See him as he watches you from the top
but does not bring you a ladder. You
ask him why every night for 6 weeks
in a row and he says nothing.
All in Poetry
See him as he watches you from the top
but does not bring you a ladder. You
ask him why every night for 6 weeks
in a row and he says nothing.
The father would like to explain: the cycle, the impermanence,
the giving and the taking away—
but she is just a seedling and he is full of termites:
old wood, a petrified Cypress.
he met me at a clam bake, barefoot and howling at the moon on the gulf coast
in the summer of ‘82 and has never forgotten my hand on the bottle of raspberry
wine or the way I disguised my lust with tragedy, my tears sparkling like beacons
every time I walked into the bay, and I told him that his ice was melting
I shot the poet. But don’t bother crying.
You yourself have died a thousand deaths --
anesthetized, stupefied – in case you haven’t noticed.
Poetry is dead. I read it in The New Yorker.
The woman I become shaves her head
again & again because nothing ever feels clean.
the person at the epicenter of the experience doesn’t necessarily
get to decide / i was completely at his mercy in that way / it was
just like a whole other layer of being burned /
growing up, you always thought you’d be as tall as lightning in a bottle, so damn electrical
you’d shatter any prison with your brightness & shoot through the clouds in a blaze of glory
it hasn’t worked out the way you had hoped, wasting your wilderness on the American Dream
partying in the gooey lowlands & cutting up napkin monsters, all that talk about howling
where were you when all the broken people in your life built boats out of used razor blades?
i tap into the spot in my chest you live to not respond to his text
i trust that everything will work out in time for the credits
queen of choosing loyalty and herself first
queen of platonic girlfriends
teach the bend and snap to everyone
He was older and tall
and married though I didn’t know
that last part till I was in too deep
in so deep with his dick
that I gave him a yeast infection and went to therapy
no token-booths,
no gates,
passengers stripping the body
in preparation.
Amenorrhea means no children, or children if you’re lucky. The Latin translates to no moon. I am a moonless woman. The Pollock painting does not depict me.
In this white bed. In this white gown. I am no one’s woman.
Should my heart stop
before prayer can save me,
who will claim this body? Maybe, I will be buried
at sea.
He falls out of a plane and proclaims, “Anything is possible.” John Travolta dies hospital slow, in a government made bed that's known many guests. John Travolta dies on set, in his flm trailer, choking on a bagel.
I was raped and the story reads like a rejected script; someone else’s gritty noir.
There are no cicadas in this poem—
no praise for the passing of seasons. No lover with a velvet touch.
There is nothing left to romanticize
I love the theme song, trailer, Firebird that never dies.
He climbs out wincing, has a hitch in his getalong.
Maybe after this I’ll watch some Magnum, P. I.
Her period blood
like a tight watch band
can’t wait to get it off
his arm, wrist, palm
if you love the liquid
then love all of her
You will always be
you inside a dark theater
Watching yourself, you
adrift in your
effortless durability, you,
A TV cannot escape
the card catalog or schedule a time to be read out
loud. The talk shows go on all day. Channel changer
bang-a-rang. Cathode smile to set
picture frames on. Please go to the source.
I spend an afternoon in a waiting room surrounded by fake-wood-vinyl walls
while Grandma Martha pours 3 fingers of Jack Daniels
(smuggled in a plastic flask from Florida), and catches up on Wimbledon.
Thank god for European healthcare. Thank god for antibiotics.
I am alone in this meadhall: sink, toilet, tub,
spinning wildly in the oarlock of panic.
Mist is coming under the door. Breath:
bananas and blood.