go ahead

stare,
my skin
is thick enough to take it,
even thicker
in the places you're
viewing with that look
of indecision, trying to
figure out whether to
find meaning in my
skin's incoherence,
the bisection and incision,
the permanent things
we do that stay with us,
no matter how we try
to shake it off

so teach me

it would be, perhaps,
indelicate of me
to ask
if you want to fuck

but the curiosity's
eating in.

every time we meet,
a different reflection
glints from your corners.
i have seen the proper
classroom mask, the
wet&freezing ocean you,
sweating, breath in my ear hiking,
casually revealing you,
the
fireandnight side,
crashing beside me wildly through plants, and
brandishing an ear
of corn like a saber against
the darkness where our flashlights
do not penetrate.
it is
you, every time, whose
long fingers tap out
deliberately inconsequential invitations -
what next, where
to?
i
know what i find in you;
but
your kaleidoscope faces
do not give me the reasons
you show me
your patterns.

in which i realize

i find my priorities have changed.
i don't
want things to remain the same.
& i find you
in this time warp,
trying to squeeze into the mold
we both said we'd never fit in,
i watch you
& wonder where i would be,
had i not stuck
through the dull inanities of the south,
held my ground until my sense of self had
gelled
into what i want to be.
now i watch you and assume the area's
ironic smile, when i realize
that i assume about what you do, only
because i am right about you.
i miss
the easy rolling intimacy of
our earlier years, but know
the past can't be repeated.
i am trying to forge something new, the
push & pull of new scars stretching
into a place we may carve for ourselves,
that is,
if you are willing
to make me any room at all.

spontaneously

i'm obsessed with dancing in the kitchen,
i mean
i realize
it's not your average discerning factor
as to whether the one we fuck
is the one we love,
but still i'm
telling you, take my arms
and
fold them around you and step on
my toes
and off we go around
the kitchen in circles, my head whirling
from too much on-the-house
vodka.
kiss my shoulders i
don't care what music is playing, just

make me laugh
and let me
get dizzy on you

interpret

yesterday i stepped out
of myself for a few minutes, peering
curiously into
the life i'm leading, looking
for signs, or an explanation

floating over the encircling
arms of the one who shares my bed,
i said
something is all wrong
with this picture, i don't
know what it was; maybe
i was too high

but it all gets mixed up
into hoping
that when this is over we'll love
each other as much
as when we were
fucking

the pulling moon

i want to know
where it comes from:
our moisture that wicks into
our underwear, does it
spring forth
as a cave
bears its water on
its walls?
or
are we wet from
the womb's ceaseless sea,
the shifting tides?

today my thighs are still
damp from clenching you, last night,
into me

and i rub my own spunk between
my fingers, salty like the
ocean.
we are all
only
the legacy we leave behind,
if we
leave anything at all

like waves
who vomit shell, fish, and other
debris onto shores washed
by other waves,
who take
what has been given
and leave more in its stead.

"service with a smile"

how quickly
i remembered the dance
the pop-top, palm cash
into hand,
click-click ca-ching,
thank you, here's your change.
seven twenty-five.
whirling
a flimsy straw into the vortex
of someone's nightcap,
or their addiction,
the cigarettes and worn flannel
creep slowly
into my skin.
i cover my awkward,
cuckoo presence: drip
my accent out
in doses, the way it
springs through when i speak
to my family through the phone,
laugh louder at the jokes
from the chauvinists
as if
i, too, grew up in this
particular cultural poverty. here,
my teeth alone mark me as foreigner.
now, i'll practice again the art
of submerging all of me
that does not belong, and waiting
until i reach my car to gasp
for fresh air.

infection

i'm gasping
for breath and you moan alongside
me, push your sleeping head into
my neck like a cat
rubs the one
who feeds it. i don't know
how i caught your fickle feline fancy exactly
but i'd lay odds you're also
drawn by what you can't have.
miaow.
i'll pet you anyway, in my stilted
sort of manner.
if my pores
would just open and breathe
for me i'd join you
on that pillow and stop
rasping through my half-
closed throat but
every method tried
thus-far's a failure, and i have to admit
there's a certain satisfaction
to watching you sleep. there's magic,
somehow, in the still hours. the night
even sleeps, the dead leaves
catching catnaps on their branches
before tomorrow plummets them
to the pavement.
and over
and over i ask myself: what
keeps me? why
am i staying?

