to twist
then she rolled on her side,
she was getting wet and open
like a flower in the rain.
then she rolled on her stomach
and her most beautiful ***
looked up at me
and I reached under and got the
**** again.
she reached around and got my
**** she rolled and twisted,
I mounted
my face falling into the mass
of red hair that overflowed
from her head
and my flattened **** entered
into the miracle.
later we joked about the lotion
and the cigarette and the apple.
then I went out and got some chicken
and shrimp and french fries and buns
and mashed potatoes and gravy and
cole slaw,and we ate.she told me
how good she felt and I told her
how good I felt and we
ate the chicken and the shrimp and the
french fries and the buns and the
mashed potatoes and the gravy and
the cole slaw too.
69.4k
Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.
Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.
At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair,
Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy
As Victorian cushions. This family
Of valentine faces might please a collector:
They ring true, like good china.
Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.
A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle
About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper
And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly
With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture
She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised,
Leave her alone now.
The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.
41.9k
I am slowly learning to disregard the insatiable desire to be special. I think it began, the soft piano ballad of epiphanic freedom that danced in my head, when you mentioned that “Van Gogh was her thing” while I stood there in my overall dress, admiring his sunflowers at the art museum. And then again on South Street, while we thumbed through old records and I picked up Morrissey and you mentioned her name like it was stuck in your teeth. Each time, I felt a paintbrush on my cheeks, covering my skin in grey and fading me into a quiet, concealed background that hummed “everything you’ve ever loved has been loved before, and everything you are has already been,” on an endless loop. It echoed in your wrists that I stared at, walking (home) in the middle of the street, and I felt like a ghost moving forward in an eternal line, waiting to haunt anyone who thought I was worth it. But no one keeps my name folded in their wallet. Only girls who are able to carve their names into paintings and vinyl live in pockets and dust bunnies and bathroom mirrors. And so be it, that I am grey and humming in the background. I am forgotten Sundays and chipped fingernail polish and borrowed sheets. I’m the song you’ll get stuck in your head, but it will remind you of someone else. I am 2 in the afternoon, I am the last day of winter, I am a face on the sidewalk that won’t show up in your dreams. And I am everywhere, and I am nothing at all.
Mar 24, 2015
Mar 24, 2015 at 12:34 PM UTC
Anger,
as black as a hook,
overtakes me.
Each day,
each ****
took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby
and sauteed him for breakfast
in his frying pan.
And death looks on with a casual eye
and picks at the dirt under his fingernail.
Man is evil,
I say aloud.
Man is a flower
that should be burnt,
I say aloud.
Man
is a bird full of mud,
I say aloud.
And death looks on with a casual eye
and scratches his ****
Man with his small pink toes,
with his miraculous fingers
is not a temple
but an outhouse,
I say aloud.
Let man never again raise his teacup.
Let man never again write a book.
Let man never again put on his shoe.
Let man never again raise his eyes,
on a soft July night.
Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.
I say those things aloud.
12.4k
navigator’s balcony cocktail hour
rocket orbit ocean liner rising
clenched no teeth no guernica no bam bam bam
correspondent notary republic
address book dial figure 8
charred with a thousand jigsaw pieces
false as a beach chiaroscuro black
on black graveyard womb naked milk glass lit
footprint tourism by candlelight and flare
vaccination fatigue puke fingernail fish
moving a bandaged echo **** him **** her
familiar bell music **** them both **** them all
stretched shirtsleeves spanish toffee slashed tires
(failure as a painter he shaved his wife’s fur coat)
bust your ***** Barcelona red alert
knock-kneed broken squeezebox no hands
standing room only ladies first (please)
unbuttoned interrogation coffee rolls (stop)
marine’s vegetation (stop) early morning tea (stop)
armless menus (stop) pink cathedral fingers (stop)
and (begin again) move
we move
moving inside an eye this eye
that advances step
by step
10.3k
Blade or fingernail
its all the same.
