…

…

MY FATHER’S WATCH

[Published March 2020 by: “Pamplemousse 5.2”]  

On your wrist was a watch
of solar systems,
which the spines
of immense black creatures
rotated as if in a cosmic sea.

The watch,
blue-star-twist-turner
leather bound to skin,
cried in deep
thunderous calls
like a great owl.

I contorted your wrist
to watch the continuous circle.
Like the planet who is just a wave.

SENTENCE SCENE

[Published March 2020 by: “Pamplemousse 5.2”]  

You didn’t want to go in but I insisted it was cold and dark and I didn’t want to wait outside for her bus to get in;
we pushed the door and our feet trudged through the snow bank
of lottery tickets, the bar was half empty, and we were strangers there and we could tell that strangers were never welcomed because everyone had always been there, everyone stared; they were construction workers, yellow vests still on, pool players who had swung their sticks over shoulders to watch us order, truckers with mid-bite mouths filled, boots scraped early morning all day with short lunch break men, and I was the only woman, which you pointed out so I made sure to ask for a beer but I didn’t have cash so you had to pay for us both, we sat down; I didn’t unbutton my coat to reveal my tight dress, you wore your suit jacket and plaid scarf I gave you for Christmas; people still stared, and we sat in silence; there was frost on the window next to you and though you weren’t exactly framed by it, you almost were, we almost could hear

the group of men leaning into their table whispering, I had never seen men whisper like that; the music was softer than I would have liked and so we couldn’t even comment on it but if we had they would have been empty comments because we weren’t sure what type of music it was but it was something between our tastes; the bartender just cleaned glasses, strangely, as if he had never seen glass before he held it up to the dark ceiling, with its light fixtures full of missing light bulbs; we each had a hand on the table and kept ourselves close and looked in separate directions because here was somewhere where no one knew us in a town that knew us so well so for a moment we were strangers  to each other and for a moment that was pleasant

and for just this moment.

BIND

[Published September 2019 by the collage zine “Hysteria” in: “May Zine ” ]  

I want to wrap
the leather of your
tongue in-between the dip
of where hip, meets inner thigh.

You want to taste
the air of the room
as you lay back
and my strumming fingers
indicate the movements
I want to entice from you.

I want cold metal encircling
my finger.

The way you cuff me
I want to bind your soul to me.

CEMENT CHECKERS

[Published August 2019 by “Qommunicate Publications” in: “Queer Around the World too” ]  

I am from
the dead of the West.

Below the earth is ka—
I fear her

more than shade that
latches to my feet

because my double must be
better than me.

Someday, I am required
to return to the West,

where there are guards seated
in chairs broken and lavish.

Men with hundreds of
keys dangling off their fingers.

I want to sit in the treeless gardens,
and play checkers on the cement.

In the end what I hope they say is:
she was a river in Egypt.

Ka can be the great one. 

BREWING GORSE TEA

[Published August 2019 by “Qommunicate Publications” in: “Queer Around the World too” ]  

I.
When I close my eyes
I am catching scar-deep cuts
in fields of wheat.
Steel clouds drown a far house.

.

Pines drop eyelash needles.
There is salt and earth, air.
Deer snag low branches. 

.

When I close my eyes
there is a cold sea below me
the rush of air in my ears
gasp of anticipation
a wide sail above.

.

When I close my eyes
thank god I am not here.

.

When I close my eyes
I am on a grey beach
collecting stones and bones.
Green glass.

II.

When I close my eyes

.

Ships rest in the harbor
settled with ashen evening light.

.

Wild grasses crash
long waves. There is the scent

.

of thick elderflower
and smoky whiskey.

.

I am hushed,
a sweater drying by a fire.

.

Houses with buckled shutters,
lights outline wood cracks.

.

I am brick stones walking home,
streets soaked in beer. 

.

I am cathedral tower at night,
ornate and lit.

.

I am wild seas and gorse hills,
a yellow flower that smells of coconuts.

.

It is brewed as tea
to combat hopelessness.

.

There are crumbs on the saucer
and wind against the pane.

.

Steam of another table’s coffee rises
and there is soft winter talk.

.

Voices sheltered from the cold
warm my skin. Teaspoons rattle.

.

There is a low mist of morning.
It is always. Winter. Raining.    

.

Dreich.
Tea is slightly sweet.

.

