poem: portrait of a lady, january 2019

pine tree hands make ginger kisses. they are better than the crowd of girls: nice, but all emotional. the boys carry rocks on their heads and in their eyes; the girl tuck the rocks into athletic bags and into breasts. she is with the boys, competing, the rocks split open to Intelligence and Intellect, and…

poem: self-delusion, always in style

there is a dream: right now, he is far away, in London and Japan, and he is not remembering her: he is all symbol, not enough boy. There's no sex when it's only literary, didn't the blood on your lips teach you that, or the blood inside that cute boy in the journalism class, the…

poem: teenagers aren’t humanity, but the horror comes close

he cut her up inside the grand blue gray there is amourous floating of livers and other passions, there is repression. he cut himself up and she cried out she was his hand, his wrist, his perfect dead face after the school imploded. we are living too quickly to catch the blood there are insides…

poem: and your eyes like marmalade and stretched blue skys

and your eyes like marmalade and stretched blue skys: it was only a whisper, forget it. like old cd's on repeat and her hand shaking, 2005 in blacker sharpie on her nails. that's time: tipping back your head for the thickening music that scratches across the widening sky and she buries her head into your…

poem: unexpected afters

people do not tell you that heartbreak physically hurts that I can put my thumbs to my chest, and, coughing, tell you linear stories of blue demon veins, the sticky fingers of the unseen cut in my blood-caverns the spot between my breasts sore, a waking pain and your memory like pine-acid. little ghosts lick…

poem: the artists

lying across icecream sheets and smoking cigarettes, with the glowing nubs held ladylike between fingers like it's the 1920's. he was so perfectly confident among the freaks and they rejected her. anything utopian and egalitarian is a lie. turning on her back with her hair curling onto the mattress and nicotine hissed up under her…

poem: cabin out in Nowhere

wouldn't it be nice if someone was secretly in love with me--- loner, an under-used word in the poet's dictionary, but it tattoos nicely into her softer eyelids fraying, against her cheeks. against her intellect. wouldn't it be nice if someone found my answering all the univere's questions-- adorable--and not awkward-- the shifting impatient eyes…

poem: ghost

this is the ghost. sitting with my tongue sour and pressed against my teeth; writing five bad essay sentences and stopping to stare out the inside window. how the hell do people have so many friends? this is the ghost. no longer can I tell if I was in love with the symbol, with the…

poem: war + peace, scarlett o’hara, plato (& her)

I have known too much to be secure in what I have known. Even I am sick of this narrative: here is the danger-warning, so listen: rewriting the narrative inside your head so that what happened happened differently is (please don't make me finish this face this). long sigh, and tucking the hair behind my…

poem: it will not change the fact

It will not change the fact that I Like you and I think you’re brilliant and I read Your article, and you were flippant But there was an Emotional core and I felt you inside the automated print I Felt you And since then, since I have read that, I Cannot properly leave you because…