Midnight strokes
I feel all the pain.
Oct 8, 2015
Oct 8, 2015 at 4:25 PM UTC
i am sitting and pressing green paint in misshapen swollen dots on my nail beds and thinking what if i mess this up? i am notoriously bad at fingernail painting and i ruin it and i am also afraid i will ruin myself by loving you.
yes, yes i hear you like a train. my head is all railroads and oceans, but i hear you puffing and whistling he does not love you, he would not love you, he loves her. long hair hazel eye i am not her i cannot be that girl i do not want to be his girl
but i want him to want me
oceans
trains
Mar 4, 2018
Mar 4, 2018 at 9:59 PM UTC
The great hanging weak **** of India
on the map
The Fingernail of Malaya
The Wall of China
The Korea
Ti-Pousse Thumb
The Salamander Japan
the Okinawa Moon Spot
The Pacific
The Back of Hawaiian Mountains
coconuts
Kines, balconies, Ah Tarzan-
And D W Griffith
the great American Director
Strolling down disgruntled
Hollywood Lane
- to toot Nebraska,
Indian Village New York,
Atlantis, Rome,
Peleus and Melisander,
And
swans of *****
Spots of foam on the ocean
6.8k
one more time, she whispers,
she whispers violently, tremulously, like an addict whispers
to the fingernail marks in her skin, like persephone whispers to pomegranate seeds, like sin, and her whispers collect on dollar bills in the wind, and the money flies home but she's still sitting in that bin,
wondering if Hades ever regretted his win
Aug 20, 2017
Aug 20, 2017 at 7:40 PM UTC
We traced the constellations
(Or what we imagined we saw)
Gods’ fingernail and shooting stars
(You said to make a wish)
We laid uncomfortably on crab grass
(It felt like little needles in the back)
On a cool August night
(We had so much to drink)
Looking towards space
(Stargazing)
And dreaming of something better
(For the both of us)
Apr 24, 2011
Apr 24, 2011 at 9:11 AM UTC
This is what she looks like when she's sad:
The human condition effective immediately.
Winter shades shift side to side,
exploding out of each iris.
Skin falling off,
when lunging forward to kiss me.
Fingernail daggers dig into my pores.
I'll bleed under her fingernails,
if she'll drag them down my torso
until her knees click the floor.
This is her tongue inside of my mouth:
We taste each other before we waste each other.
Hip bones parallel and our eyes rubbing shoulders,
my hands surfing her rib cage
and it's all the rage because she moans.
And when she moans,
color tones orbit around her head.
Planetary tumors dancing around her skull;
jump roping with her hair,
eating morals and removing plurals.
Those are her lips around me.
Her head moves up and down
but her eyes focus on me.
She makes eye contact
and I empty my dreams
into her mouth.
We are a public forum.
I ache with alcohol poisoning
and liberal undertones.
The terrain that is my face
bleeds oils that would lubricate
the axle of the car that she drove
into the tree
that we carved our name into.
Come back to me.
I miss you so much.
I watched you die.
I watched you die
and there was nothing I could do.
They told me that she wouldn't make it.
They told me that she might make it.
My hand gripped at blood stained blanket.
I think she said my name under the air mask.
I could tell if she saw me;
her eyes rolled back into her head
after she gazed a thousand yards away
into the field of black
that sheltered the tall grass
that we would chase each other through
and get lost in
as we got lost in each other.
I love you! I ******* love you!
My back, a membrane coil
that rises my stiff neck
that cares my head full of memories.
I turn on the light and you're not there next to me.
I put my hand on your copy of The Thornbirds
and know that you've read it more than the notes
I leave in your inbox,
hoping that it'll say that you have seen it.
Walking to your grave,
I am a darkness that the abyss has swallowed
and I have followed myself into nothingness
that is such bliss
that I forget
your kiss.
Dec 31, 2014
Dec 31, 2014 at 1:01 PM UTC
It's dark outside except for the pale glow of a fingernail moon sailing through the starry sea of night.
