Two seven days time, waiting nigh
The carriage driver
Arrives tomorrow, once surmised
The man is hung by her
The Warden granting – Death –
In Eager’s Fortnight hence
Her Spartan household waking Dread
In Eager’s Fortnight hence
Two realms entomb’d, the quiv’ring Door
The rest await her corps
Their harrowed tales of Life and Want
Abandoned heretofore
Unable to enclose shadows within our hands,
we learn their cunning nature quickly.
As death’s acolyte, they slither through each
of my fingers and slip into the cracks of mold that’ve
grown on the sutures embedded in my sternum.
Each pointed claw pulls at the stitches until the
flesh at my chest slumps to either side, and when
the shadows take form, I see thousands of faces at once.
I see ghosts of people I’ve never really cared for.
They smell like sugar water and feel like the velvet of a
bodice I ran my fingers down on a morning I realized
I could’ve loved better.
As red threads pull my soul down onto Hell’s welcome mat,
I swear death grants me an out of body experience.
It loves me loudly as it bleaches the bones of my soul
and feeds me fables of twenty-dollar angels and their
religions; built to break.
Red skies dilate my pupils; the voice in my head tells
me it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
The blood haze of burning cities whisper
that this is my safe haven, a soft landing,
and I’ve become a thing ruined so perfectly that
my vows to a sinless existence are as effective as
the kaizen of a gas station coffee.
By the time Satan stands over the fragments of a life lived too long,
he reminds me of a love poem written to celestial bodies.
He reminds me of May flowers and April showers, smells of
bloody noses and methane roots, and I wonder how anyone could
let go of his promises.
I’d much rather be the love in Persephone’s narcissus
than be a soul trapped in the grip of Seraphim.
“I’ll take the hair in your food”
What a sweet gesture… not.
What kind of psycho wants to eat hair,
Willingly at that?
Out the corner of my eye
I see the freaks hand reaching near me
I smack their hand away
Why would I allow someone to deal with something so sickly
Although their face…
It looks so unreadable
Are they actually upset I don’t want them to eat it?
Am I the crazy one or is he
Shakingly I grab the hair between my fingertips
My breathing quickening the longer it takes to grab it out
My brows furrow in discomfort
But this feels ok…
I hand the hair over
The psycho readily grabs it
Downing the hair in one gulp,
They smile at me right after
A weight was lifted off my shoulders
One too heavy to bare
So I gathered all my courage
And passed it to the psycho who loved hair
We were eating breakfast
at the hotel when dad got the call.
Rushed to the hospital,
opened the door to your room,
found your body on the bed.
Dad collapsed on top of you,
wailing from deep inside himself,
for you, his father, a sound
I’d never heard before.
It turned the Earth upside down,
like it was trying to keep the sun from going down
Full of life the day before, you woke,
asked the nurse for a bottle of wine
and a glass for me.
She shook her head.
You tried your best to laugh,
grinned and winked at me.
It’s that wailing that keeps me up tonight,
sitting at my desk, drinking
from a bottle of wine
staring at your picture,
wanting it all back—
The Christmas eves at your house,
on the carpet, your back against the couch,
I’m sitting next to you,
you ask if I love you like a dog or like a puppy,
your laughter booms across the room,
when I say both. You squeeze my shoulder,
say I love you with such a tenderness
it brings me to tears remembering the sound.
I can still hear the sound.
The apparition of faces in the crowd.
They pay more if they’re airport bound.
The apparition of faces in the crowd.
Invalid cards make lower sounds.
The apparition of faces in the crowd.
I did not think that Ezra Pound
Could so encapsulate my views
(On platform crowds, that is, not Jews);
Few faces are remarkable.
Did you just board? I can’t recall.
Come, friendly bombs that fell on Slough.
Petals, on a wet, black bough.
Clarice had a little lamb,
His fleece was white as snow,
Until the night they chopped him up –
When he got a blood-red glow.
Clarice can hear the little lamb
Still screaming in the night,
She tries to save him in her dreams
But never wins the fight.
Clarice loved that little lamb,
Thought it was a darling.
I love the way she lingers here,
My poor and injured Starling.
Clarice asked me what I’d have done
If the little lamb were mine.
I said I’d have ate his liver
With some fava beans and wine.
Queer as in Weird
Queer as in
unsettling adults
by pecking a boy with a rattail
on the lips
(my first grade teacher
calling my parents concerned
about my sexuality)
by fumbling with words,
saying that I felt like a boy
when I was around pretty girls
(my second grade teacher
telling me never to speak this
to another living soul)
Queer as in Strange
Queer as in
climbing trees in skirts
playing soccer in a sweater set
crossing my ankles over my knees
chewing gum with my mouth open
and hearing: “girls don’t do that”
wearing pink pantsuits and red lipstick,
a bisexual bob of neon peach,
a marriage of drag and comfort
to my brother’s wedding
wrapping my arm around my partner
in their green-brown faery dress
tucking away my amusement
tucking away my dismay
when I hear the straight ladies:
“I didn’t know I could wear a suit!”