soaking

i'll watch as you slowly drift
closer to me
almost touching.
our arms wave in the current
of the water and hang limp,
and well-heated.
your voice
has taken on that confiding tone
i know so well in you,
and i'm warming a bit -

but my trust still oozes slowly
toward you, cringing away
as if expecting a blow.

nudity

sometimes i read
what i have written
years ago,
and it's like a ghost
shouting
from long ago
screaming,
~ please
do not leave me behind ~

it all gets mixed up

i want to say it, but
there's no ears to pick it up.
dear
anonymous: i wish
you were here.
i've been
thinking of writing letters to myself,
scribbles
of indecision
i etch into my memory.
mind-masturbation, a voice
answering my half-assed questions.

i'm too emotional about this,
i keep
thinking i should approach it rationally
but i'm not rational
i'm right out of my head, heart and convictions
while thinking i could just as soon
use the time alone
to talk myself out of what i'm feeling.
it's not real
it's not real
it can't be.
too much to be really happening.

my mind is tired of the racing and
it's no surprise to me,
really,
how much i've been drinking.

either way

i think i need to be left alone
in my private hole
to mull it all over.
i need
to let my private life back in.
i've lost a few parts
of myself on the trail from here
from the life i used to lead,
i missed a turn
somewhere, to end up where i am.
today
i wish i could be completely alone,
no human contact until i've figured out
how human i really am,
i want things
so impossible at this point i'm starting
to give up.
outside it's attempting
to rain, a few drops at a time.
i'm huddling above this book and my
bedcovers and i want to lock the door
i don't have,
to keep myself
inside long enough to figure this out.

burn it onto your retina

remember her face.
remember
rain falling so hard you shoved the window up
and let the water puddle on the
windowsill and the floor, holding
her in your arms.
remember.
or don't.
forgetting comes easy with anguish
make it a blank, black wall that
will not collapse no matter
how hard you'll pound on it later,
wanting back those years of your life.
forget.
remember
she wasn't everything you made her
out to be, a small dark
chaotic whirlwind swirling
around the memories
of who she was. of who you were.

the coffee table hits right on the shins

my house is still unfamiliar enough
that i sometimes miss the last
step
going
down the
stairs,
landing
on the carpet all arms and knees,
just enough impact to get an
"oof"

but it reminds me
of how impermanent i have been
flicking around
waiting to take root somewhere.

i think i'm trying to root here, but
it's
off-putting, the newness of
it all, the jarring realization

that this is nowhere near home
nowhere near.
surroundings i know in the dark
are far from me now.

in this house i stumble
in every room, waiting
to learn it.
waiting
to be sure i won't be leaving
too soon for the knowledge
to matter.

it's novel

tonight my only friend
has 645 pages
a hefty hard cover,
and no way
to wipe off the tears i try
to will away.
i'm sure
my face is steely, but the
impassiveness doesn't matter
to my eyes, which follow,
stubbornly, their own course.

my own victory is to go outside
alone
and experience this silently,
staring at the stars and waiting
for the moon to be full enough
for my howl to seem merely
theatrical.

waiting for the world to
turn around again.

puzzle

yelling screaming
mulling
it over in my head
and now
your inability to name this
has become
my inability not to. this is not the person
i want to be.
leaning
into myself, hugging the bar until
i feel capable of walking away
without my head scrunched against
my shoulders.
i'm not dealing lately.

my hands twitch with aching desire.
instead, when i walk home
and crawl into your (my?) bed,
i'll try to dream,
and wonder
how i fit into this scene.
how i'll understand what i'm
supposed to do
with the pieces of you
you'll give me to fit together.

poetry

i'm trying to
submerge myself
in words, hoping
to drown in this art
until my words
detach and float

to the surface.
the stack
of poetry beside my bed is at least
shin-high, filled
with the words i'll pull
out of their context and rearrange
into my own patterns

until i can stack them against
the chaos outside.
sometimes
when i am alone,
i start to believe
the only reason i write
is the fault of quantum
mechanics.
i see
the page blank, and must
replace all those possibilities
with anything definable
to keep away the swirling

could-bes of what-ifs and try-mes and
what-the-fuck-is-this and what-
does-it-all-really-mean

who do you let in?