The wind has tucked itself to sleep with the birds, weary of bustling about and playing with my hair.
The whippet snuffles his way along the rabbit trails, delighted with this late night walk, white tail wagging in the air.
I wander down by the edge of the swamp, grass all soft and dewy 'neath my feet and spy the pallid uoow reflected upside down,
between the reeds along the creek.
The constant, shrilling chorus of frogs and crickets drills my ears yet I find it strangely soothing - a well known voice across the years.
I turn to walk back, whistling the dog and notice in the low fields, the usual ethereal fog begin to form.
I look up at the dark shape of the house and see light from my
kitchen window painting squares upon the lawn.
Amphibean bodies seek the brightness, bellies pressed against the glass and if you warm them with your finger on the other side, they move.
My man and I bet kisses on whose frog would move the most - one of those silly games you play when you're in love.
As I close the door behind me, grabbing logs to feed the fire, the dog flops down upon the hearthrug letting warmth dry swampy mire.
I make cocoa in my blue mug then pull down the kitchen blind - cutting off the froggy light source - abruptly silencing the choir.
Apr 27, 2017
Apr 27, 2017 at 8:42 AM UTC
you can hear the echo via Zizek the Slovak,
well, attire me in slavic myths and
i'll be mumbling purrs in mud too
for a helium bubble to become a comedian,
i know a jittery ******* addiction
when i see one...
if one thing the catholic schooling system
taught me was how to avoid
sniffing glue and how to recognise
a Freudian apostle - still, with all
the hippy **** you'd think
sniffing glue was what Ukrainian existentialism
prescribed with paracetamol,
catholic education just said: no no.
**** me it's the late 90s and we're talking
post-Chernobyl antics...
but that's how i see the left, leftist politics,
the right
utilises prefixes and suffixes in the
old stance of simple pre- pro-
anti-
qua-
-so so...
the left? oh they're right in there...
their prefixes are
Marxist-
liberal-
Hegelian-
whatnot...
they don't
use abstract prefixes,
their prefixes
are concrete,
they want the porridge in their mouth
to ensure a slur that never comes,
among a range of onomatopoeias they argue
from the perspective of the hushed and ushered crowd,
via one observation: Stalin clapped after a speech
to enjoin with the crowd, a real big brother,
****** never clapped, a sitting-duck method;
i'm not advocating, but by a proxy placebo dynamo
experimenting, it's called experimenting with
thought rather than practising with will,
former no chance of footstep evaluation for
cult status imitable -
the left intellectual
has no rubric of thought concerning to and fro -
it has to be concrete layered and a shut off
perfect architecture without fault -
it can't be what it is -
con-
has to be conservative
pro-
has to be socialist
you once said legitimate
transparency - but you didn't say legislation -
well, the left understood it as legislation,
the right too wanted legitimate transparency -
the green party said we could have neither
but could have the replanting of a thousand
oak trees with a Robin Hood placard on the first
oak tree replanted in Sherwood Forest...
b. ~ d. ~... shot ~100 bent arrows into a bullseye -
hurrah! hurrah! maid marian lost her virginity
too! to a broomstick rather than maradona's
fingernail toothpick!
at an essex market the cockney shouts (out of
place): *** yer courgettes! *** yer courgettes!
ta fa a pudding! ta fa a pudding!
