November 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Wingspan (DRAFT)
I love that notebooks stretch across two pages a crucifix, a wingspan, BC and AC, across the ages a torso and arms, a man How else will I show that one half of my body says yes the other says no one half says stop the other says go one half stands proud the other pleads so how else do I explain that the meaning of life is as black as is gray that the sky shines and cries all in one day that in the...
4 tags
menswear
lopsided breasts only visible with heaving breaths she drapes her uncle’s faded fishing flannel over her prom dress she likes the silver slinkiness where it’s pulled taut across her slim and skinniness but her secret asymmetry is revealed by the silkiness
5 tags
The Fruit They Bore
My father is not a particularly handy man, as my mother will not hesitate to explain, and he has never been one. He fixes my closet door when the hinges malfunction, and he taught me how to change light bulbs safely and mow the lawn evenly, but other than that there’s not much I remember. My mother has been pleading with him for years to pave the driveway and he hasn’t made a move to do it....
October 2011
1 post
6 tags
Bottle
There is a void: to be filled with buckets of sand from the beach, with dirty paperbacks, with God, anger, and love.
With sunrises, highlighter fluid, does it matter, it’s all the same, with arguments, mascara, with the mid-coital bliss my biology textbook promises.
There is a void.
The depths of which I don’t dare to stick my hands into. For fear of the shadow falling across my...
August 2011
3 posts
8 tags
Cabin
The torpor relieved for a breath from the windows, opened and highway static, telephone lines and treetops
The ache what is there to say a dizziness, a heady must inside of her lungs grows on her tongue
The women stared at a wall yellow, yellow-eyed could it be honey gold-link handcuffs
The pause becomes an end the foot of the semicolon slips away; what is there to say.
6 tags
Ennui
Why does torpor begin like tornado
Is it the hollow the silent of the center
5 tags
Gutted
something, a word a wayward nail in the flooring something to strike a chord there is only the hollow of a casket, a violin case, a cantaloupe, intestines scooped clean
just for something birth, death, marriage life something, a look a filthy stranger smelling of mints something to break this;
is there a hollow?
July 2011
1 post
5 tags
Just the remainder
How do I measure the depth of your reciprocal emotion
Is our proportion positive, negative, or zero by height, I win, by weight, I win, by intelligence quotient, I win, by the length of your hair, you win, by the softness of your skin, you win, by the teaspoon of honey you stir in with my coffee, you win
How to ascertain the length of your reciprocal devotion
I conduct experiments - if I spill...
June 2011
12 posts
6 tags
(To read while climbing up your mountain)
We stand, this time nose to shoulder. For three birthdays, I was younger but taller. Still, I’ve grown, brother. I called to complain about algebra and woke you just in time for philosophy lectures. This time I cross the T’s in your essay. You look at the red lines and crumple the sheet. You used to put your arm around my shoulder, and then turn it into a headlock. Now you’re afraid to wash...
5 tags
separate scenes
unravel at what’s under the wedding gown. in a heartbeat but the telephone rings. “Just move to Utah and marry ‘em both.”
i sleep in my brother’s football jersey at night.
who would best commit suicide in this scenario. the baby: eaten by a doctor before her existence. i feel like she was kidnapped, i feel cheated of my life.
popping a bottle of birth control...
6 tags
this is winter.
i wade through three thousand feet of snow up to my calves and my soft blue jeans have frozen stiff, i am cold, i am cold, i am cold - she is fevered at a hundred and four degrees fahrenheit, and i can’t find any pills in the white cabinet above the chipped basin and oh god, maybe she will die because i can’t find the stop & shop in this thrice-damned white christmas (i’m only dreaming...
5 tags
Tinted Lenses
Such a relief that One of your eyes is smaller Than the other. Both have such brilliant shine, As humans do.
But when I am overwhelmed, I will look into the other, And remember that There is a side to you That is less beautiful.
Perhaps a flawed way Of seeing flaws, But I must think of myself, too.
5 tags
Gloves
Freckled cheeks, dark eyebrows like smoke in black and white eternally young Italian queen back row of the lecture hall
He sees all this but when he falls in love, it is with her hands
He can easily imagine them toting an evergreen gun She would tremble and so miss her first and second shots
But, like when they’d play chess, such a graceful loser
On the third time though she would...
5 tags
cracked pot
so many songs they all say what i feel (often something happy) i read cummings to confirm that this is in fact real life; that this can in fact be a love poem but now it’s just that your head looks like a porcupine
9 tags
Forgot Forgave (SIN)
“If there is a God out there,” she said into her sweaty fingers. “Help me.”
We say this often, when we are desperate and terrified and ready to sacrifice. Oh my Lord, we think. Oh, if You only listen to me this one time I will give up my addiction! I will not lie, I will not cheat, I will not curse, I will not smoke, I won’t. I swear it. I will be changed, I promise, I will.
We think...
6 tags
Such feelings cannot be helped
I wrote you a poem Four lines, but still a poem You didn’t read it I shouldn’t be angry (I didn’t send it) I shouldn’t be angry
6 tags
Crutch
Why am I rinsing the damn ketchup off of the wine bottles (our mother likes to collect them as I suppose you wouldn’t recall),
wiping dust snakes from beneath her bed, mucus trails from bathroom walls, orange popsicle melt smudges off the sofas -
Why am I laboring and sweating between the attic and my mother, why am I pulling our sister from her room and showing her how to do the laundry
...
