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.

the new apartment

mostly empty room,
just a mattress set
i've seen so often
i have it memorized,
and you and i.
not touching
at first, both nervous,
probably shy
remembering, together
happier times, interrupted by
the same woman who's now
interrupting you

but i had to touch you, run
fingers through your close-
cropped hair and let you know
i meant it when i said
i love you
a year ago

above

skimming clouds,
blotting spilled water
from my books and my jacket 0
the water's vivid on the leather
staining the color dark.
i don't want to be here, but then
again, i don't look forward to
my destination. and although
i'm damp, i see this as a sanctuary
cramped as my feet may be,
where i may watch the sun fire
the horizon.
and maybe last night,
i was too drunk to catch the joke, or
maybe it was on the inside
i'm no longer part of,
but i feel you're laughing
at me.
stuck, suspended between
two places i do not belong.

your knife waits

it's either
a sharp, bottom-of-pit
ache
or a nauseatingly
full slosh these days,
and though no one mentions
anything,
because of course you're aren't
really all that thin
[all things considered]
you know the signs. they
confront you
when you least expect it,
holding their truths
in the mirror
the way you judge everything
more harshly than anyone
you get sick more easily now,
the fact that the stairs make you
out of breath. your mind
is a cloudy haze. is this
the same affliction, or
something newer you've developed
from your nasty little habit
of refusing to eat?
who cares.
hold your insanity to yo
like a shield.
sink into the covers,
head aching, stomach
roiling,
the world revolving around you.

american health warning

we advise you not to ingest
the things we promised save
for ingestion, and oh
(please) remove that cigarette!
thank you for smoking! but
you'll have to huddle outside, under
the dripping eaves. that's too
poisonous for our indoor air.
also, enjoy our arrays of fine snack foods but
don't eat them, they're bad for you!
(mouth full of doritos...so...fucking...
crunch, crunch...good.)

tourniquet

to leach harder
i tie the elastic above my elbow, hang
my arm off the bed, force
gravity to work
for me.
i can see the blood seeping through
constricted veins, shallowly spread
flush red beneath my skin
as if
it tries for oxygen
by getting close to the surface

although you still pretend your scars do not exist

scars are never
impermanent.
they will stare
with their blind,
white tissue
until you are forced
to acknowledge
their existence.
make yourself sicken upon them,
LOOK
really look, as if you
have never gazed
into their muted, raised
impotence.
make yourself RECOGNIZE
the damage - i
did this.
i have marked my body,
irretrievably loosened
my skin, widened
my cracks.
the singing
of blood and my mute longing
to speak,
there is no denying this.
i could lie, back
as i did in the years that
i spent hiding from mental incarceration
but the point has vanished;
no one ever believed
the falsehoods.
the fact remains:
i have wreaked
vengeance against myself.

consonants

the tongue trips
over the tinny taste
of words that associate
themselves, rudely
with the taste
of old, and crusting blood.
linguistics linger with
memories that thrash
into me, & attack.
your eyes, staring
up at me, from your
hunched form on the carpet
as you tied knots
into your converse
you seared into me.
i love linguistics,
lovely lover words,
L's, lilting from
any tongue,
any but
your word,
hateful
"lifestyle,"
sneered out as if
the fact that mine
would be different,
queer,
would poison you.

bury down, hunker down now *

we're wrapped up
worshiping "more for less!!"
erecting concrete-block monstrosities
shadowing the handmade.

this cathedral smells musty, like history, and
i think you'll know what i mean, the way
bygone buildings accrue the
quiet habits of older times.
thousands of hands
helped mold the metal,
smooth the wood,
wear patinas into the key
protruding
from the lock, stuck for who knows
how many years.
places
like these make me certain that
history is not quite so removed as we
think. peeling-plaster jesus implores
the peeling-paint benches, take
me down, the centuries are
really getting to me,
get to the root of it.

get to the root of it.
sometimes when i run my fingers
on the floorboards i can't even
feel the nails although my eyes
say my hands are lying,
and all this jagged paint
and plaster falling off the walls
makes me ashamed of how little
anyone cares to preserve
brick-by-brick examples of why
big and new is not better,
or
advanced.




