4.8.17

So with a sigh and a soft nudge
the Mariana trench, spreading
wide, wild, and empty from
collarbone to wide breathing ribs
was stitched together.

Breathing became solid and full
with each lilt of his lips against
her skin. He turned, faced her
straight, pulled her from the squall.

The Siren of Mariana shall sink
no more ships to fill her Pacific heart.
Her tears floating her instead toward heat.

His heat sewn among her scales,
soothing cactus blooms of their love—

the color of a dusty desert dusk.

Via *

ceramic skin

You had a penchant for breaking plates
when things got tough, you said.

Now remember staring across at me, through
the hope of candlelight, cradling promises
across to me on your lips.
You look like porcelain. milky skin;
soft. white. clean.

Now remember laying in my bed,
never quite believing I was real, you said.
Your tongue marbleized, crystallizing
around mine, melding me to you in
the most beautifully cruel way.

Now remember when your digital
secrets found me, even as my love
grew. Sharper than actions are words.
Sharper than the needs shaped like you
lodged into my ceramic skin.

Even then you were graduating to breaking porcelain dolls;
your specialty changing from plates to people.

via *

Edge I

I bit my lips wide open; ruined them.
I know what it was to leave you in your bed.
To feel you against my skin for the last
time as I sat against your sink and
smelled you in my hair. (No, No, No)
Empty rose petals were swallowed
by screwdrivers made of bone.

I sucked and sucked for more
flavor from the petals, tucked the single
flower up against my windshield,
then watched as the wind gently
carted it away. Without ceremony,
the smell of tea leaves still in the air.

You felt yourself here, in the alcove at
the back of the house, where I watched
your shoulders (God, I love your shoulders) leave.
We are nostalgic messes, fumbling to
connect. And here I come apart.

Please miss my fingernails.
Please miss my rose-scented lips.
Please miss the night(s) you saw it all.

via *

daisy's last poem

It was with eloquent larceny that he
gained my eloquent heart.
He snuck inside with pernicious claws,
easily removing my brain and beating organs,
replacing it with liquid nitrogen and venom.

That first kiss felt like riding through
a carwash, locked inside
a phantasmagoric dishwasher of colors.
But all of my paint chipped clean away,
leading to a final kiss of lead and decay.

via *

What They Were to Me

A night of milkshakes and split latex.

A wasted wedding in all senses,

A tired and slipping drive home,

The smell of cigarettes buried in my hair

follicles, broken air conditioners.

Unanswered messages and easy

Conversations gone silent after

Confessions of President’s Day.

One night in summer snow watching

Deer skirt past the truck.

Casual coffee. Nothing serious.

Awkward movie nights with

Christ on the walls watching.

Wiffle balls and baseball bats.

Midnight walks in small towns.

Lost socks, broken shoes, laundry.

Broken ribs and suffocation. Suffocation.

A jacket shoved in the back of a closet.
A pot of flames burning memories
one by one, realizing how small he made me.

Moving forward. Drinks in bars.
Memories of two years of different men.
Different hair, different skin.
In my bed, my skin. And in the end-
I am better for it, even alone.

via *

rock candy

He was so beautiful, that long haired boy.
Smelling like weed and guitar strings
And fogged up car windows in January.

Hot summer sidewalks. Blown out matches.
Skinned knees. Ice cream cones. Sticky rock candy
Now transformed to whiskey and cocaine.

The cobwebs now pull his mouth down,
Sand has settled in his cheekbones, speckled
His face with pretty lies and bad boy charm.

Everything burns him like guitar strings
Snapping against calloused fingers, iron
lowered into the flames of premature age.

Cigarette smoke and ashes curl and veer
Through his dripping hair and down my back,
Sparking on my spine, ripping me up.

He ripped me open on a night of velvet and
Fractured glass. He rips himself open every night
With needles and bass lines.

via *

constructing the interstate

the body was made of pure cement.
each rib glued together.
thumb tacks lining the mortar between each nerve.
the hair was the hardest to pin down.
it was wild, covering the
body's face and obscuring the leakage
pouring from the blank spaces
where manhole covers were still needed.
holes for men to climb down into
the sewage lined heart,
the shit infested wasteland constantly
dumped on by countless men before.
the hair was the problem.
it made the body seem alive.
the hair must burn.
the body must be broken down
again. jackhammered.
traffic backed up.
the body reopened with each passing semi,
questioned if there was a reason
for this destruction at all.

the first attempt

Her name was Mary, but she was no virgin.
Her insides were made up of blackberry dust and
needles, memories of the day the ferris wheel froze.
It stood in the middle of the fair and made shadowed
cliffs across the snowy hills.

