The word “squalor” has always reminded me
of Sarah’s bedroom. not just the food she let rot.
The clothes, the papers, the toys and wrappers and bags.
All manner of debris, putrid, oozing blankets,
pillows of crust, dull crowns of dust.
All in Poetry
The word “squalor” has always reminded me
of Sarah’s bedroom. not just the food she let rot.
The clothes, the papers, the toys and wrappers and bags.
All manner of debris, putrid, oozing blankets,
pillows of crust, dull crowns of dust.
The second is a sunflower that I pressed in wax paper,
rough and plastic between my father’s bible and the dictionary.
Its petals are shriveled like wrinkled noses around its black heart,
The width of my palm
I work too much at a job
that is not cute, not a children’s
bookstore, not in publishing, candy-
colored cardigans & coffee runs,
The birthing pool is empty
My swollen vessel is a balloon
Where no one lives
In cobalt twilight the whole
world wants to scream:
are you touched or just simple?
If you know which, you can’t
be the other – call it
Emily’s divinest sense.
we exit
time melting ambivalence
a corpse celebrated
the last whirlwind
small bodies collapsed and lost
and I wonder if I did cheat. If this
was all a test, that I was supposed to refuse
the man he told to touch me. Like all dancers,
I worship my choreographer. I revere
the director of this pornography.
Gamma-Hydroxybutyric Acid. Jeff mixes it with cranberry. Gives me a one-gram dose.
Drink the bitter stuff fast, then wash it down with Gatorade. Takes a bit to kick in.
There are sheets pinned to the windows, so no light can seep in. We take his mattress
& pull it into the living room. Other men come & go. Jeff opens a suitcase of clothes.
She said never eat bananas
before bed time, but I was a kid and she was silly,
making up that sort of nonsense. I abdicated
such tales to runways of the theatre of science
I don’t see you dangling in the distance,
rising in unfettered crowds, enveloped by
a smoky steel blue haze, with melancholy
jazz instrumentals, riffing with hot licks.
I look up at stars and clouds from rooftops,
and dream the big dream on our bed
I plant and plant
and dig and dig
and grow and grow.
Perhaps you’ll lose a limb
or two,
but the loss will surely
pale in comparison to
the glory of the rebirth.
…my love for you was born in this city
…in this city, is where I love you
…where I will continue to love you
…until some other city, becomes the concrete beneath our boots
in hot weather, we see it
we pulse with the sun and curse our impermanence
those quakes, and that sun, dance with our fate—
they twitch for our sanity—
When I kissed you and my tongue brushed against yours…
You never realized I was leaving poetry in your mouth and
how my words would stick to your lungs like smoke.
an illusion with eyes closed
chiming gold on hard cement
powdered, hidden treasure/
a punishment for silence and
moments left unfed
your
disappointments in the whistle
between the gap
of your
yellow
teeth
Poetesses write & dream:
puncture, skin, ruby,
Moringa plant, wood,
gone. Their friend’s
piano; the pages
for a friend
These days, I have to peep on humanity
if I want in, like doing my best impression
of the conference table at the secret
corporate powwow to reintroduce
lead and Xanax into the public water
supply.