it's not you,
precisely, that i'm attempting
to drink from my mind.
it's the
implication of you.

our bodies fit neatly,
face to collarbone, hands curled around
our fingers, legs crooked
into the spaces
behind our knees.
it's the hand on mine subtly, in stores, your touch on
my side - the signs of a connection, but also
the hesitation you have
regarding me.
the nothing
[something] we are[n't].

the implications of this. i'm
getting mixed up
about [in] you.
and so i’m drinking liquor mixed
to get it down faster,
and
strawing it like oxygen
until my vision starts to sparkle.

sleepless

i remember this feeling
trying to sleep
in a sticky bed
gasping
at the heat between us.

our sheets ended up soaked
by our slumber. years later, i can
conjure up that smell:
unwashed girls,
tangy
and bittersweet.

i don't invest so much, anymore. if the
covers go clammy, i kick them away.
i'm thinking downstairs in the den
that love is only the illusion you make
for yourself,
to give hope something to lean on
as a crutch.

i notice you're a bit quick
to tell me
you love me now,
and now i'm quick
to shut up.
the kind of love i build bonfires for
is love that's not returned,
and i know it.

sometimes, we define ourselves
by who decides to leave us,
so now i’m busy learning to leave others, hoping
if i learn well enough,
i'll understand
why the ones who leave us
don't look back when they're out the door.

the edge of love or hate

i see all we wrote about
"LOVE"
the concept the raw
hamburger anger of it

crying until
you choked, and then,
the inability to
no matter how much you wanted it

the mess it made[makes]
of you and me
and i'm wondering why
we ever called it love at all

but then, a masochist loves her razorblade
we love the things that hurt the most
we love the most the hurt we inflict on ourselves

you are the poem i do not write

i eviscerate what you write
in hopes
of discerning slightly more about you.
we speak in glimpses and our
desolate silences.
we both know why
the other is sad, [or used to].
it's poisonous lately,
our unspoken understandings,
the whispers between the words we do not say.
i want to knock on your skull
to know [really know]
what [if] you are thinking,
if your mind
is as blank as your eyes
have become.
i see you everywhere
on the streets, a flash of blonde
becoming your face, your eyes, until
the spell breaks
and i see a
stranger.
never mind.
put it out of sight.
drink it down.
i'll remember things that mean
nothing to you anymore, or
let them fade into the obscurity
of my mind.
either way.
fight it down.
i keep rationalizing
with myself but it never
seems to change my mind.
i flip through our shared history
in your words, wanting to
remember.
or forget.
or change my mind.

parenthetically

i like the way you [i] (we) smell
tangled up in me [you] (ourselves)
hanging on with sticky fingers,
the pads of your [my] (our) fingertips
stuck together, intertwined.
this smells clear, like your
[my] (our) clean sweat and
your [my] (our) mouths(s) all over
me [you] (we) smell like me [you]
(each other)

i'm failing to qualify it
musk is too strong
sweat's too sweaty and we
don't reek of sex
it's not like that
it's the scent
of a pillow after someone has slept
and you pick it up
and it smells like someone
has loved this place, these
crumpled sheets, my [your]
(our) twisted body(ies)
your [my] (our) arms
akimbo
and sprawling

for good measure

i do not believe for a second
that you
do not fuck me [love me]
like you want to
worship my body, take me into you,
just a bit.
a little.
when you pull me
into your neck, bury in,
all i'm
thinking is,
i don't care what you (i) [we] say.
this is more than temporary.
this is more than fucking.

