Revelation

I don't expect you to have a revelation (definition: a surprising and previously unknown fact, esp. one that is mad known in a dramatic way, Synonym: beyond biblical in my mind). I started out hoping that maybe in the dusty corners of your mind there was potential for discovery, for the newfound understanding that you're a better man than you make yourself out to be. I am desperate and flailing, a contradiction to my face. I turn around and feel whispers wrap their fingers around my throat, cold and foreign; your mouth. Everything you try to heal just ends up leaving a bruise and drenched in purple and blue I'm standing here screaming "for the love of God find something to love." I always have and I always will find you to be something extraordinary. Even if when you rip at your own skin and pull at the arteries and dig in your bones to find something in your marrow and you're furious that all you found were cells and matter, and a pulse. If I could make myself seep in between your toes and into your bloodstream and weave myself up into your head and sit on your eardrum, I'd beat the hell out of it until you understand that there are things worth hearing in this world.

I'm perched inside your eyelids so even when you're trying to sleep I'm still laid out in front of you, naked, begging for you to see something that I guess you've always been blind to. It's retinitis pigmentosa of your human functions, the little things that you're just supposed to get. Like when someone lays down in the middle of the road, the yellow lines a suture line, just to get you to look at them and say something that takes more than five seconds to put together inside your head, you're supposed to notice things like that.

This is no ordinary love, it's carnivorous, it's vultures. But we forgot somewhere along the lines that I'm a vegetarian, that I'd prefer to leave your carcass intact, that I'd rather just let you pick at me.

I didn't expect you to have a revelation.

But I guess I expected something more than this.

Slam Poems ("momma" and "pound")

“Momma”

Are you proud?

Did I do right by the dreams

you had for me? Your conehead opportunity,

rolling around in your belly.

Is this what you envisioned,

me singing crap songs on street corners,

slits on my wrists and echoes in my ears.

You’re echoing,

rattling all my cartilage

and the righteousness

you poured down my throat.

How am I supposed to think I’m beautiful

like you told me

when you’re stuffing yourself

with silicone, and gasoline,

and money.

They might as well dip you in formaldehyde

so I can look at you

pickled in a jar on my nightstand and say

“Look, look she’s a fucking diamond.”

How can I listen to you

telling me to keep my panties dry,

when you’re on number 3

your chest all blown up,

thighs all glitter.

How much is your monthly allowance?

Maybe I’ll write a novel,

except according to you

I can’t write a novel because that’s reserved

for people who’s brains

are fully developed.

So I guess, it’d be pretty immature

to write a book about a woman who screams

down the stairs to “Get the Fuck out

you pathetic little bitch.”

People would cry and say it’s poignant

and then they’d put it back up on their bookshelves

because my cerebral cortex isn’t fully developed

so it doesn’t count,

and anyway,

they have that luxury.

But me, I ain’t got no bookshelves

when you left you asked if we cared if we wanted anything

and we said “fuck no” and gave you our wallets.

All I got is a corner

and a box cutter

and some gauze

and I feel sterile as hell

and don’t feel it go in

as it begins again,

cutting out the mother

that thought she told me

I was beautiful.

“Pound”

Here I go again singing cradle songs

“tell me that You’ll open your eyes”

So I can distract myself

because you don’t

love me tonight and your

sweating and grunting

means I’m nothing more than a notch

on your belt

and something to brag about.

We were at this party earlier

and you laughed with everybody else

when they started in on

my fat ass and huge legs

and how my breasts have swollen

under my skin since I had

to take my pointe shoes off.

But you weren’t laughing later

when you smacked me so hard

it left a bruise,

or when you grunted with disapproval

when I wouldn’t turn over

on all fours

like a damn dog: your bitch.

It’s an appropriate metaphor

because you hold my hand sometimes

leading me around.

and my hand is a leash

and my clavicle a collar

and that’s how you got me

on this picnic table

in the first place.

I thought maybe if I

acted like it didn’t feel

like being sacrificed

if I didn’t feel like a piece

of meat

like I liked it.

Then maybe you would

decide to love me.

But you don’t and I know it

and I could see that girl

with longer hair and leaner legs

and an even fatter ass

grinning back at me from your retinas.

I flip over so it’ll be over faster

and so she can see the red marks

on my back.

So maybe, she won’t be so stupid.

Cover Letter

I have a big family

with older siblings

who are loud and pretty and talk

a lot.

They all like each other, and people.

I do not like people very much

but I’m not shy.

I say plenty of things sometimes

but not in situations like group dinners

or parties or funerals.

When I talk in these situation

my voice just makes things more crowded.

I have verbal communication issues.

But I write things down really well.

Because of the older siblings,

and because I was fat,

I read lots of books.

Because the books were more interesting

and football looked really fucking awful.

