Night Out
I told him lots of things about myself that my favorite book is Anna Karenina
that I believe in God and don’t remember anything from my childhood talked about whatever and he found a way to put a hand on my inner thigh I might have gotten closer to him I honestly don’t know we were sitting on the same side of the booth I made a bunch of jokes about how my dad’s going to AA again asked for a Modelo because I heard it’s pretty sexy when a girl drinks beer
played pool got blue chalk on my teeth thought about my ex boyfriend how I loved him in that way that makes it hard to eat how he liked me starving always forget how long I spent gnawing but where the fuck is my lighter it was in my pocket like two seconds ago I’ve been trying to stop smoking so much Spirit in my mouth and this guy from NYU doesn’t really care
I don’t really care either I just wanted to let someone touch me
wanted his hand on my lower back.
A Good Day
Bullet hole in the back of the head,
I open your mouth to look through the wound
like a telescope It’s all so clear now:
Yes, the fog was crawling up the hill
and a mossy rabbit jumped
across the stream, into the field.
Yes, the lightning was purple before the thunder
crumpled in my ears,
brightening the room,
veins in the air.
Yes, your death was just a coldness against my hands as I
held you up by the shoulders.
And yes, it really is quite sad,
you thought you were going to have such a good day.
Fishkill
I think lots of things about me have grown larger,
mainly my body, my unkempt figure,
the lemony murmur at the back of my neck,
and the cavities of my bones, scraped hollow,
are now pitch dark.
It bleats in fear–
the meat of me, failing.
You’ve heard of flightless fish that get
flung out of the water for wanting something special;
you’ve seen the screwdriver hit the first eye,
burgundy blood reshaping the tide,
watched tactless hands re-stab to puncture
the brain housed somewhere between
twin corneas.
He let it squirm and bleed and flap it’s rear-wing,
watched it sputter–moving like it didn’t want to die.
If only he had hit it on its side,
been more deliberate,
he would have killed the fish,
the flame would have bucked eastward,
I would have stayed silent as I watched him aim
at the small stolen thing near his feet.
I find myself searching for a formless future
only to look back at myself and find my present
mutilated by small bruises,
hornets in rose bushes–like the one that stung my Auntie
who just did not know simple,
careless things like
which side of the scythe reaps the grass,
which faucet provides warm water.
I mean,
you saw the scales in his teeth,
the blood in the sand,
the hunger.
What’s not obvious?
We ate bluefish for dinner.
Benthic
Skin inside of skin–I, within I, within I,
rings in the center bone
old thoughts written into the muscle.
Towel yourself off when you get back to shore
but hours later you’re still covered in lake spit.
Months later you remember looking at him through
green murk, you still feel it on the skin inside your skin.
4 pm light tea stained on the tusk-white walls
cut into window squares, pale forehead nearing orange.
Palm pressed hard to get a smile, your skin caved in,
a sunken stomach full of freshwater pearls [barnacle beauty
Freak/blood change
oyster/egg bapt-abysmal; re-dunking of the hair under crashing rain residuals.
It’s ridiculous, the desperate tread of feet glancing the muddy shallows.
Seasalt yolk washed through the river
disappearing yellow center with the splash of hardened ovarian pebbles.
Back covered in a brackish convergence, your skin a fossilized speckle you appear first as a shell
can’t tell how tough.
Cascading cough of burning brine you still feel it on the skin inside your skin
You remember speaking to a blithe devil near the stream behind the house still spit pooling under your tongue.
One day you sit down with your mom and scoop out
a handful of stomach parts of you clatter to the
ground you ask do I smell like an oyster
all cracked open and spilling on the floor you are so
unforgiven. I know exactly what parts of you are eaten.
[untitled]
I thought you wanted to take me
to the river but I was wrong
that’s okay I’ll get over it one day.