routine

i have the feeling
my body won't stop
shaking until i get a grasp
on where we're all going,
where it,
why it goes,
revolves into this roiling
festering mess we're in.
men
who use women for their simple visual
and women who wipe tears in the
back rooms
and pretend to live like
the party they appear to be,
watching
as men come in the door -
broke, broke, mark.
broke, broke, sucker.
chalk it on their foreheads,
reach into their wallets,
and don't
take your fist out
until you come up with something.
don't give up while there's still a wallet
in the building.
men who have exhausted
the world's resources so heavily
they now rely
on buying feminine time.
men
who want to confess their sad, pathetic
regrets and lives and jobs,
spew them into
my half-naked lap and i'm smiling,
nodding my head and thinking
i taste bile
in my throat.
talk all you want, just reach
into your wallet, pay me for it.
you realize, you
are nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
NOTHING more
than the denomination you place
into my upturned palm.

appeasement

today
i use my body
as a weapon, poised to strike
unless
appeased by money,
placate
the goddess with your bills,
i'll be nice enough -
if you pay me.
i'll show you the least important
part of me,
if you pay enough.
i'll smile
and i'll hide my truth behind my eyes.
fucking give me all you have,
because outside of
this tin world,
i would cheerfully kill you,
as soon as you'd give me the chance
to get close enough.

nervous in the drizzle

it's raining, really raining
(as far as oregon goes, anyway)
and i'm thinking even
my tears aren't falling as hard,
for once.
hard enough to
wash my goddamn windshield,
take the bug splatters into
the beyond.
my eyes
are so blurry the rain's
not even impacting, and
i think if i see that strip club
one more time this week i'll explode.
the same highway into the same
smoky hole where people think
they can buy my body
with the money they hold.
can they touch me, fuck me,
offer the pretty girl
a life vest, give me anything,
is it
better than nothing?
tell me,
is prostitution worth your time?
is your fingers brushing my twat
worth the forty dollars you throw at me
as if i'm a whore on the street?

you know, for all i use it
my education was a $20,000 WASTE

i'm telling you
it takes more, these days
than a drive to succeed,
it takes selling
your soul or your body or your skills,
who cares which?
whether it's shit wages or no insurance
or no money for food
or a stranger running
his fingers over your crotch

nothing is worth this,
nothing can give me back the respect i had for myself,
back when my body wasn't someone's commodity
and i don't
just mean naked,
i mean AT ALL,
like i'm nothing without
a job without a neat fucking category
to stick me in.

at this point i'm
welcoming the crying rain.
i'm wanting the skies to weep
even remotely
as hard as i do
i'm waving all my talent above my head
and thinking it'll be a fucking miracle
if anyone cares at all.
if anything
i could possibly do as a "profession"
can make up for this prostitution
of humanity,
as if some simple phrase
or job title
can give me back times
when i wasn't judged
by how much wealth i could amass
for my employers.

swimming backwards through it

i'm too high
to still be awake, but
my brain's flying around
my bedroom light, making
scorching sounds.

so late it's early
and i'm learning
ways to keep myself awake
while trying to fall asleep.

nights like this
it's almost painful to have
someone sleep beside you.
they twitch and toss
and gape their mouths
and you go on doing
what you do, wishing
you could look that peaceful
on a pillow.

dear book...

i hate to admit it....

but i'm scared of you. the amount of effort i'll make
to satisfy these blank, ravenous pages.

i'm feeling transitory lately. hope
the feeling is fleeting - writing in
eraseable thoughts, i think, is
a sign of my changeable mind.
it's not that i want to disappear,
but i'd like to make sure
i'm capable of change.
never static, always bending
(just a little)
[don't stop
evolving into yourself]

in[valid]

today i feel impermanent
and mostly see-through
camped on the couch
or the bed i do not own,
clutching my mug of tea
and a blanket
i do own, i keep thinking how
i pay my rent just like you, but
this still feels like your place i'm
intruding upon

and i scald my tongue on my tea
and think about eating food i don't
have the appetite for,
curled under my covers
like an [in]valid
in[valid], not
sick enough to count,
not well enough to
shrug off
your oblivious insensitivity

it's days like this
where i want my body to be
less substantial
to match the way i feel -
a little translucent,
turned sideways so you can't quite catch
a good glimpse
of me

the same old refrain en français

je t'aime
halfway between
lie and truth, between
what i say i want, and the
reality
of the situation.
un peu...
beaucoup...
passionnement...
pas du tout.

pas du tout.

it's true

distance will
distill
you, from your parents, old
friends, things you were
supposed to do,
thousands of miles can
change you.