*B.A. senior thesis poem

dreaming

she was just, suddenly, there
i ran into her, intruding
on my campus
my turf.
FUCK classes, i pulled her
by the hand away from her tour
group, held her
by the hand and
for once, she didn't mind.
i took her - my small, lonely chapel
the peaceful cemetery full of dead,
chaste priests
to the ribs above the soaring
gothic cathedral arches, the
abandoned dome of Admin
business-office's open, musty hold
of a basement, under
the road in brick tunnels
the oak whose branches i crawled
into, seeking solace
or solitude
when i cried.
showed the heart
of my campus, the heart
of myself.
fingers clasped tightly
to hers the entire time.
she did not pull away.
and then we lay on the worn,
cool stone steps
running my hands down her
sides, splitting open my heart,
my mind.
tonguing, melding, abandoning
ourselves to the absence
of alone, as the shocked staff
peeped out the office
windows, and neither of us
would mind.
free of shame,
constraint, uncertainty,
fear. i held her
in my hands,
took her to my chapel
we lay together, stretched
on the floor, worshiping
each other. melting
into her.
melting into her.

i don’t hold my breath for you these days, either *

i don't know why my mouth gums
up when you talk to me.
i tried to offer, meant
to say—two words, your
basic apology—
but
the words would not cleave, they
hung, forced the works to
a halt
until "uh-huh"

was my
only articulation.

these days we rarely speak
although
when we do,
i shake
around you

my prolific
mouth shudders to a halt
although

i itch to
say,
i’m sorry

you talked about the band, gave me
headphones to hear
your new songs,

especially
the
nerve
splinter
ing
one about me,

the rough
draft of which
i found hiding in my favorite novel
between 682, 83.
you sent it back
through a friend,
three months after i
asked for it
back

so now i remain,
with my tongue tied somehow about
your heart, which left

with you

an hour or two
ago, heading out into the night



*senior thesis poem

to the metal *

dismantling the last three years of my life
i try to forget, as i meet people who interest me
that i will leave,
soon.

soon.
count down days like sand through my
fingers, gone
before i clench closed my
fist
a phone full of numbers i may,
but probably
won’t
call, too full
of excuses and a little,
admittedly, busy.

ahead lie roads i don’t
even know exist. but i like
driving, so

i whip around the curves,
engine rumbling so
satisfying oh yeah that’s
right pedal floor down
heading into the horizon

on roads going
no place

i’ve ever been.





*senior thesis poem

relax

it is three a. m.
the hot tub whirls and bubbles
i feel i'm floating

iie

the wine cannot be
the only reason i'm so
dizzy, hopeless, tired.

hai

she's wet and dripping
holding her towel closely
until she sees me.

villanelle

i don't think i'm the kind of girl you're looking for
my emotions bend and sway
and you don't seem willing to put up with me anymore.

i'd look to even the score
between us but i think you'd rather i make my way.
i don't think i'm the kind of girl you're looking for.

and darling i just can't ignore
the way you always leave now, and never stay
the night. you don't seem willing to put up with me anymore.

it's in the way you don't touch me or
repair the tears that fray
our fabric. i'm not the kind of girl you're looking for.

and i don't know if i could have done more
to get you to stay
but you don't seem willing to put up with me anymore.

and this won't be a chore
i'll leave, though i won't know why i'm walking out this way
i don't think i'm the kind of girl you're looking for
and you don't seem willing to put up with me anymore.

sestina in the key of swingset

children are flying
they pull at the chains of the swing,
their voices crying
out, laughing, trying
to transcend from the sharp
daylight into worlds of their own construct. the creak

of the chains transports them as the kids creak
out hoarse chanteys, legs flying
and flailing. a sharp
ache assails me as i watch them swing.
there, at night, there i sat trying
(but failing) to stop crying.

and the crying
is not what made me weak. i had to creak
out the tears. my ducts were rusty. but trying
to remember the feeling of flying
with you by my side, on the other swing -
this gets me every time. the pain is poisonous and sharp

a sudden wash, a tired ache, sharp
and insistent, nothing more, or less. crying
will not make it stop. i come here to swing
when the children are gone, to hear the creak
of the chains, and to think of you. it's not flying
anymore, without you here trying

to fly too. but memory is sometimes trying
sharp
and clear, when forgetting would be a blessing. and flying
brings no freedom, only chains. i'm crying
with every part but my eyes. creak, creak.
the swing

sighs and moans. i could swing
for hours if the wind wasn't trying
to turn my edges blue but even the trees creak
and groan in the sharp
biting breeze. i'm sick of crying,
tired of flying

alone. the swing chains are sharp
with cold. and now i'm trying - i'm not crying
but this familiar creak no longer means flying.