February 2012
31 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Door in the Mountain
Never ran this hard through the valley never ate so many stars
I was carrying a dead deer tied on to my neck and shoulders
deer legs hanging in front of me heavy on my chest
People are not wanting to let me in
Door in the mountain let me in
2 tags
*
I bled it. A little animal.
A kept bird in a held hand.
*
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study, nine
1.
So now, we collect nine-year-olds
to examine them, study them, liquify them and see if they still hold up
Stretch them limb to limb and memorize the angles
the way light catches on thin skin
their eyes
Bend them over, turn them round, cut off their hair and sew it back on
Will. She. Hold.
hang them in the sunshine
lay them on a beach
in the back of a car
put them on a couch and...
2 tags
I tell you this
is what I love about
America—the words it puts
in my mouth, the mouth where once
my mother rubbed
a word away with soap. The word
was cunt. She stuck that bar
of family-size in there
until there was no hole to speak of,
so she hoped.
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I loved you only with my girl-heart, the false
one that like a baby tooth lost its root and fell away.
January 2012
104 posts
2 tags
Why I'd Live in a Terrarium
How tiny I’d have to be, how
crushable, like a snail or sow bug.
And what a relief to never again
fret about the fragile sticks
and shells of things under
the weight of me—rely on giants
rather than coddle the things
my hands engulf.
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Lent
On Saturdays I drank pilfered liquor,
kissed boys in backseats, in basements
where the parents were always
out of town. Spent Sundays
penitent at mass. The slender
marble aisle. The cracked leather kneeler.
The congregation sitting and standing,
kneeling and sitting in a stuttering unison
as I replayed the rhythm
of hand on—, tongue on—,
my prayer-bent body arched
with...
1 tag
the remembering: always as careful as fitting casts on wasp’s wings
and only ever as microscopic