*** yer cucumbers! tooth firth 'un!
Apr 20, 2016
Apr 20, 2016 at 9:50 PM UTC
A star of blood you fell
from the point of the hypodermic
singing of fabulous beasts &
spitting out the *** of vowels
Your poems explode in the mouth
like torrents of ***** on a night
full of zebras & bootheels
Your ghost still cruses the river-
fronts of midnight assignations
in a world of dead sailors carrying
armfuls of flowers in search of
your unmarked grave
Your body no sanctuary for bees,
Death was your lover in a rain of
broken obelisks & rotting orchids
In the tangled rose of a single heartbeat
I offer you the shadow of a double
profile,
two heads held together at the bridge
of the nose by a nail of *****
smoke
in the long night's dreaming
& memory of water poured between
glasses
In my mailbox I find a letter from
a dead man & know that for every
shadow given
one is taken away
Yet subtraction is only a special form of
addition and implies a world of hidden
intentions below a horizon of lips
thin as your fingernail sprouting
mysteries in the earth …
The ace of spades dealt from the bottom
of the deck severs the hand which
retrieves it & the eyes of Beauty
sewn together peer over a black lace fan
in the ****** sunlight of a Spanish
morning without horses
The Belt of Orion is loosened
before you as you remove the silver
fingerstalls from your mummy hands &
kneel to plunder the nightsky in a shower of
bitter diamonds.
(Somewhere under a blanket someone weeps
for a lover.)
Peace to your soul
& to your empty shoes
in the dark closets of
kings with no feet!!!
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 4:06 PM UTC
/I dreamed that wrinkled fingers pointed me backward down the road to teach me about faith./
there’s this plastic imitation leather
peeling off of my steering wheel
and it caught the edge of my chin tonight:
like a fingernail if I closed my eyes.
I re-find that people are flawed,
that I value flaws in a certain lilt or lighting—
I fall deeply in love with confidence like that
but fail to pull it to my own cheeks.
we’re microwave dinners, have you noticed that?
showcasing our dreams in caricatures we later regret.
we’re rotating in heat—pressurizing for perfection,
warming our raw insides to blend with what we see.
(it felt like a fingernail if I closed my eyes.)
spines are expressive—they make us easier to read.
no spine is more inclined to bring eyes the rising sun than yours.
our spines are expressive—they make us easier to write.
Jun 4, 2014
Jun 4, 2014 at 9:11 PM UTC
Friend Rockstar,
Listen, yield to a robust think-tank,
earlobes skidding against wheat and grain.
Terrible story, yes, what happened to that little girl.
Sterile teddy nightgowns weeping in the squad car windows.
Teacher – Teacher, do you harken my yodels for grace?
I’ve never been maternal.
Put the game on. Abortion.
That’s what I’m about.
Grab a bra. Sling some weight.
That’s what I’m about.
Some housefly wings on a weathered corn cob.
Some downhome, homegrown twang for those fancy, fussy britches.
Muddy workboots. Sweat-soaked collars.
That’s what I’m about.
Him done made me read, sir.
What sacraments did we write today?
I can still remember my first broken bone.
I can still remember my first broken *****
That could be what this is all about.
Mary, Mary, you can be contrite,
so knife – so critter – so laze – so stalked.
Who fertilized your seeds? Who reared your sprouts?
Cockle shells and silver bells, honey,
can’t grow up
to be pretty little maids all in a row.
Sterile teddy nightgowns – green bells in gaseous gardens.
Friend Rockstar, you may have to sleep.
This restless harbor is a shivering anecdote spilled from a belly,
a vast, deep cavern with love notes written in milk.
Your fried, stern smile was a flaking fingernail adjacent to the crack in the flowerpot.
Some garden, I say.
May 31, 2012
May 31, 2012 at 7:12 PM UTC
The dried petals of a once green love
snake through the beige carpet--
along with potato chips,
along with icy *****
along with grey ash of cheapshit incense,
my empire soles trample in after work.
Susan smiles and tries to reheat the leftovers.
Our bulging bellies match from a marriage of coping strategies,
stretch mark'd and daydreaming of
other seasons; sweat on foreign sheets,
other napes; Mediterranean baby's breath,
other scents; a choice between gardenia and gasoline,
Susan's a liar.
Of deceit--I've grown tired.
Newspaper, newspaper bring me a bullet.
Doorbell, doorbell bring me a blushing nomad in need of bruising.
Ringtone, ringtone bring me DHS and an actual Friday.