The voice behind her licked at the space
behind her knees, blew her kisses as the edges
called her closer and begged for a release.
"You'll die if you keep this up, little girl,
you'll die if you don't kill yourself first."

via *

battle scars

I dressed like Seattle that day, my hair liquefying into the Puget Sound.

I wanted to be my own home, built inside my own bones.

But inside his strong arms our lavender bodies fell together,

Struggling humans opposed to these falsely perfect people riddled with expectation.

He moved me, begged me to punch him in the ribs,

Find his heart- he craved determination and diligence.

Only screaming and breathing and breaking emotion down

Will let my skin know war, the last sentence he speaks in the dark

The last bullet hole of a bleeding turquoise sentence.

How do you know the distinction between lover of sex and sex addict when

Having the lights off makes it all so much more forbidden and foggy?

Send me right to hell. Send me swiftly right on down.

via *

scorpion venom

It was easy for ninety people
to drink eighty bottles of wine.

It's hard to paint
the tumors hot pink,
to let all of the venom in the world
eat up your blood and sting your
stomach lining.

It was so hard to feel my breath
and my bones turn to ashes
while I tried to look happy
to still be here.

In the violet hour before
it all begins again, I can hear
the other side calling so softly.
Like moths burning on a light bulb.

I'm so close- closing my eyes
is so goddamned easy.

But then they all come through
the door and I snap back to myself.
The weapons won't be laid down today.
Dying is much too easy.

Let's make Hell wish it could have me.

via *

peaches and planes

Her hands were always so soft, like
peach fuzz warm from the afternoon sun
in springtime.

The twenty rings spread across her ten
slender fingers tap dance along the pages
of the book she holds.

The planes are all meant to crash, she says
as she lets her brain march through the sands
of Mexico.

Here coke and lime is warm next to her,
condensation spreading as she questions why
life does little more than hurt.

via *

home and abroad

I packed only the essentials,
laid them all out in front of me.
My tiny stuffed kitty, three nickels,
assorted lego pieces for protection,
fruit snacks shaped like sharks and monsters.
My small gummy worm fingers dropped
them into my baby blanket, yellow softness
and drenched in my smell.

I dashed to my dorm and threw

essentials into a plastic bag. 

Underwear, shirts, phone charger, baby blankets

still steeped in my smell, the tiny kitty too.

I had bruises etched into my collar bone

and was still bleeding between my thighs.

He'd had me for three months and no one knew.

The bundle was light and easy to

tie up on the broken stick I'd 

found in the yard. I was 

a 1930s runaway, ready to jump

into a boxcar and head to California.

I'd run to my aunt, the woman with

the same lips as me, the same

little rosebud smile and auroral eyes.

No one knew how his hand covered

my rosebud lips and stole the

glow from my eyes. No one

could see the Dahlia grin bleeding

its way to the surface of my cheeks

every time he touched me. 

It was time to run.

I slung the stick across my shoulder

and marched to the end of my driveway,

the orange September glow blazing.

Suddenly she called my name.

She started to smile as she walked to me 

but saw my determined brow and faltered.

Oh Emma, I'd never let you leave home, baby.

You'll always have my arms to hold.

I drove into the November chill and

called the woman whose arms 

were always there even

when I pushed away the most.

Three hours and I'm home, mom,

I'll need a hug when I arrive.

Oh Emma, I don't want you home.

I know what you've been doing and

you're not welcome here.

We sat in the family room and ate 

cherries until our fingers smiled red.

She unpacked my bag and

wrapped me in my baby blankets.

He was sitting in the dorm room

when the key jammed its way in the lock.

He sliced my bag from my hands.

He ripped my baby blankets. 

via *

infidelic

It's dark when he goes to work,
darker still as he idles in his truck
outside of his own house, sure
he's scrubbed the smell of her sweat
out from under his nail beds.

The house sits dejected like his wife
on the edge of the bathtub,
the bottle of laxatives empty on the
counter, every inch of her
intestines scraped clean.

She can hear the truck in the garage.
The business trip was longer than usual,
longer time out from under his prying eyes.
His nose was once so perfect
and now it turns up at her, shoves her.

He's still in his truck, craving
alcohol he's never even had.
He craves the son he never had.
She was always so thin,
those birthing hips no use to him.

The truck engine cuts at last and
the shaking house is silent.
The words on the post card meant
for her husband are loud as ever,
a pretty script unlike his wife's.

She stands, stares at her broken
frame in the mirror and sees that
despite all efforts, the fat on her
stomach will not dissolve.
For two months that fat has grown.

The hallway is tighter than usual
as his form bombards towards the bathroom.
He pounds until his wife appears,
hands him the crumpled card from
the woman he hides in Colorado.