do not presume what you find
is the only " you" you can be. or that this new product
is "you" at all, don't think
you're not trying on new faces, this far
from home. it's so much easier
to hide behind your masks
when no one can distinguish them
from reality.

book now firmly planted
in my bag again,
i pull it out now
when my fingers get itchy.
i am slowly walking back
to myself.
my brain has
turned back on,
retrieved my desires.
at night, i wonder about
unused words, lines
that need to insert themselves,
details not yet plugged into a page.
sometimes, i am afraid
of the sudden outpour,
the reveal of the underbelly,
naked pink secrets.
remember
when i displayed my secrets
in blood on my arms,
wrote them in capital letters
on the page?
these days it's safer
to play my cards close to the vest.
they are plastered to my chest.
i do not assume,
anymore, that those
who read my words
will let them remain
in hiding.
small matters.

those words i let escape
into light,
i pin,
wriggling,
against the black backdrop
of internet
anonymity.

burn out

i've decided not
to go to sleep until
my jaw stops clenching,
an exercise to see
if i can wake up
without aching.
you look so calm when you sleep,
legs slanted toward me,
reclining into your pillow
as if in the throne
of sleep.
looks like a lovely place;
wish i was there.

it's hard to hold
someone already sleeping,
set into
their unconscious patterns,
limbs leadened
into slumber.
i try, but always,
in spite of the warmth of you,
feel
like an impostor.
maybe tomorrow night, we will fall
together, all tangledup
in one another,
and i won't feel like a voyeur,
when i'm lying
next to you.

weakness

i imagine it to be pink-red raw
like rug burn on your knees
where all the skin is scraped away
and the flesh left swells, as if
compensating.
that kind of tender. that
way of laying a large, gaping
hole like that down,
one i've kept a festering lid on
tight for these eight years now
and now i'm open, waiting by
my wound
for you to come by, cover it,
help me heal
i don't know
what i expect from you.
i only know what i fear.
i fear
opening this, at all.
but these days,
i fear more
the blinding wall i built
around myself so tightly
that nothing
could get through.
not anger, guilt, or the agony
she put me through
nothing
could have broken that shield
down.
not even you.

when you leave

you won't be knifing me
with it
too self-possessed, and
kind. you'd be the type
to cry more
than i would. i save
the bawling, for later
when i think no one
can hear.
no, you have no knife in this scene,
the owner of the blade is me -
turning it over and over
in my fingers, walking along
its razor-sharp edge
with my mind, trying
to spot its flaw.
sometimes
i watch you while
i fumble around my
sharp metal,
collecting
"paper"cuts.
i'm planning
and preparing. i'm not a fool,
this one's easy
to spot coming.
you'll fade away,
and, alone,
i'll peruse my body
for the best place
to stick that blade.

havoc

she sits straight up in bed,
never got to lying, back stiff
and aching.
her stomach twists,
and wrenches
quarter-sized pieces of flesh
from her insides.

soon she will need to walk downstairs, staggering
to the bathroom to crouch
over the toilet and watch
the slow hemorrhage of chunks,
staining the water ghastly pink,
a waterfall
of red stains
on the white porcelain sides.

it wasn't a baby now,
hadn't ever been, wasn't even
a concept
until the bleeding came,
in the middle
of the cycle, all wrong.

her lover watches her body eject
the foreign material,
something that never was, and
tries to argue:
must be side-effects from her new birth control,
anything
but the reality of the word miscarriage,
which must, by nature,
imply first
the fact of pregnancy.
the fact that his gentle, sinuous body
has wreaked violence upon hers.
he sleeps beside her rigid form, right hand
curled around her ankle.
the ache shifts, lowers.
she breathes slowly, and,
untangling his hand, steps one foot
toward the staircase.

contemplating it

i think i'll never
unravel your complexities
the way i think i've got you
all pinned down
and you take that moment
to shock me.
your text: "be ready
for me to come home."
you never waited for the bed.
who is this animal
underneath your usual
musical composition?
why don't you let it out
a little more?
i think of your brain
like a computer - a mass of wires
i'm scared to touch
for fear of malfunction
and there's so much complication
a million ways for things
to go wrong,
none of which
i have the skill
to fix,
the technical know-how
to troubleshoot.
i'm standing outside your locked door
knocking, not afraid
of hurting you,
anymore.
i am afraid of really, truly
feeling all this
when it is over,
and i don't
want to be there
when i fall.