I don’t like people or noise

but sometimes I can handle people or noise.

I went to a concert and sat in the handicapped section.

I really liked that concert.

But then I went to a different one and had to stand up.

The people were a lot closer and therefore it was very rude.

I am very sensitive to rudeness.

If you say you will meet me at four o’clock

and then don’t meet me until 4 o’nine

because your train was late,

I will think you are rude and not meet you places

anymore.

That’s why I’d be good for this job because if I was running late, which I wouldn’t

because I hate rude people,

I would call you until you answered

to let you know where I am and why I’m late

and will have a stranger talk to you on the phone

so you know I’m not rude and I’m trying to get there.

I am the woman for the job

because it involves writing things down,

which I’m good at,

and not coming in direct contact with people,

which I’m also good at.

As long as nobody is rude to me

I’ll make a super great waitress.

If they’re rude to me, I can’t guarantee

that I will not drop their pie on the floor on purpose.

But I would also clean it up on purpose,

because that’s what good waitress’s do.

Confrontation

What you have only guessed

is thrown across my cells

in shades of wilderness

and networks of electricity.

Rosacia marquees to declare

unpaved roads, a scraped knee,

a daughter.

Have a confrontation

with my cells.

Find where some are flushed rosy

and others the color of dark beans

roasted with decades of sun.

This one is a little sickled,

puckered around the edges.

Note it,

so that they have even more

justification for why “I shouldn’t

feel nothin’ down there”.

Color by number me a sinner.

4’s are for when I ate grapefruits

that left welts in my cheeks,

2’s for when it wasn’t making love

it was just making me remember

the 6’s,

the day God didn’t come

because I was young

and had the possibility

of becoming a woman.

Have a confrontation with my cells.

Layer me lovely for now.

Shove me into the corner of your cortex

the place reserved for the mutilated.

I don’t feel

like talking about it anymore.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2313097.html

Art Credit: Emily Kngwarreye. Awelye, Autumn

He Builds Glass Houses

He builds glass houses

that fracture when the light creeps

from room to room.

The walls are painted

with his name,

searing and familiar.

And my eyes unlike

my mothers,

change with each glinting hallway.

He moves in silence,

save the sound of his moods

(he loves me sometimes)

jingling with loose change

in his pockets.

In the quiet,

barefeet padding across lacquered floors,

the confrontation of callused cheeks.

Then,

tornadoes above my midsection.

He swallows my refractions.

The most terrifyingly sweet

thing to touch this mouth

since stillness.

Once we’re in the light,

shards of glass cling to my sweater

for days. He builds our house again.

New messages on the machine

echoing off transparent walls.

"Separation"

I taste you in

sun on my shoulders,

fingertips on kneecaps.

I apologize for

dripping sweat

on the tablecloth,

grit under fingernails

falling on hot laundry.

I can't feel you

through the calluses on my hands

pushing splinters

behind your ears,

the sweetest thing to ever

touch this mouth.

Settling into sunburn.

(photo: Ansel Adams)

Old Lungs

You hang wafer thin crinkled,

flexing and stretching

with turbulence.

A post it note on my carotid

fluorescent yellow

reminding me to settle down

not forget my spare

key, spare life,

spare tire.

Reminding me of the dozens of things I am

bound to forget

while in the company

of breath.

Like reading the road map

on the bottom of my shoe--

old, white, oxfords.

Or changing the lightbulb

flickering in the ceiling,

a parchment paper man

nearing old age.

Geometry

I am from geometry.

From a stained hankie

a hole in the wall, FakeTown

where every slummer dips his beard in fourteen karat gold.

I am from my sister’s contradictions,

I am the note asking to return supplies,

thumb thack spelled wrong.

I am from the drunken crucifix

throwing beer cans at the steeple until my eyes go cross

singing glory.

I am from the spaces in between each vertebrae

trickling down to pool at the top of your tailbone.

I’m a collection of what I told you on my roof

one lonely Wednesday, with

popcorns kernels in between my teeth.

I am from the eyes my uncle lost amongst the black kohl

smudges, torn road maps

and gas station Icees,

melting in cup holders.

I’m from the ones he found up underneath his cuticles

two days later atop ivory keys.

House of Wits

Words taken from House of Wits by Paul Fisher

He mentioned

that he recollected vividly

visiting dusky churches

bursting with Rome,

scented with the danger

of the most accomplished women.

Thoroughly enjoying the grand

language of steep roofs

the timeless cultivation of

loving.

Alice, In late spring

partly out of favoritism and partly

out of the infancy of incompetence.

He would have stung if

she had worried

if she hadn’t already blamed

the younger Mary James’s

in Paris

where “one must dine somewhere

and I sometimes

dine in company.”