She tosses more words over her shoulder.
I'm pregnant.

via *

mother

Keep the boys away, Emma Jane,
you must know what you do to them.
My mother's fears of boys
eating up my smiles,
feeling my calve muscles
curve under their touch as
they ease my legs apart,
are borne from her self-loathing.
She's told me I'm unwanted.
She's told me I saved her
from becoming Sylvia Plath.
And yet I mortify her,
I keep her tossing all night long.

She hates knowing they've touched me.
She hates knowing I liked it.
She remembers me in my tiny
underwear, sticky little thighs
glued to the couch with
popsicle juice and messy toddler fingers.
She watched Jurassic Park with me
every day as I helped myself
to sliced hot dogs and macaroni
and she helped herself to slices
of Sam Neill. Imagined him
lowering his aviators and freeing
her from my tyrannosaurus father.
Imagined his dew-drop blue eyes feasting
on her flesh as I ceased
to exist in reality, a virtual
dream like the dinosaurs on the screen.

But I never went away.
My hair grew long like she
liked it and I chopped it off.
She stopped buying my underwear
as they lost their cotton to
make room for the lace. She saw
her doll leaving her, no longer
begging for Jurassic Park. No
more Sam to feed her insecurities
and fantasies, just the rumble
of water in a glass as my father
boomed home at night. Until.
A snowy day. A quiet theater,
solace amid a manic film festival.
She felt her hips fill the seat, cursed
herself for eating for the first time in days.
She touched her hair, cursed the frizz
that never tamed like her daughter's did.
She brushed her nose as she stood,
for fuck's sake why is it so big?!
And then he was there. Just behind my aunt,
dew-drops gleaming, smile wide as ever.
My mother's face flushed,
her thighs ached as they clenched
where she stood. He passed. Continued walking.

My aunt chuckled, swore he was looking at her.
My mother, breathless, swears it was at her.
But her hair is hideous, after all. Her nose enormous.
And those goddamn hips must take up
the entire theater. How could she
let herself out in public, she thinks.
How could she have imagined
his hands on her worthless breasts?
That night she comes home and
throws my training bras away.
She watches my growing hourglass dance
and knows that boys will fuck me.
The Xanax is extra sweet that night.

via *

easy girl

It gets easier not to pick at your nails,

the incessant pluck flick pluck. 

It gets easier to shut your eyes at night

without checking for bodies in your closet.

It gets easier to listen to those songs

again, the songs imbedded with evil.

It gets easier making friends who 

understand writing and withhold judgment. 

It gets easier to ease words out

of your brain the more you write.

It gets easier to admit the word rape

even with the acid it leaves in your mouth.

via *

8.8.14

The shades were drawn and yet we held onto
the light that seemed to clamber through the dark
veils we had closed so suddenly. And yet
we stood, faces reaching for drops of sun.

via *

rock candy

The cobwebs are pulling his mouth down,
sand has settled in his cheekbones, speckled
his face, a fractured mirror surrounded by

the memory of youth. Hot summer sidewalks.
Skinned knees. Ice cream cones. Sticky rock candy
now transformed to whiskey and cocaine.

Everything burns him like guitar strings
snapping against calloused fingers, iron
lowered into the flames of premature age.

Pretty lies dusting his murky charisma,
cigarette smoke and ashes curl and veer
through his dripping hair and down my back,

sparking on my spine, ripping me up.
Everything is numb and everything kills
him, but nothing can put him in the soil

faster than the bass line tearing him apart,
screaming his name until the world is dead,
torn open by the drugs that kill him.

via *

red cars

The strings are cut, my nails are trimmed
and every day my hair grows inch by inch.

The red balloons drifted through the
April clouds, pulsed with the atmosphere

and popped before an unfamiliar God could
push them back down to Earth, to my arms.

Each fire engine siren grabs my still protruding belly,
screams into my ears like I screamed

on the bathroom floor as the tile
bloomed scarlet beneath me. I run.

To feed the demons, to shush them and
to obliterate the remaining fat that

grew with the early springtime bud.
One more mile. One more sprint.

One more inch to pull myself through
until my heart stops breaking.

via *

melissa

With grace and with teardrops she sighs,
makes a move for the crushed velvet dress
sitting in a pile at the foot of the bed.
His cigarette smoke behind her curls
around his face like a villain's mustache
from her father's old cartoons.
He was never a man she saw herself with
and yet moments before she let herself
moan in his arms, let his sweat hover
above her and glue their chests together.

via *

still I rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
- Maya Angelou

I was writing a paper about her when I heard the news. Rest, dear heart.

Via *