I am sipping tea
when I close my eyes.

TO THE JELLYFISH WHO STUNG

[Published online July 2019 by honey&lime lit on “oceans&time”]

Thank you for those
red sweltering 
child scribbles. I look
beautiful with your
addition to my body. 

Thank you for your reminder
of my distance from nature,
from cedars
and their glued
-on needles.

For the warning 
that I do not belong.

Thank you for your hidden ways
and thank you 
for your brainless form
which reacts instead of thinks.
I could use more of that.

People who kiss instead 
of thinking about 
kissing. Who hurt instead 
of thinking 
about hurting. 

THE WEATHER AS HER MISTRESS

[Published June 2019 by “honey&lime lit” in: “Issue Three: loud and unashamed”]

Sometimes I think my girlfriend
will leave me over the weather.

She was built for deserts—
my lips for rain.

It means my skin tremors,
in the storm, my hair raises, then
drifts back against me like
rhododendron leafs.

Her skin is like a hide, stretched
and tanned by the hunter. Her body
shapes to her bones. Her clothes fall
off in hot breaths.

I don’t want to sound like I
speak from experience
but I would be the god of weather
if I could.
We could both be,

our horizons never crossing,
our hemispheres in other skies.

stars like borders.

TAKE HER TO THE WOODS THEY SAID

[Published June 2019 by “honey&lime lit” in: “Issue Three: loud and unashamed”]

Take her to the woods they said
And so I did

Take me to the mountains she said/ And
so I did

Take me to your home I said/           so she took me to the creeks & the sycamores & the piercers & the

lettuce houses, the tracks and that left hand turn after the x rated store you don’t go into.

Lastly she took me to myself & when she kissed me I said take me.

Snowy Words

[Published 2018 in the Gramma Press weekly].

The buses shut down
so we, the drunks,
walked home.

The cold air slithered
around red drinking ears
and a breath curdled.

The circus tents beyond
the slate walls burst
red under the snow.

You twirled and spun
on the black ice,
your coat extending

like a full tulle,
flung yourself into my
tight-rope-thin arms.

You almost asked.
I almost said.
And there was the snow:
so delicate.

One could reveal something here
and tomorrow it would be a different world.
One where we hadn’t.

When it snows words can be erased
like breath from air.
So I didn’t say.

Risks are not made for nets—
the ropes should sway with weight
and helpless breath.

The trapezes
should feel not lightness
but gravity.

Moist

[Published online 2017 on Exactly As It Happens as an illustrated poem].

Cloth left raw and blackened
like burnt flesh,
snaked around soot silver—
forks and knives which shivered
with moist blood.

Insisting locked doors
sighed with her steps.
The split eyeball,
halved and lustrous, rattled.

Oh Lizzie.
She scrapped her name between
her teeth and gasped for air between her pleasured looks upon
the gapping, meaty corpse,
Father departed.
The humid summer made
the bodies sweat
and stench.

Her fasting flesh damped with it all. Then she cracked
eggs into a pan
the oozing orange
mucus fowl sizzling
until the edges crusted.

Mutton fermented on the back
burner and the hot shit stench
of plumbing drifted.

The eggs—she brought quivering fingers to her wet mouth, hovering them to hide the broken lark—
they shaped like lunar moons
or hacked pigeon wings in the pan.

Pitching back
in the rocking chair,
she felt like a young scion.
Her palace: a grotesque table.

The Fable of Bundled Sticks

[Published 2016 in the Journal for Social Justice, Vol. II].

There is the sound
of snapping sticks.
Ridged backbones
of branch broken, cut, cracked.
It is the idea that hands
can destroy an individual
but if one were to gather sticks
into a bundle it would be impossible to snap
them all at once.

So how does one destroy a movement
Simply take into your hands
an individual man, and kill him.
It will be a simple, thoughtless gesture. Then take all the other men and women, show them
that you killed the man.

It is then necessary
that you take the bundle of them
and untie the knot of string.

It is easy to do—
teach them differences in death: value, authority, safety.
Tell them you understand these things and they do not.

If I was the farmer,
and I stood before my sons who bickered and fought
I would not simply take the sticks and show them that
there is strength in unity.
I would show them too,
who unties the knots.

That deep within them,
is something that tries to separate us all.The fear of being the one without value.

Our value is in what
we gather and share.
So I would recommend
gathering the sticks.