(or otherwise took her life,

an early version of a woman)

Have a toast to London

luxuries. A festering

sore on Justice,

the bride.

Harry’s and Alice’s absences

from the wedding though

speak volumes.

Streetwalkers

Mix me in your marrow

stuff me in your bones

chemistry lessons.

What happens when cobalt air

mixes with perspiration,

liquor on my tongue

the stupor of nerve.

Chemiluminescence

it stings but it does not blind

a floodlight secreting

from your retina.

Percussion,

the vibration from rubber

on street

synonym: I quiver.

Taught veins between

fingertips. Alert hair

on the backs of knees.

In the incoming implosion,

the smell of fresh cells

mixing with formaldehyde

and exhaust is going to

possess us.

Knuckles braided in

steel cable and spinal cord

tucking in tucking in,

before one turn out.

Fingers coming up

through your throat,

your tongue wet exigency

neon lit locution.

Reaction

What you told me without a shadow
of doubt, paranoia, dark lidded eyes,
bitten nails.
My rumored
beauty.
Glowing sentiments, recollections
of phosphorous.
Throwing back beer cans
while I suck on a peach chased with
vodka, fingers
knotted in my spine
all captured in tacky fisheye.
Talks of vacation to New Dehli,
Paris, San Antonio
forgiveness for your favorite
broken shot glass, the one
with the Spanish flag on it
that you stole from the liquor cabinet.
A comb for my hair-
wisdom teeth on ice.

I forgot to get you a reaction
and now we're just
familiar.

Redrock

Donkey, painted on the rockface
near the Watertown exit, by I-24 East
retreating
into erosion.
My brother always told me
that you were painted right before the tide came
or that you were a caveman's first revelation
or the result of a partifularly ambidestrous
dinosaur.
Whichever fit the remaining length.

I never asked you,
no when we took the highway instead
or when the "Save the Ass!" signs
(that I didn't make)
went up.
I never kissed away
your dust and placed
my ear against your redrock chest
listening for what you've heard about me
and the fatigue that must come
with being mysterious.

Arithmetic

I took the time to count the wrinkles

[the furrowed and steaming]

weaving from freckle to hooked nose

the blood under the skin

rivers of silk and childhood rhyme schemes,

the nucleus reflected in silver bifocals [heavenly contradictions].

Tell me of your wise heart

[never cease speaking] because I

have confronted the possibility

that ninety percent of what you say

is brilliant.

And if I absorb half of your brilliant

and add it to my simple one

that makes me fifty and one percent your brilliance.

They said if something is more than half

it rounds to the whole

and if I am fifty and one

that makes me round to

wholly you. [arithmetic fails me]

So tell me more

of you wise heart.

Let me count the lines

your speckled paper in my hands.

Gamine

Though externally I was cut with precision

evenly, hanging razors

perplexity fogged my conscience.

When I should have been concentrating

on pulling into the intersection to turn left

or stirring the pot constantly to boil,

I was distracted.

And now

I extend my condolences for the loss of your

sweet lady.

Dearest grandmamma,

I am sorry that my missing ponytail detracts

from my image of godliness

and hinders my ability to appreciate

appropriate table settings.

Cosmopolitan,

I apologize that I must tear out pages 32-35

and 41-47

and 108

that describe so accurately how to get the best

“post booty waves”.

CVS,

to you I really am sincerely woeful.

Your success was dependent on my monthly venture

into the haircare aisle.

A frenzy!

I will see you semi annually now.

I’ll be sure to buy some cigarettes to make up the difference.

Spectacled lady on the subway,

waiter at Chili’s,

stiffed adolescent,

I’m sorry that you can’t see something

sexier..

Sir,

I’m sorry that your woman doesn’t look like a woman,

that you are so frightened

here, hold my hand instead.

I understand the trials you must be under,

quite some trial indeed

not having something to hold onto

when you want to fuck me like a dog.

God knows you need reigns to reel in

your bitch.

june playlist.

1) Snow White- Jaymay

2) Funeral Dress- William Fitzsimmons

3) Keep it There- The Weepies

4) Shadow on the Wall- Brandi Carlile

5) Simple Song- David Saw

6) Living in Twilight- The Weepies

7) Where the Road Meets the Sun- Katie Herzig

8) Cosmic Love- Florence and the Machine

9) Noticed- MuteMath

10) Eyes on the Horizon- Brendan Benson

11) This Time- Jonathan Rhys Meyers

12) Sparks- Coldplay

13) Veins of Your History- Matthew and the Artist

14) Do What I Can- Greg Laswell

15) Sleepwell Chicago- Trent Dabbs

16) The Girl You Lost to Cocaine- Sia

17) For My Generation- Tyler James

i apologize for the minimal (or really absent) posts, but I head off to Virginia in fortyeight hours and i assure many posts practically daily.

-a