Category: Poetry

A coffee cup next to warm brewed tea. 
Does the herbal bag remind you of me? 
Grounds pass your filter, grind between my teeth.  
Pleasure-stained smile with pride underneath.  

Two bodies flow with beautiful contrast.  
The river’s impact on a stream grows fast. 
What happens when a rock gets thrown our way? 
Wither it down, we can mold it like clay. 

My stars wide awake in your sleepless night. 
How does the Moon shine without the Sun’s light? 
Hues of dawn fight to find their own place,   
But Calcite and Quartz mix together with grace. 

Sweet Lover Boy, we are nowhere near one.  
If we were the same, how would that be fun?

My hand clamps the handle,
ready to pull. 
Resistance hits my arm. 
Why? Was it something I said? 
Did he not like the color of my sweater? 
Caramel and bleached stitching 
coming together, hand in hand. 
Or did my shoes remind him of another
who slammed him so hard 
that he never wanted to be touched again? 
The dulled look of his exterior, 
mixed gray and brown 
Found on the palette of a painter 
starved and craving affection. 
Is the door an artist 
Creaking to be seen?
A painting without a gallery. 
I place my palm upon his frame,
touching him as he touched me. 
Could he feel my warmth? 
Or is he heating up his handle 
warding away my fingers.  
Does he think I’m like the rest? 
The mildew film atop wood finish.
Maggots caught in the second coat of paint.
He should know best of all. 
The moon’s breeze can chill 
lovers, stuck in a foot of snow  
just as fast as the sun’s can scorch
eyes picking at his splinters.
I’ll let his metal burn me, 
maybe I’ll burn him back. 
Shared white scripted scars 
will make him understand.  
We’ve both felt far worse.

My heart is a muscle the size of my fist 
My teeth wear crowns that ache      
This brain makes it painful to exist 

My scoliosis spine is bent in a twist  
My eyes blacken from being awake  
My heart is a muscle the size of my fist 

My lungs are cigarette cancer kissed  
My knees are ready to buckle and break  
This brain makes it painful to exist  

My skeletal system can barely subsist  
My head sits on my neck like a mistake  
My heart is a muscle the size of my fist 

My tears evaporate into an ugly mist  
My bones shake like an earthquake  
This brain makes it painful to exist  

My thoughts are as unwanted as a cyst  
Telling me to Plath myself like a cake 
My heart is a muscle the size of my fist 
This brain makes it painful to exist

If I could have chosen the you you would become, 
the way I choose a perfect avocado, or a just-ripe cantaloupe 
from the produce aisle at Patsy’s Seaside Pantry,
I’d paint your eyes “Elderberry Blue,”  
the color on the walls of a long-abandoned beach house
where summers ago 
your childish laughter flew unbound
on sun filled breezes
until suddenly one summer 
your laughter bent, 
then shattered,
and your blue eyes grayed, 
like ashes, 
from the fires in your brain.

forty seconds of quiet. of nothing
but the thrumming of a too-big heart—
the sloshing of water up against
his moonless cavern. forty seconds
of a panic that subdues as fast as it came,
of peace unlike any other. past mistakes
and forgotten hopes, futile dreams
and desperate prayers.
silent wishes drowned out by the slow
suffocation of death. forty seconds,
then the gates are opened, the
flood widens, the space becomes
expansive, and the quiet peace of it
all is pulled under the current.

She watches from the doorway
as the room grows dark,
sleek silhouette in black
backlit by the bathroom light.

She slithers into bed,
viscous skin on my ankles,

her grasp coils around my neck.
My skin litters with goosebumps.
I toss and turn to free myself—
seized in a bone-crushing embrace.

She measures me, inch by inch,
readying to eat me whole.

Her teeth sink into my flesh,
forked tongue savoring the symphony
of my heart’s last beat. In her grip,
dreams and nightmares meet.

six little rooms aching remnants of a home
now they lack any signs of living
and there stand packed shelves drowning in boxes full of you

underneath us lies a hazardous basement
housing specialty wine, a dryer, uncharted diseases
and a decrepit parkway sign that stood for dreams – Born to Run

you are loved, here lies the proof in piles of tattered posters
we’ll walk through streets of fire
drive all night for you
tougher than the rest

your friends, your family, they’re all here
your mom’s scrapbooks, Obie’s collection of remembrance,
even Tex and Marion who got you started back in ‘65
(when you were still trying to be the Beatles)

their love stands here
in this little house with the tub overflowing
with magazines, your famous red baseball cap
and even a small group of people dedicated to you

it’s your house, even after you’ve gone, we’ll be here
on the corner of 10th, Cedar, and E

Wind wrestles through open car windows,
Blowing knotted hair into smirking lips.
Sun-lotioned thighs unsticking from hot leather,
Ripping away as every pothole sets them free.
Music masks the struggling engine,
Teenagers’ voices performing over Steely Dan themselves,
Over the tires bouncing off the ridges of the bridge,
Ones that sing their own anticipatory song
As the salt air becomes thicker between each beat.
Crashing water.
You hear it when you stick your head out the window,
So far you can almost taste it.
“You’re crazy,” he says
“I know.”

Bring me the old man.
Give me that old soldier
Who broke your
Spirit upon the rack
Of all the pain he carries
That no one ever made a dent in.
Give me the child who wished for
A father she did not have.
Measure of Adam.
Made; Separated.

Give me your Sylvia Plath anger,
The rage that burns in your throat,
At the center of your chest
And somewhere between your shoulders,
The nightmares he gave you first.
Before you knew the word for zombie,
For skinwalker, for banshee,
For wraith, and for rake,
You knew the ghost that sired you.
Give me the fear, the anxiety,
The distrust that runs like saltwater
In your blood.

You are only hemoglobin. Not him.
We stopped bleeding people;
No more spirits, no more demons,
No more monsters in your blood.
Finite bodies that track every pain
And every mark, connected
By all the hyphae of memory.

There are things you are not made to carry.
You cannot keep a war you never knew,
Never fought in, never added to,
Cannot hold in the water of your soul.
Give it all to me, you precious child.
I will carry you.

To have dominion over the hearsay of God,
Would make me drunker than His wine.
If I were a man, I would be a priest.
No moral authority stems
From this stale-breaded womb.
If only we were recognized as healers of the sick,
Givers to the poor, providers
As mothers often are.
To give love and
Receive it.
Without a twisted need for sensual payment.
To have glittering fortresses made
from heretics’ pain.
By hearsay, we’re doomed.
As promiscuous thieves,
Bearers of sin,
Murderers of religious morality.
Man, who heralds us as his destruction,
His blessed soft, striking palms now stinging,
Ripping ribs and pliably silent wishes.
To be His kinder, right hand is
My sweetest desire,
To be celibate and not prude,
To bless the water, mythicize faith,
To cure another soul without
Offering my body to the plea.
As a woman, I am beholden to men,
Bound by His word.
But if I were a priest, I could redeem us both.