Category: Uncategorized

Aching is today’s passive verb,
tentative pause. Everything
still cracks, rework-eects
without performance. Home holds
teddybears who know miracles:
myth, breath, love, tears, resurrection.
Hospitality as, rest easy love,
yawn into cushions like ower beds
(without allergy-aversion)
a cup of tea is cooling somewhere.

Thank you for being here,
which is to say, all needs worthy
of being met, we can dance in place
if you don’t mind
my always-mistaken metronome.

Without jest or judgment
(or test) I wonder, what’s
your favourite scary movie?

to: the one i lost
seal me with a kiss
i write this letter to the one i lost.
your sm il
e makes me less sad.

i can’t keep letting people hold onto just that.
my happiness cannot be held in another persons hands anymore.

our song plays ♫♪♪♫
and my broken heart
continues to ache
for you.

I have to let you go.
instantly,
instantly,

I loved you.

should I love another or myself?
I keep losing myself.

There are sudden but soft waves
a place where our memories will stay forever –
Pomerance lake.

I remember the first wave
when you said hello.
and the wave of emotion
when we first
kissed.

Our love was concrete
but i keep breaking trust.
Why is my heart made of stone?

I keep losing myself.
Should I love another or myself?

Embroidered tapestries drape like clandestine skin,
Epaulets of memory weigh soft linen thin.
Cinctures cinch truths in serpentine coils,
Crinolines cascade, hiding labyrinthine toils.
Corsets constrict fervor with each careful lace,
Chions utter wildly, like doubt’s delicate chase.
Loomed threads entwine in a chiaroscuro spin,
Revelations fasten with a sly, silver pin.
The cloak of concealment, the mantle of might,
Dons itself daily for battles out of sight.

I lived on the streets of Moscow
Man’s best friend
My loyalty unwavering
The greatest soldier in the cold war
Your fire cooked my food
Provided protection and shelter
From the winter of Russia

By the river
You caught fish and messages in bottles
If not you, then the enemy
But I do not understand war
You trained me for battle
But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks
I don’t know how to shoot a missile

Stay
You taught me how to stay
I know that
And my desire to make you proud
I was the good and faithful servant
A good girl
You fed me a treat

Stay
You asked me to stay
it was dark
But I will do this for your love
This felt like the dances
you made me do in the centrifuge
I know I will get a treat after this
I am a good girl

It started to scorch
Embers dashed my chin
The heat reminded me of you
How you took me in
When I was near frozen
Something feels off
My teeth start to melt from my barking
How will I consume my treat now?

Did I fail you?
It’s been hours
I hope this wasn’t my fault.

Was I a good girl?

My love is biblical, shrined and christened and all the pieces of myself that I could possibly give are etched into a commandment of all-consumption; a promise that if you let me, I will swallow you whole. Stone by stoned-son, a Kronus of gluttony until I am bursting at the seam with all the love I will pool to baptize in. Gardens of Eden I build, all of them fertile in pomegranates Eve’d with broken teeth; heaven does not exist within an inch from the tip of my tongue, do you understand what it means to fucking starve in the midst of ambrosia fields? And I feel closer to God lately, in the way I understand the urge to rip flesh from bone if it meant the hunger would be satiated. Turning blood to wine, hair to confit, the sound of my sobs could break bread and I rip arteries out to feed those begging at my doorstep. We smear red above the walkway, my mouth stained with the veiny tremble of carnality, dripping like mistletoe under the wrathful gaze of a slighted idol; these are hymns for the needy and I am Judas atoning a silvered
moon, wearing our communion noosed around the neck. They hang me and I come crawling from the grave in four more days, a Madonna of wallowing with the rage to raze more than what comes knocking in the morn. My love is biblical, but my yearning is hellish; making men into trinkets, women into Liliths of acrimony, the faithful into pillared salt beneath my temples. But I am no Mary, I bite the hand that dares to feed me, I lick the ivory clean and pick my teeth with the carnage; it’s no coincidence that I only worship on my knees, God’s karma and his too, my martyrdom only worthy if it burns on the way down. There is nowhere I do not haunt, nowhere that does not dip into my juvenescence with gleaning knife to gnash at the hollow of my throat. I serve Mass on Sunday and time on Monday, dipping into the clock and pulling out beaded prayers I let seep in salivated surrender from my nose. The Church becomes me rather than asks of patroned sainthood, shackles against masticated wrists ringing like choir bells, and my persecution will taunt you longer than the love ever could. Our keeper spins fawning locks into strands of gold, promising me Atlas if I sell the sacrament of my body for one last supper. I take it like Christ on a cross; a Magdalene’d vision draped in funeral wear, hands above my head, crimson dripping down my thighs. I am a crucifixion of those who could not hold me, I am gospel for the bitches I have been in this life and the next. My father does not cry at the wake, my God will not mourn. I belong entirely to my own want, to my own greed, my ribs eternally making room for the longing; only this will keep the fire lit longer than my bones will simmer in the dirt.