the hanon book

i remember the repetition
the endless up-and-down
the plunked-out plodding scales
i hated them so
but what
i would not give now
to have that certainty
of fingers on keys
hands to rhythm to
keep the music coming.
the things we do not understand
always come back
to haunt us
with my ghost
of a skill,
and uncertain, shaking fingers
pressed to keys no longer familiar.

forever and crap

you crashed into me, gently
but with force enough to twist
my path,
head me in a different direction.
it wasn't intentional;
you wouldn't dream of interrupting,
just insinuating, gently
interjecting
a hand with an open palm,
an open interpretation,
an A or B or C choose one,
choose all of the above,
choose anything
but not choosing.
now i'm staring back the way i came,
the path paved with
my shame and rage, my tears
and impotent innocence all
combining into fear and disgust,
all the reasons i'd tried a new path
but here i am, deja vu
give it a second whirl.
until the fear is gone, disgust
optional.
open your eyes
really see it, stare
until you know what you were
supposed to be looking for.
then, try
your parallel road. give anything
a try,
but be prepared with the knowledge,
first
of who you are.
of where you are going.

meld

the ferocity with which i grasp
at you terrifies me,
as it must you.
i love you
i'm not IN love with you.
how much of this statement
is true, how much
a lie?
which one of us was lying,
who
is lying now?
sometimes as we sleep
i try to fit into you
as though i have always
been a part
of your body

moving in together

teeth tasting, tonguing
the sharp, bitter
pop, iridescent
effervescence winking
away as i chase,
open-mouthed, palate agape wide
to eat the shining
see-through soap.
our hands
are slimy with mr. bubble,
waving, reaching to hold
brief round moments
and pass them between
our fingers.
they cluster, compound,
disappear when we move
too quickly.
the late sun shines
through us.
"do you think we're still
children?" you say.
"yeah," i say
"i think we always will be."

transparent

like a vampire i rise
to meet myself in the glass
and stare
at the hollow void
i have become

thrift

like your old
clothing, lying hidden
in drawers, cardboard
boxes mouldering
in the attic,
like the
homemade things
you would have thrown out

i also
am discarded.

do this in remembrance of she *

sometimes
i scry my wrist like
an unwilling
oracle,
trace thin
white lines
from origin

to completion.
scarred flesh pillowy-soft at
surface, rope-like, raised
and rigid
underneath.
my fingertips
read lines like Braille,

this
from when i called hysterical,
cried, begged you
stay
on the line, i’m
scared, so scared,
so
can’t get the bleeding
to
stop.

this
from the year my watch strapped
permanently
over blown veins,
collapsed, bearing no blood,
vessels
mangled
through a fine science.


lines
i ignore out
of habit, almost
forget, until they
glint silver in
sunshine, draw attention
to my arms.

sometimes
i catch myself
in class, staring
at my skin,
touching, pulling
pleading memory
out of flesh,
begging
twisted tissue

for an
explanation.




*B.A. senior thesis poem

i actually wrote this in class, less than 10 days before my final thesis was due. i put it at the end; it seemed to sum up everything quite nicely.

butter *

smeared languidly
by
the middle finger on my
left hand, the
blood i wiped on my pants blotched
the thin, greying material, between
the spatters of paint.

you were oozing
between your shoulder blades, left of your spine
on the scapular
tattooed wing that webs
across you

i licked my finger
let the salt and tang dissolve into my tongue,
the way i want
to melt
into our lives, without interrupting
you, or me

effortlessly

as simple as freeing
you of droplets
that would have
stained your shirt.

i don’t mind shit
on my jeans.





*senior thesis poem

the view from kelly’s window *

nonfiction classmate
beating off under blanket:
oh god! close the blinds!





special thanks to two of my wonderful friends for inspiration for this haiku.



* also in my senior thesis. this particular poem is a true story - my friend lived next to one of my nonfiction classmates, and one day saw him doing the above activity in his living room - of course he denied it (said he was petting a cat - HA!), so naturally, i shamed him publicly.
also, he deserved it, for being the prick that my entire senior seminar class loathed, universally.

