Dizzy

(freewritten)
The thought circles back like Gravity's knife:
there's a hole in my skull and all the good stuff's falling out.
Cold bodies cuddle neuroses and fend off their nightmares
worried fingers panhandle and pickpocket but rarely get pinched
even as the holes in the keyboard open wider
the "O" and the "0" are really just 2 stretched open-terrified eyes
but no.
no.
I'm getting it wrong
the whole is in my skull
a second mouth where typos fall out
and the fingers plug and push and staunch the words back in.
My body is stroking slowly as the cortexes collapse into each other's gravity
and the thought circles back
quick like Gravity's knife.

On Christmas day

you can see a child's laughter
through cracked palms,
Beat out the
and overzealous precipitation
with a field of candle-flames refusing to die.
And when you try to sing
there is nothing but miracles in your throat.





(after writing this poem I had to listen to this song
and yes. I do know how cheese and non-xmassy that is)

after the holidays

Written in a nauseous daze after too much holiday spirits (mostly of the dark and aged variety):
Dreams find themselves doubled over in pockets
dank clouds of peculiar ill
hang
waiting around corners
teething under the sidewalk.
Innards quiver like a salamander on fire
peeling lizard skin splits rubbery & dry
the consistency is not leveling out
sleep arrives crooked
propped up on the couch
(beneath a foreign overcoat)
& when I open my mouth, the salamander comes out.

The Day After Christmas
When Morning's body fell wet into our door
we rushed in to cover the sound
and shoved her slime under the table

Opening the Mail
I watch the envelopes build up in the wastebasket
my favorites are the official ones
whose previous cargo may have included:
bank statements
medical information
or a reminder about those student loans.
Serious messages
come clothed in dancing pinstripes
an inward-turned somersaulting of endless hyphens.
The tessellations keep you safe,
help you keep all your debt to yourself.

The small things make it worthwhile,
broken drill bits and four chocolates between the two of us.
I loved the way we laughed as we cleared out the corners.




Our skin shook the air
loud like thunder
our turbulence took flight.
We are stormy weather
eating through the sky.
It rained for hours
& by morning I could almost move.
This is the kind of thing you don't recover from.

I've been sick and not had a computer available for a few days. Sorry about that.

Erin
Your freckled softer-than-jersey face is a feeling stronger than a papercut.
Your presence is better than pulling off the stilettos at 3AM
the dancing enthusiasm loosened through the night,
I am jagged edges in the stairwell
and your arms rocked me anyway
-my body just a curl of a person
but your hands didn't brush me away like pencils shavings.


Christmas Shopping
1 week out
I huddled in the boisterous bookstore corners
the teenagers in puddles
philosophize about the social capacity of space:
"I can't. I'm shy. I can't if somebody can hear."
A boy in their group grunts rhythmically,
she punctuates by counting out gritty restrooms as well
the disapproval weighs down her words,
points at the missing spaces in their group.
The bookstore groans,
& they purchase a book about flatulence.


After Xmas Shopping
Screaming heels
and a small taste of sleet slanting off the forehead.
It stings then melts
like getting shot down in front of the bartender.

I Made it Home
My body is more that just a smear on the highway,
I've got moving parts like everyone else,
parts that move like no one else.


Solstice Poem
She's got hornets in the throat
& lizards in her feet.
Her face smiles
like the guttural howl of a motorcycle in a churchyard.
You can tell that it's winter by the thickness of pumping exhaust.

She is cowboy boots 2 sizes too small,
blistered histories that tried
(maybe) too hard.
She leaves her heart on the field
wrapped in sleeves and lengths of small intestine
drops a kidney and a set of tonsils on her way to the sidelines.
She keeps her liver to herself.

& lastly
beneath all the clatter
her eyelashes gather into tiny triangles
-long with salt and regret.


Torsion
You're body got crooked
while working toward my sleep,
& unfurled the torsion from 5 different contraptions.


Light
The light collided
and their friction colored the windows
the world obscured by misty blue-green geometry.

Drunk haiku

I love eating cheese.
Sometimes it tastes like yellow,
sometimes it tastes orange.

running

I've got penmarks built up in my scarf,
the pinkness shortens my stride,
and I get by
counting cracks sidewalks.

Bother+Sister=Metamorphic

I called it archeology
because the big word made my mouth feel good;
helped the two years between us shorten
and stand small, but strong next to the millennia.
Together we learned how the stones were cooked and bent and compressed:
Igneous,
Sedimentary,
and Metamorphic.
Only wet rocks show their true colors.
In the backyard we took hammers to granite
smashing our way through a molten backstory.