6 tags
One for each year, how does it feel
How should the child feel When asked, My darling, your marble eyes So wide, so shiny, so gentle, so bright Just what colors make this light China doll cheeks, look how fair Such smooth skin, such pink flush The luster of your curled hair What makes these coils stay there What makes you grow, why the rush Slow down racehorse, still forever and a day Well, then what should the child say Well then,...
6 tags
Stupid wishes
Child, don’t be stupid Don’t be theatrical Don’t cry over spilled milk But if I was a ant I would have to build a boat to travel across this ocean You would wish me luck Find encyclopedia entries on why the Titanic failed Teach me how I should navigate fluorescent lighting And tell me to be careful Kiss kiss me goodbye Child, don’t be stupid Making mountains of molehills But if I was an...
7 tags
Questions I should not ponder too long
How is it possible that An earthquake lurches down our block Knocks me flat onto the carpet from where I’d lain Restless on the sofa, And you will sleep untroubled Right through it all How does this happen, That I throw spitballs, paper airplanes At the curve of your shoulderblades You say you don’t feel them But I feel my pocket vibrating With new newer newest Messages, even as we speak I wish...
9 tags
If I were anonymous or brave:
You’re a liar, you’re a cheat, You’re a goddamn navy fleet. You announce that you surrender, Then you slice the mango vendor. You pervert set policies, Play on public fallacies, Crush the future of the people, Call it another way to peaceful. Carry the world in your palms, Rain, hail, storm atomic bombs.
May 2011
14 posts
6 tags
He steals it, arteries and all.
Something falls from her sleeve but she walks away, blushing already, oblivious.
His fingers catch it, crush it, and call her back to return what she lost, but as she turns around, he stops and says, Never mind.
For in his hand: a little golden heart.
It has four little chambers, little arteries and all, pumping. He sells it at a dingy Cash for gold! sign.
With his newly acquired money he...
7 tags
There was little need for planning.
“I just needed an outlet,” she explained miserably when her brother found the box under her bed.
He shook his head, shocked and horrified, at her excuses and showed the offending material to their mother, who promptly burned it and called her ex-husband.
Not three hours later, she was vehemently refusing to enter the plane heading towards her childhood home, and still no one quite...
5 tags
i'd rather lose an appendage.
non conformist physical deformity at least with an amputated arm passersby can write their own stories
limbs sacrificed nobly in holy patriotic warfare malignant tumor detected just in time to save a life caught on complex factory machinery
oh yes it must have been very bloody
but this pink scarring streaks on the backs of my arms just born like that
there are no excuses
5 tags
baby blue throw your wings up stay with this ache this longing for flight to swallow a slice of sky you will only find dust clouds plastic paper poison sewage strewn
smog
7 tags
Miss begotten
If you are not a child of this house, you have come out backward We call this thing a Bastard
I am not a Mischance I am a Magnificent We say this to be Heaven-Sent Not oops oops Accident
6 tags
If you rub your cherry lips
I will not open my mouth to ask you for your name where you bought that gold ring
I will sit and write you letters
each dirtier than the last each dirtier than the next
but if I never send them
7 tags
Kitty Hawk
It’s some hundred years ago and the heavens are open wide, The wooden contraption’s rickety wings are smooth as they glide.
And who says that it’s impossible to swing from the clouds? You’re not soaring because you’ve gotten lost in the crowds.
Yet two brothers have diagrammed, have researched, have planned - We’ll see who’s laughing when the skeleton...
7 tags
Frostbite Windows
Solid glacial lake outside - Volcano inside, spewing out ice chips, shards of glass sit whole in her stomach: a heavy mass.
Leans her forehead against frostbite windows. Oh, cold, cold, storm. Her tongue is heavy, feverish, and hot, hot, warm.
Candy colored sleighs outside - Cough syrup inside, spilling out from her mouth to the blankets. Sticky purple on the wool.
Nothing stays inside her but...
11 tags
August
They sit and listen closely to the boy’s crooning recitation, sit and listen to his exaggerated arabic gutturals and desperate attempts at eye contact.
The woman, the woman with the pink wrinkles and gray wisps curling tenderly from behind a brown shawl, she looks on proudly at the children –
their hands clasped, scalps covered with lopsided caps and slippery scarves - as if they’re...
8 tags
Better Than Who
He swears he’s not suicidal, and he’s really not. He definitely doesn’t want to kill himself, he doesn’t necessarily want to die, he just wants life to end. He’s terrified of what’s to come, that’s what it is. How is he supposed to survive college? How do people manage to come up with amazing theses and essays and projects and futures? He’s neither...
8 tags
Boy (The One With Two Parents)
Don’t you remember the boy?
Which one? The one with two parents.
You do know him, though.
There is a boy who lives in a city. He has a father with a nine-to-five job, and a mother who insists she does more work than is done in three nine-to-five jobs combined. Statistically proven, she says. If sitting in the kitchen on a tall stool, scrubbing pots and dirtying them and scrubbing them...
5 tags
if what we give is what we get, no wonder we’re buried in debt.
5 tags
fingerprints
on saturday evening she decides she is a rainbow. a fragmented rainbow, yes, a misshapen rainbow, yes.
she is standing beside her elliptical all-knowing mirror, which hangs long-faced beside her wide open closet.
her mirror tells her that she is a surreal oil painting of a harpy, psychedelic swirls coating her like sweat.
she runs her hand over her skin and must agree. her legs are the pale,...