THE LAST SUPPER

My journeys had taken me far and beyond, I thought I had seen it all
I’ve had many a wonderful experience, I was sure that I had it all
Yet what I saw that day amazed me, for I had never seen such a dame
Though I had seen many beauties that had such name and fame

I was at one bank and she at the other, of a river that flowed gently
She was oblivious to all around her, she moved so elegantly
Her arms were slender and her skin was clear, hair that flowed like a river
She came up for a breath and brushed her hair off her chest, I got a shiver

She was naked in the water; her body looked like it was sculpted
Not of rock but of ivory was her pale white skin crafted
She dived in the water, did the fish begin to blush I wonder
Seeing such a woman naked, made my thoughts began to wander

Everything about her was perfect; perfectly she was made
She reached for me and pulled me close, she was a mermaid
I was her prey, she was pulling me in, I knew I was going to die
I kissed her mouth and let go, this was a great way to die

my pain is biblical, sacred. my pain is cain with the blood of his own heart staining his hands, the ripped cavity of his brother drenching the both of them in their father’s good wine. my pain is but a daughter’s, this is men’s work, my pain is first-born of this union and first-generational, and where else but my brow am i to bear it? my pain is a good prayer, how you search for it on your knees, am i mary of nazarene or the mary sat at the able worship of a dead man? my pain seeks God out, crushes his Hand beneath the church pew when my own give out halfway to the cash bucket, when i look for answers in the lace of my skirts and instead find nickels tinkering like bells. a woman stops to kiss my feet, a man clutches fistfuls of my contempt and smears it red across my temples, my pain is faith and it is lonely all at once. i give a sermon on wednesday, i say that i write so much about religion because i am terrified to forget it. the mothers understand me, hold my guilt between their hands like they are offering it to mortal ruin. the fathers never hear me, they wish the pain was easier to digest. i attend the funeral for a girl who i only met twice, her mother asks me to dress the part and i pay my respects in the sound of bangles i found atop her daughter’s dresser jingling against dripping wrists. i don’t write a eulogy or an instagram caption; when the procession starts, her barely grown blood bears the body like Christ against a cross. i almost drop my hand; its almost humorous, the image of its omniscience. i guess we leave this life exactly how we begin it, with our brother’s pitted knuckles clutching the fabrics of our funeral wear together.

Besides the grassy knoll and sun-lit auditorium
She fed you, chocolate draped
Little strawberries
Picked from your grandma’s garden.

She’d croon to the babies,
Feed them fleshy mess from her
Marbled fingertips,
Stained from cocaine and cigarette ashes
(From the early 70’s addiction)

After school, she’d drive you home
Eyes wrinkled, kindly, bright like
Candle against burned fruit and
Your father’s dullest promise.

There was strawberry pie for
Ms. Polly’s third grade class,
Potatoes freshly sliced for school
With a loving knife pressed
Against grandma’s gnarly teeth.

She chain smoked,
Waiting for your classmates to make room
For your little body in the sea.

She’d call your father in whispered tones,
Pink manicure wrapped like wire
Around the cord and your neck
Twisted sideways, gently, she examined.

She baby-sat Ms. Polly in the 70’s.
They’d share joints
Behind the school auditorium
And lick blood-red sugar
From each other’s lips.
Now from yours.

And that’s your grandma.
The strongest tide, crashing to the beach

Waiting, calmly, for your little body
To make it out of the sea.

Seeded and bloody,
Her sweetest harvest

I would fade into nothingness so fast if it meant you could come back for a moment—
if we could relive a single memory together,
instead of just me carrying this aching around like an anvil, like a swarm of wasps.

I wrote you into my veins,
maybe you were always there.
But when my blood pulses I can convince myself it’s your name ringing in my ears.

In the light, I return to myself,
but it’s nothing like when I had another person
to connect all my seemingly misconnections to.

The winter was made just for us.
And I will miss you gloriously every summer in between.
The gold flecks in your hair, the soft brown of mine,
hay between our teeth,
cowboys until I can sink into the earth beside you.

I have the soul of another and maybe that’s why I could spare one,
why I could take the punches without bleeding on your shirt.

I’ll never miss a day missing you.

In what mould was this soft clay cast?
From what rich dust of former men,
the men whose lives have now since past,
has man been wrought to shape again?
For surely from some lifeless dust
were we thumped into common clay
and in time’s stolid sway we must
from dust back into dust decay.
But when my dust begins to mix
and mingle, when my blood is dry,
I pray that from that richer mix
will rise a better man than I.