I was a punctured carton
spilling spoiled milk
Throwing stones that boomeranged
around to clip my heels
I object to the hard-nosed
upturned pews, the bridegroom
he does not trust me once a month
I am stuck pig bleeding unclean
unfit for consumption.
Hello my mother tongue
photosynthesis (it is
what it is) is unstoppable
yellow kitchens and nothing
good comes from Nazareth.
They pass by your
puffed inflated chest you are
bow-legged and
small eyed because of
sighs, delusions, or failures.
Not the
holes in your shoes you
refuse to repair, but
your hideous obsession
with television shows—
Each episode fantasy reenacts
your prince character’s lesson, your talking points
vacuous-timbered laughing at physics like
a stuffed head hung on a mantle defying.
The unloved, forest floor pine needles and
cat piss.
I shred the little dress with razor hips but
to know you is to nightly dream of
cutting off your hair.
I love the way your friends laugh when I stab
your week old birthday balloon ego.
They lick their slick Chiclet teeth
cracking laughs through their dish soap
slip and slide throats.
I see finger prints on my parent’s wedding photos but I don’t remember whose. They’ve shifted under so many hands, and I forgot why I’m always in places I don’t want to be. I know there’s a good reason, but it slides out of my mind and so far from my tongue. While my sister’s dyeing Easter eggs, she writes “Fuck” on one, and draws a cross on the other. They sit side by side in the egg carton, and I want a cigarette but my mom will want one too. Smoking with her means insults hurled at the man in whose image I’m made. Everything I never wanted is a television set stuck on a murder a minute, phrases that turn into jokes the more they become truth. “Let it ride, baby girl.” I heard it as clearly as if you were sitting next to me in the breakfast nook of a yellow kitchen where framed Dala horse needle points line the walls.
In the mosquito kettle hour I
wash you from my hair
red like
revolution’s per minute
nuclear protests.
One hundred and seventy-six dead
but I seeing only:
thirty, twenty-eight, thirty
pearled fingers counting
apple seed rosary beads.
“You’re so pretty,” he whispered delicately. His perfect pink lips were so close to my ear, I longed for them to meet, “Let me take you home tonight.”
He brushed a hair out of my face, sending goosebumps rippling throughout my body. I put my hand on his chest gently at first, but then I began to apply pressure as he howled in pain. I broke through his sternum and grabbed his still-beating heart to take a desperate, hungry bite. I laughed maniacally, swallowing chunks whole. I threw the rest on the ground and turned to flee. One woman in the bar began to slow-clap. Others joined. Soon all of the women were on their feet, applauding and cheering like a twisted jr. high pep rally. And you know what I did, right there in that bar after the full glory of my triumph? I slipped on a pile of blood. I blushed, muttered “excuse me” and ran to the bathroom humiliated. I guess some things never change!
.
Sugar is the dust and the sender and
Bethlehem Baptist university ate the sennet.
What is a few months of broken down doom,
catwalk and I have ant apples.
Believer that walks with you,
seer that signs and I am.
A man with a blurry face asked me to dance. He cooed in my ear with Neil Armstrong swagger “What are you thinking?” Implied: I am the first man on the moon. This is what I am thinking:The black mamba and his ten thousand scales. The pills, and the dandelion. The lovers who spit my teeth out and laugh. They laugh at my gap-toothed grin. They lick my body expecting honey, then recoil tasting everything but. My father’s beard, my mother’s wrists, and the way they will share a coffin even though they hate each other. The way Law and Order becomes company just like nothing becomes food and bad days become a way of life and tears become the flu. Or a cold. Or tired. Or busy. What the fuck does he know about the nights stacked on top of each other, 8,366 high. It’d be pretty easy to dig right through me, since he has no idea what he’s looking for. I’d spit dirt in his eye, but I’m worried I just might heal him.
APR Financing
In the green-glow reverse geode
paper winders
bind and tie
flash and fly.
Splight-legged, plier-thighed
my cracked glaze eyes
are dimes.
A red bow
for the dark days
a gold calf
is the right way.
An Arrangement
I am a vessel for soot
hemmed in hydrangea
her life blood on my lips
trickles down my hips.
My face, a bauble crowning cashmere
fine and china pink.
On dimpled cotton sheets I see-
your iron cast on every wall
the humming light is molten gold
across my candy floor.
An Apology
Liquid courage, incorrect misnomer
sounds too much like blood for fire water.
Six months hardly trying to read Homer
Giving up and failing as a daughter.
Lost medieval king beneath a car park?
lost irony embarrases, you think.
A little princess punch worse than her bite
he thinks my favourite colour is still pink.
Chamomile tea, a fifteenth birthday gift
I don’t know dick regarding the Crusades
White people’s history carved a steep rift
who didn’t hate their parents at my age?
Regardless of what either of us do,
You gave advice I wish I’d listened to.
