poetry
photos of the author
prose
I look back
at old pictures and old posts
old pictures and old pictures
and old statuses and letters and poems
and messages and posts and pictures
and I watch myself
get raped and curl up to die
over and over again
I’m sure you’ve watched your favorite
movie millions of times. I’m sure you’ve
dabbed your eyes at the same old
parts, screamed
at the actress on the TV: “Don’t
go in there”
but it happens anyways. You knew that.
It’s just intriguing, watching
the transformation
Deterioration
Two days after the incident, my facebook
status read “nobody can tell on you
if you cry
in the shower.”
Typical dramatic status
of a teenager. No one knew
what I was referring to, what
images and words and sequences
were about to unfold
but I look back, and I
play God
because I know.
The saddest thing
about poetry
is
the gaps between the words
The sense
I forgot to make
in between
the silence
of sheets and pillows
and the crack
in my voice
the craters in the moon
I can’t say I love him
but I would love to
There are
gaps between the words
in this poem
He has been my most difficult writing project ever
ever ever. I have come
to realize that I simply cannot describe his blue
eyes because I can’t figure out how they
got so blue. That is the only plausible explanation.
The sound of children
laughing and splashing in the pool on Summer Monday
across the canal
and I am sitting on the seawall
behind my house, carelessly dragging
a cigarette. That used to be me,
you know. It won’t always be like this
forever. You’ll grow.
They can’t hear my silence
but it’s loud, buzzing
in my head like the bee that is soaring overhead.
I cover my ears—the one place
I don’t want him flying is into me
through these holes. I imagine
it would hurt much more
than anything I’ve felt in these long years.
I hear the faint giggles again, followed by
a rush of water over one of
their young, wet heads. That used to
be me, you
know.
Lately I’ve
been scribbling
on my liner, dark.
Without him.
He makes me feel
beautiful. It’s been two
weeks since I have seen
him last and I
will anxiously race home
to those arms
tonight. I need
to feel something, I must
revive beautiful.
Put down the pencil
and scrub. Watch
the ink sink through
the pores of the drain and
my pores gasp for breath for
the first time in days,
once smothered in face-cake.
I hear the
crack in his smile coming
from my bed, in the dark. You are,
you are, you are,
my love.
Watch a father who can’t afford his groceries ‘cause he’s run out of money on his EBT card take back orange juice and a loaf of white bread so he can buy his overweight son a carton of ice cream
Get fucked in the mouth to the point of vomiting in the name of love
Witness a good deed and a suggestion for something to be done in return
Watch a mother get away with murdering her child
Read your first “I love you” off a text message screen
Hand a homeless man a beer - it’s what he probably wanted, anyway
Analyze the Bible as a piece of fiction for a semester after spending 8 years in Catholic school and watch your faith deteriorate
Search for morals and laugh when you can’t find them
Sit in a classroom where no one respects the professor
Or their elders as they cross the street, dodging cars
Hover over a fourth grader’s shoulder and watch him misspell “Weather.” “Snowman.” “Pineapple.” “Reach.”
Meditate to the sound of the news, bathe to a repeating record announcing the latest government budget cuts, take the sun and think about cancer
Flip through the channels until you find a sex scene, hear a curse word, see a poorly written drama on screen. Well that didn’t take long
Come home from work with an aching back ‘cause no one wants to carry their own weight. The manager sits in the back room playing with his new phone. He makes the big bucks. You’re understaffed
Ask how your best friend’s dealing with their parent’s divorce
Panic when you see the way your father scowls at your own mother. It’s only a matter of time
Listen to the next President get sworn in. Have a nightmare about nuclear weapons and a war over gasoline
Work 30 hours and get paid for a percentage of it. The rest goes to the government. You’ll get it back someday
Check your facebook
Check your facebook
Check your facebook
Count the lightbulbs in the church ceiling
Pray you’ll never end up married to the man sleeping next to you in the nude
Evaluate today’s education system
Realize the world is not what you thought it was going to be
Wish you had never opened your eyes
for the peace sign picture
Clothe
yourself in memories; strip
your way to freedom.
