poem: letter to myself

the only thing I could imagine piercing me todayis the long cat-vomit pink, stretch, of sky -- and after driving home, the awareness of the earth that would notaccept or come into me, the places I will not go because they are outside, and I cannot? cannot! leave this bedroom, the walls bent in and…

poem: my charger

thirty day poetry challengeday 06– ‘my charger‘ was sometimes a wattpad boy (and I mean that ironically and also unironically) -- who wanted to go to Heaven nowrather than later, because it seemed betterthan whatever else; I don't know if that really counts as wanting to kill myself, he said; but I was listing, the…

poem: my father said he was going to the store, we needed milk

thirty day poetry challengeday 04– ‘buy milk‘ I broke down, like my father's car, which had been breaking down again and again, like my fatheralways broke down -- in the parking lotor the pharmacy queue -- where his latestprescription sat whore-ishly orange;he prized them like my mother's tits or my grandfather's slaps or my own…

writing: hunger and boys and poetry

There was a storm coming and she had run six miles and she was not hungry. She sprawled on the couch and ached pleasurably, but her stomach was ringing hollow. I am going to vomit, most likely. Why the fuck am I not hungry? Why the fuck? It was six miles. The last time her…

poem: atonement is the name of a book

I can feel the surge inside me -- water coming up from the underneath; people sneering, poland subdued-- I would wait for my lover at the window, in a green dress, but how can I if I cannot manage a morning routine? -- depressionis a modern invention, generation z does notneed our grandmothers' ecstasy, we…

poem: woman vs. truth

his future was in his face,mine is in my crouch: a laundry-listof menial prostitution, bracketing the old crushesand old trauma and old men (hoveringaround the desk, watchingme work). i am reselling myselfday by day, in twenty-twenty-one,trauma is profittrauma is business. he thought he was terriblyoriginal: pretty boy, fucking the systemand then me after. next timei…

poem: I have lost reality many times

and yet she always come back, that unreliable bitch. you'd think I could let my organs run off in snot safetyfor several hours and not return to disgusting wherewithal when I shower or finally sleep, as if everything wrong with me was merely situational. I can write claimsin mad tongues that I am also doomed…

poem: crying after a fight with my mother, twenty-twenty

in the autumn far-awayi read a portrait of the artist as a young manunder the trees, under the universityand i was notthe drama, the failure. waitingoutside the daycare, an after-somethingjob for the boring, earbuds and trite tragicmusic wrapped around my skull. i stayed very latein cafes, no-whip-cafe-mochaand scholarship questions, dreaminghopelessly and i — droppedthe history…

poem: all madness, no genius, pt. 1

two thousand 17;the aesthetic of this,it is like spring, the old suicide days, when the poemsdripped — no punctuation.music stuck spiral-likein my throat, the pulsing pulsingwonder: my chemical shitin the bathroom (before class)the animalism of no-onemeeting your eyes — I cannotwrite like thatanymore. The downsidesof friends, of making it. two thousand 19/20;remember the chemical swings,the…

writing: the things that happened today

I stood in the shower a long time and imagined getting out, taking my towel from the hook and wrapping it around my body, and then unclipping my hair and shaking it loose and bunching the curls between my fingers, and walking back to my dorm room. My room is clean. Nothing else, lately, has…