These days I steal beach rocks by the pocketful.
And sometimes, when I know nobody's watching
I'll spit on them,
think wistfully of hammers,
and remember who they really are.



done for poetry potluck week14

missed connection (pizza delivery edition)

To the boy with bulbous black glasses,

fingerless gloves

& pumpkins rotting on the front stoop:

you are beautiful when you apologize.

unravels

Stuck on my sinking bedsheets
I succumb to a broken gravity
let the sleep pull me down.
When I rise my center scuttles away
and I am dancing lopsided
in a many-mirrored room.

for last night, when the internet died

This tension is dizzy with vinegar,
boils over the body
and simmers into a toxic calm.
With chemistry working against me
the dust smothers to a motionless haze.
The anxieties
have got thousands of tiny mouths
one for ever membrane.
If you're not careful
corners of the soul can be corroded;
All you dream
subjected to a rusty and jagged sigh of escaping.

Singing Cedar Memories

(image sourced from Magpie Tales)

The geometry has tilted,

our eyes slide too fast and too far down,

gravity gets hungrier with the years.

When the body takes a moment to remember

our legs make bruises on the sidewalk.

And when those cold footsteps crest,

we pull that deep red nostalgia beneath us

and slide down on singing cedar memories.

Not at all

All over-planned love letters fail.

The words come without timetables or perpendicular creases

sounds bigger than the filling of black spaces.

&

After our legs pulled us underground,
our words rushed together,
&when he kissed me
his mouth curved my heart into a series of overzealous ampersands.

If I could, I would buy you flowers every day

Last night I dreampt of red roses
blossoming into a thorny alphabet.
With stemmed parenthesis
and jagged leaves
I left the petals of a love letter in your bed.

A heavy-handed norse power ballad

My body was built by the Valkyries.
Ribs spread wide as victory,
then curled together like wings
striking curved against a bloody gravity.
The whiplash began my heart's electric rhythm.

I could catch you in a glimpse,
and long before our bodies even think of colliding,
I've got your battle cry churning beneath the skin.
I speak in raven feathers
and honeyed gasps.

I fill the air after it's been emptied of souls
my body keeps the night from tearing into nothing.

Based on a wackadoddle response I got after typing "daily writing prompt" in to my google

"On December 3, 1967, the first successful heart transplant was conducted. It is important to keep your heart, along with the rest of your body, healthy. Create a list of ten (10) activities that will help keep your heart healthy."

Hearty
(a list poem)
1. Cheerios have a really great ad campaign,
hits your chest dead center,
with blond children and health benefits.
2. Steer clear of falling and(or) feeling unfulfilled.
3. Keep your laughter from hurting
4. (both transitive and intransitive).
5. Get at least halfway though half of the things you set out to do.
6. Help your bicycle up the hill
she really wants to see what's up there
and I'm sure both of you would like the way the relationship grows
(bruises and bike grease are worth that sort of thing).
7. Find at least 4 kinds of love in your life.
(no fill-in-the-blanks, this is an essay question for your heart)
8. Learn.
9. Drink.
10. Enjoy.

The words of a clock

The minutes got hungry and ate themselves while waiting.
The air is sour and emptied by each tickticktick.
Machines gnash their teeth in circles
Spinning gears
whose mouths measure what they cannot touch
Time cannot be caught
only hollowed out
by the words of a clock.





(written in 3 minutes)

cold relationship poem.

This body chose to forget you
I can see your face through calculated window panes.
Outside those walls the memories crumble
& deteriorate like newspaper.
Your name separates into grit and tawny debris.

I love you
& I know how cold it is,
but no amount of forlorn
could frown this door back open.

If I let your shadow in,
you'd collect all your footprints
and leave your longing
pristine with the snow.



For magpie tales.

Ava

Tonight was the first night we slept together
soft and warm
and only 4 years old.
Her mouth spins the spectrum as her body dreams,
stealing an absolutely impossible amount of covers.
She shouts angrily against the green and slanted night
slaps my book with a drowsy hand,
lonely in her dreams
she pushes at the papery insomnia
and laughs so hard I can see all of her teeth,
Whispers in words too dream-shaped to decipher.

When her morning voice prods me into waking
her eyes are rounder than two chocolate moons.