Susan tucks me in to the Lullaby of the Infomercial,
her fingernail seeps into my lower lip.
I roll onto my side.
Sep 27, 2011
Sep 27, 2011 at 2:40 AM UTC
Stars blinking
Billions of God's eyes
Following one another across
A mostly vacant sky
The Moon smiles
Perhaps this is God's fingernail
growing for days until
It gets clipped
A slippery slope
To crane a neck
Staring out at
The distant explosion
Were these eyes meant to receive such an ancient light?
Apr 12, 2012
Apr 12, 2012 at 1:08 PM UTC
Snowflakes scraped underneath fingernail tips
When the charcoal was pressed harder.
As often as the cheetah runs with the crocodiles by the nile
They do not look for each other.
As often as the bees sing
Only once could they muster poison and sting
With a clockwork, shelter and carpentry of honey.
The fruitness of a living body.
The sound that gets lost in the woods
Gets lost and carried
Flying through the whispers between the branches and twigs.
All the creatures are all but lost
Yet the striking fur
Shocks
Hunters into firing hot shells across
and the falcon fell.
A shouting cull
The silence that meant that wildly blooms have been collected.
A bouquet was calling the passing hours
Wrapped in the scraped white spirit of the wooden towers.
Oct 12, 2018
Oct 12, 2018 at 4:23 AM UTC
The fingernail moon
Shinning through
my window
At night,
Brings light to my
dark and grotesque
Bedroom
As I lay awake thinking.
The junk I've collected
Makes great shaddows
on the walls
Of my room,
And the silhouettes
Of junk
Look like people arguing,
To me.
Sep 20, 2015
Sep 20, 2015 at 3:34 PM UTC
Amidst the humidity and darkness of the forest floor
ants scurry in hyper-speed over invisible highways
mushrooms spread boldly beneath wise wooden giants
At night, black panthers weave through thick overgrowth,
undetected, as birds quieten their hungry young and sleep
But even in the rich darkness of the dense forest
micro flashes of silken pink and yellow cream can be seen
catching the moon's light, glowing like precious gems
By day these colours dim in their translucent chambers
atop the world's most beautiful, fearless caterpillar
This tiny being boldly ventures from one leaf to another
while all others cower underneath
Its crystal spikes hide only soft, sticky goo
and it is no bigger than a fingernail
But don't be fooled by its size and raw beauty,
this bejeweled crown easily summons its strength
to move faster than the predators awaiting
Its beauty comes not only from its form
but in its lion-hearted spirit and grace
This confident caterpillar lives
and surrenders to change
without the leaden shackles of fear and worry
and when the time comes
she embraces
and is transformed again
to something new.
Dec 7, 2018
Dec 7, 2018 at 12:38 AM UTC
I am from too long grass
that left muted green stains on my knees
From rock gardens overrun with punny yellow snapdragons
which delivered into my care all sorts of fascinating creepy crawlers
I'm from ash grey two by fours
which were all together fun to climb on
but gave nasty splinter when they were mad
I'm from the woodchips and sand
that provided me an elaborate landscape
in which to house my boundless imagination
I'm from the tail of sulfur smoke
that burned white hot through the crisp October Sky
and propelled my rocket to high heaven
or so it seemed to my eger eyes
I am from Thursdays
from green and red rhubarb leaves
and dirt under every fingernail
I'm from hurling half-rotten tomatoes
at the fence accross the ally
and running haphazardly from angry neighbors
I'm from lasagna and jell-o
candels on Christmas eve
and the squirt bottle of water
my only defense against ants
I am from obscure old families
who came over like so many others
and played the ***** in the secret choir loft above the church
I'm from woodwinds and piano strings
and never a silent moment
From reading aloud and reading alone
and from those who did the reading
I'm from the future and the present and the past of a million different stories
And I've always been headed towards
Where I'm from.
Apr 30, 2012
Apr 30, 2012 at 2:47 PM UTC