Queer as in
patiently walking a new-met photographer
through the nuances of out-ness
and filing away the tenderness
his wondrous love for his wife
her smile like a camera flash
the purest language of artist’s adoration
and remembering the first time
I saw my beloved smile
Queer as in
unpinning their wig after a long day
drawing bobbies from behind their
tiny pointed ears like precious coins
smoothing my hand over their afro
hoping to soothe their tender roots
and them telling me: that
was more intimate than sex
Queer as in
choosing not to fight she/her
from people who don’t know me because
I have bigger problems than confusion
and casual indelicacies
Queer as in
most people want my complications
only to spice up the bedroom
yet I allowed no one to steal them,
family silver and gold tucked in my bra
no more painful than underwire
Queer as in
I am still here
and Wickedly Weird
Queer as in
I know the boring, straight, binary
skinny blonde I was supposed to be
is living it up under the hill
just as Strange as me
After Robert Browning
That’s my last Duke peering down the parapet
With his councilor breaking out in a cold sweat,
As he shows off his Frà Pandolf, his Brancusi,
Sculptures he neither made nor bought. Boozy
With inheritance, his orchards full of cherry
Trees stay well-tended, his banquet-tables merry
With goblets and grape-leaves stuffed with pork;
Conjuring the smell of duck roast makes me retch.
Thankfully I would have been made to fetch
Linens or flutes and would dally in the kitchen
Galley with simmering pots, never to pitch in,
Mind you, that would reek of liberal entitlement,
But rather to vex John Locke’s enlightenment
And dream of a hocking a loogie into the soup.
My raison d’être? Breasts that wouldn’t droop
And managing the arrangement of piano sheet
Music and staying silent, demure, agreeable, neat
In appearance, always deferent to the mighty
Duke, who lent me his name. But I’m Aphrodite,
Not a 1650’s housewife. My smile is my shield
Against—how should I put it?—what men wield
Implicitly and arrogantly as biological right,
Providing us the stale binary of fight or flight—
I chose the latter. See you later. Let him give
Commands to someone as secretly combative
As his staff, whose names, and children’s names
I know (not he), the one person who blames
Herself less than a flower. Yes, a faint half-flush
Springs from my throat, lilies from a paintbrush—
Monet’s, or an Edo Period master of ukiyoe’s
Lacquer-tinted woodblock prints of kabuki shows:
A transitory, infinitely sorrowful, floating world
Captured so perfectly wistful in a smile unfurled,
Though he failed to notice, it was never the same
Smile—sometimes it conspired to hide the shame
Of being disregarded or ogled again, other times
It curled contemptuously, plotting horrible crimes;
Rarely it struggled to comply or brazenly to flirt,
More often, offered casually as an untucked shirt.
Ironically, it was never a Duchenne smile—which,
Wife of a Duke and all—and still makes me twitch
To remember the last grin to crinkle the corners
Of my eyes with crow’s feet. Not a foreigner’s
Sense of having dreamt a destination before a trip,
But a leaf’s recall of once being a seed. Ownership
Is fiction, but there he is showing off his bronze
Neptune taming a seahorse and his stuffed swans,
The coat of arms with his nine-hundred-year-old
Name. Just ignore the trace and smell of mold
Never quite rubbed away fully with linen cloth.
Imagine once I was stuck in his jar like a moth,
And now I finger potter’s clay instead of sapphire
Cluster earrings and build my own roaring bonfire
On the beach where I scissor with a scullery maid—
No one will ever convince me I should have stayed.
I was a scrappy little thing,
short, no-fuss hair,
T-shirts & jeans,
questionable hygiene
the term then was tom-boy
I don’t know what they call independent, strong-willed, opinionated little girls now
He was the neighborhood bully
big and smug, followed by toadies
I can’t remember why I nailed him but I surely did
I straddled him, held him down
and saw the fear in his eyes
that was enough
I knew I was supposed to be sorry
but I wasn’t
It was a dark and stormy night
When everything changed.
It was love at first sight,
Things were new and strange.
Swore I would never fall
For I am clever as a fox.
Hit reality like a brick wall,
Felt pain strong as an ox.
For all good things
Must come to an end.
Time moves on
And time is not your friend.
Of course sticks and stones
Break your bones.
And boy his words
Sure did hurt me.
But all is fair in love and war
And he honestly was a bit of a bore.
Only a matter of time
Before I got over you.
Simply went out to find somebody new.
A method tried and true.
Not quite head over heels.
He’s a bit of a diamond in the rough.
But brave as a lion
And there where the going gets tough.
They say all’s well that ends well.
Could be happily ever after
Or the calm before the storm.
Time will tell