B. achelor of A. rts *

call it stuttering pen syndrome,
a thing learned
in classrooms.
i find
the transformation suspect:
i formerly wrote prolifically
in stark contrast to the
two or three
poems composed
in this last year.

my
exuberance

has been appraised,
honed,
[mnemonically
harmonically
composed]
something lacking
in the evisceration
what not to do
all the ways you’re
Doing
It
Wrong.

uncertain
and afraid
of tiny
missteps,
my work has transmuted from chaotic
foot
prints
of a mind
on a page

to the ironic sneer
of a one-finger salute
to an education in writing:

a blank page full of lines,
through which thick black marks
obliterate any coherent meaning.



* yes, of course i put this in my B.A. senior thesis. had to. how else are you to thumb your nose at teachers and peers?

to my [married] professor *

sure, you leave,

and you do not kiss me,
but before i go, woman

you will.
go ahead, shy away
from color on my lips,
i don’t need to make my
mark visible;
i know where i have been:

up on your classroom table, flat on my
back
you bending between
my thighs, worshiping some-
thing your catholicism has
refused

to explain.
silently closing(&locking)
the door, speaking in breathless
murmurs,
the thrill
of getting
away with it.
you play it cool
but i notice things:

your insistent gaze,
the fact that,
this time

you did not wash the scent of me
off your face.





*B.A. senior thesis poem

yes it's a (mostly) true story. no, it didn't happen at the college i graduated from. nevertheless, it horrified them a bit; so naturally, i read it for senior presentation day.

concrete details *

i.
in absence, lieu

of razorblades,
the fingernails, which peel away
from the curve
of forearm
led by fingers so stiff they clench
into claws
reveal angry, torn crescents
which, though white at first,

begin to weep
drip
onto the paper kept
to
make sure this isn’t
a dream.
this is my reality.


a day or two would see claret
turn
to brown stains.
they
smelled salty, slightly,
and reeked
of iron.

the aroma would last,
stick
around,
become synonymous
with the
living death
that consumed my life
for eight years

even when, cleansing my closet
of my past,

i find paper,
blood-soaked, puckered
and bearing the faint scent of
tears.



ii.

as my arms still bled,
running red, the
janitor, walking in
the door spots my tangled limbs
sprawling on the cold
brown tile floor
of the last stall,
knocks, twice, a
hesitant rap on the
hollow steel graffiti-scrawled door

takes one step, two, tries
the handle

i coerce my wooden
limbs, shift,
grab
for toilet paper, stuff in sleeve,
pull shirt over
my hand

sniff loudly, mimic the tears
i can’t cry

“you okay?” she asks, and
i say yeah,
fine
feel better now.





*B.A. senior thesis poem

trying not to let go

when i see you, it's not
the same you, i used-to-be-you,
where are you,
underneath the things you took
like manna from him,
and wrapped them around your
shoulders, a shawl of safety
the feel of a plan or a
float to hang onto, as you
try not to drown
in yourself?

add this to the collection of things i will never show you

i love you
i always have,
i never stopped
from the moment your fingertips
traced shapes on my spine
and shoulders i
wanted your touch,
unlike any other
you asked,
didn't think of taking,
or trying without
letting me bow my body
into you.
so small, that happiness, but
it meant the world to me

and then
a year
separating us, most of which
i spent
miserable, silent and sick
as you sat
feet from my trembling limbs,
locked into my hunched position
locked away from your mind.

but the universe can sometimes shift
in threehundredandsixtyfive days
can turn into us,
circling each other like
sniffing canines,
lying on your
[ex]marital bed, the
same frame
i used to lie in
surrounded on both sides,
but now
there is only you
inexplicable you who
made me want you, who
i tried so hard not to love,
in vain

so, give me, please
one of your goddamned cigarettes
the taste of which i
never dreamed i'd miss
on my tongue, miss enough
to start smoking my own -
send me your desires,
and missives over
email, although honestly
i prefer your letters that come
addressed by hand, your
blocky script
spelling my name out,
please
tell me
what you do with your days.