14 years later

She told me, with a wagging finger, that I was selfish, that everyone is

Her declaration sunk straight to the bottom of my soft, 9-year-old heart

And I revolted, I couldn't defend myself from her distorted lenses

But my small back was resolute, my bloodstream

Full of rioting villagers with sharp scythes and pitchforks

Now, 14 years later, I wonder where she is

What she's doing. I wonder if life gave her

A bludgeon-proof exoskeleton, or, rather if she purchased one

With her tears and heavy drops of sweat

I wonder if the mannerisms of her love ever changed

I wonder if she saw the fingerprint impressions

People left her with little more than dark blue vignettes

And elusive eel memories of how the world is lumpy and asymmetrical

I wonder if other children disliked her, with her baggy sweaters and sharp edges

A stalwart unto herself, her love, clumsy and didactic

Hers was a hug-less love that forced me to eat my tomatoes

I felt she had no right to my home yet she tried to rule it

With a fist more firm than my mother's

She wasn't a step-mother, that young, invited guest of ours

She was one of the first to stoke the waking embers of my future fury

She spoke falsehoods over my fledgling spirit

Yet somehow I understood she herself had been quenched years ago

But they named the water-buckets "love" and "wisdom"

So I forgave her, and 14 years later, I wonder where she is

She-devil

Throw her out into the streets

Until her bruised knees and elbows

Serve as targets for your stones

4.28.16

The white stag

His eyes tumble greedily from her lips to her ankles

Pointedly overlooking her eyes and feet

Her eyes that would peer into his darkness

And make him feel like a man

Her feet that would carry her to his side, the warmth of her

Body and heat of her gaze rendering him helpless

Her pale skin, smooth, freckled

Returns her to the mind, she, the commodity

She will refuse to be paraded down the widewalk

As he says, "Look! I got one!"

No, you didn't

4.28.16

Scapegoat

I want to sink my teeth into

For every cheek familiar with the back of a hand

For each ripped strand of cardiac muscle

I will carve the names of their tears in your flesh

I will draw blinding drops from your tear ducts

For every glance under which she shifted in discomfort

I will tattoo her limp body on your eyelids

So that her suffering is your lullaby

I will grind your teeth into powder

So you know what it's like to be reduced to mouth and tongue

I will adhere your hands to the stovetop

Where you brewed your poisons for her mind

And at the end of it all I will not apologize

For I am insanity incarnate and I will sacrifice you

Om the altar of every smile stolen from a little girl

Who just wanted to have wings and wear a crown of leaves

4.28.16

Nicotine

I consume poetry like cigarettes

Rolling the pages and inhaling the words deep into my lungs

The ink staining my fingers and teeth and the balloon

Of my breaths, smoky dioxide exhales, full of conversations

That I never had but wanted to

I hold the phrases, warm, between my lips

So I can use my hands to tell stories and paint murals

With each draw a new rib cracks and my nerves calm

4.29.16

Air pollution

Peer between my breasts and through my sternum

And you will not find a heart but a furnace

A massive, ominous, belching furnace with an aortic valve

Made of sturdy iron, atrium walls of char and black

It's a storehouse of un-meltable, plastic spines

Strewn in yellowish, mangled globs across the bottom of the bowl

Non-committal destruction, polluting the oxygen that it breathes

The fire, that is, hungry and full of mischief

5.10.16

Drown on, my love

Her hand links with that of the storm

For the great drowning begins with one swallow

Only nimble fingers can reach down her fragile throat

And wrench the former firmness of her depths

Yet on she trains and teaches "how to slay me"

As if murder needed to be taught of one so weak

Her voice is eaten by the gluttonous whirlwind

And the grins of greedy men prevail upon her flesh

She is soft, every inch of her drips with the sensual

Beauty possessed by nocturnal predators

Her love is a sticky mire of her own creation

For the stars within her a silenced by her filth

So that none may ask to hear her silver song

Pliable clay path bears timid foot-marks leaving

A trail and guide and hiding flight

To stranger lands and emptier loves

Drown on, my love, and sing no more