This is my reminder
to myself, signed with hope
that I will remember
the way I feel tonight in the
morning:
Please write about the sky
and the shadows, hands
hovering over a fickle flame;
3D stories we carved
out of the stars.
I’m sure, after a good
night’s sleep, it will
make a great poem.
It’s so strange that after all this time, I still find
myself caught up in the fact that now
it’s him when it should have been you. I don’t
know when that will go away, I just know
I can’t keep replacing you forever.
I don’t know if it’s more unfair to me or to
the boys who come and go and try to fill
the sneakers you’d leave at my front door.
He loves the kiss of pink in
the sun at 7:30
in the morning. The rays bounce off
his windshield as he whisks off back home,
ready for the day. For the
pink to burst to yellow, the haze floating
away with afternoon.
He sits
in a dimly lit room now, lamp light
lacing the side of
his face, in a daze. Chin up and
glasses bouncing off the bulb, eyes blue. I want
the 7:30 sun tattooed on
my arm. He’s extended out
his limb, rolled up
a sleeve. The bicep, his wrist, in view. I see
his veins: tangled, teal.
He wants the 7:30 sun
tattooed on his arm.
I’m falling in love with you, I say,
but it’s only in my head
so he never hears. I swallow;
the words are warm.
We are
kissing to Aerosmith
again. We are kissing
to Aerosmith and he’s pressed
me into the door.
I struggle to remember
a time
when his lips were as soft
as this. It
is bright in my room;
I close my eyes.
It is bright
in my room, I close
my eyes.
There used to be
thin ribbons that
connected you to me: delicate
strands that we broke and sewed
back up time and time
again. And now that I
have learned to live without you,
the ribbons hardened, rusted
over and are no longer
frail pink strings but
chains.
It seems like you creep
out of the woodwork each time,
and yet I am still
surprised to hear you slither
back under my skin.
No longer enchanted
yet forever connected
to you, because I told you once
that love was an eternal
thing (remember?) - you either
always will or you never
did at all - I writhe and scream
but I can’t unlink the chains.
Cold metal
grips my ankles and wrists
and I smile at the thought
of where you are now.
Losing skin pigment
is like losing a letter
in your name. You
become a fragment less
of yourself. I call
myself out on it now, nearly
a year later as
I look through the pictures and re-
discover the damage I had done
unto myself, back then.
And it’s strange to visualize
what other people’s eyes
had to hold, had to
see, had to envision
a year ago when they looked at me.
I look like I
was made of wax. And if you pulled
my cheeks, the rest
of my face would stretch with it.
The skin was tight, was
pale, yet simultaneously, frail.
I find reminiscing to be
a salient part of my growing process.
I look at the color
of my skin. It’s like I lost
and re-gained the letters of
my own name.
1.
For a while, I feared this poem
would never be written. The white
space sneered at me as I stared into its eyes, blank
and threatening. When I was lost, the words
found me quickly. So I set off and sank to hell
to meet them where we began.
2.
Outside my apartment threshold sat
two bags of trash—one fresh; the next,
three days old, housed a family of caramel
bugs. They flew
around the plastic and crawled upon the
cans and milk jugs that poked out
under the blue ties. They tickled as
they kissed and crept around my arm on the way
to the dump on
the way to my car.
3.
The seatbelt squeezed the heart inside my stomach
as memory sent me down
a set of winding roads. My head-
lights illuminated the street of Evershine,
and I swerved
past warnings of a Dead End. I had always
been here at night and this trip
was no exception, but it’s amazing:
the signs we overlook the first time.
4.
Cars
safely tucked behind garage doors; the white
mailbox standing anxious for a letter.
His bedroom window stood alone as it shined and I
stared straight at the place
that I was when my faith was shaken; the day
I could have spat in the face of the Devil
but instead, left stains on his carpet.
I wonder if he’s up and if he sees them.
I spun ‘round
the cul-de-sac; let the words
sink
into me to reassure that I was fine. You’re alive
and I’m alive.
