The Wake

You were asleep, and I lay on the couch beside you, staring at you, my brain trying to comprehend that I loved you. And for some reason I thought of a day three years ago, before I ever meet you. It was the last summer that my friends and I all lived in the town where we were raised. It was after our first year away at different universities. In church one day, Charlie saw Ahsley, still in high school, and wanted her. That was one of the last times I ever went to my parent’s church.Later in the summer, we went canoeing for Charlie’s birthday. No one was supposed to know Charlie and Ahsley were dating, so Courtney, Charlie’s best friend, and I were invited along, to cover the fact that this outing was …

Read more →

What would you do if I was hurt?
What would you do if the perpetrators believed I didn’t suffer while I was in agony?
If you could stop this pain, would you?What would you say if someone told you I was just property?
What would you do if I was wrongly imprisoned?
If you could free me, would you?How would you feel if you saw me ripped away from my mother’s side after birth?
How would you feel if I was forcefully raped?
Would you worry about me?What would you do if you saw somebody mutilate my body?
What would you do if you were told my soul purpose was to die?
Would you want to help me?What if I was beaten, kidnapped, and left to await my death?
What if my throat was …

Read more →

if revenge is a rite of passage i need you dead
just as i am dead inside you
the night bleeding like a wound
listen you don’t recognize me eyes wild as rice
bloody fingers shaped like claws at your delicate neck
our pulses thumping mutually to some ancient rhythm
my wounds are scarred tainted black and bubbly with infection
your wounds are healed with tender loving care and perfection
flawless mirrored version of me i am
ripping through precious arteries and veins
and meat and chewy fat just to get at you
damned heart pumping with wild abandon
ignore me will you and will i cease to be
the beginning of death for you is when i give you the knife
but my slow death inside this head has never meant anything…

Read more →

The hand of it that bends, hunched fish.
Kiss my sternum. Breath escapes
burning acid. Spring awaits us.
I picture your face, granules of flour smash against a light bulb, the rest is just dust. Where is the matter that makes up the current you?
This place you ought to know. My vagina feels right before the flowers bloom
A sting, a pinch
of remembrance telling me
Not to forget the time I swung on a tire swing and felt not my own presence of woman
But everything’s gift of photosynthesis.
If I could show you what the flowers do
I’d lay on my back
On the ground in the dirt
And pretend the moon was pulling a string attached to …

Read more →

Me levanto de mi cama
Cansado ya
Por no poder dormir
Y salgo a la calle vestido de tristeza
Con una cara sin afeitar
En la infinita felicidad de que
Nobody really cares about me here
No tengo asi que disimular que
Desde que tus ojos grises
Lloran en mis sueños
Llevo
Pegada
A mí
Una infinita tristeza
Que nadie comprende
Y ni siquiera el Sol está de mi parte
Ni antes
Durante mis largas horas de estudio
Ni antes
Durante mis largas horas de fiesta
Ni antes
Durante mis noches de cama y foto sensiblidad
Ni ahora
Durante mis noches de insomnio
Y así ahonda mi pena
Su resplandor tan lleno de vida
Es
A …

Read more →

How large might I say forever is from here?
How starred might the blank night be without us?When I last looked back at the river I felt its weeds at my ankles and knees.
When I took up the dim waters in my hands I feigned that interest;So, with that in mind, I demand to know where the indelible never is now?
Is this all you’ll tell me, from the bottom rung of a very high ladder: How now?How might the air breathe, how might the pine break, or the mud lift?—
The birch marks the cardinal in the crush, white on a color like that. The snow.How early the rabbits are out eating things from around the edge of car tires and trash bins.
How early and habitual they are in the …

Read more →

From the cleft of my
breast muscles
heart worms squirm
against the cool air—
swimming up like tadpoles bursting
from the hari-kari pores of the
mud toad’s back.
I detest the shocking horror
of a life within my own,
excreted merciless
to die,
a favored death
away, apart, alone,
than one allowed
within.
I run the afternoons through
corn fields,
jogging dirt packed
county roads, the sweat pours freely
from my muscles loose, my beaded
forehead burning
in the sun.
I dodge the
sink-holes, washboard tracks
and road kill, turtles cracking shell—
a dark red spot where the wheel
came and went
and left a bleeding
sun-dried wound.
I shake the thought,
and head for home, the dew dust
cooling on my arms,
I run the …

Read more →

Passed the market today.
Lettuce, milk, tofu
Mid February - it’s raining, filthy snow.
Dabs of drab left over grass
Grey splotched twigs, perfect slush.
Perfect wakes of half-froze
Water nip my pants, threads trailing.
The almost liquid like slush,
wears a cape like the trees and shrouds
its green vibrancy like a boxelder’s insensitive tans.
It is my shoelaces, my mind
that feels only slush
apparitions and capes.There is the couch.
Stale cigarettes and the absence of oranges, the taste
of one too many chocolates.Beneath the snow were scraps of chalk-marred cardboard, ruffled feathers,
bleeding headlines.
Our breath, the unusual air.
The sky was like bleached tin foil, soaking for days.Stepping between the cracks feeling the coarse brown bag.
Slush and shoelaces Yes. I have
forgotten the rest, but the issues …

Read more →

it didn’t feel like home until i began to leave it
time leaves me behind
your answers leave me questioning
leaves were gone at last
no warm was left on gray skies
and when everything went white
it was just the time between
new places i was trying to get to
solitude weighs heavy now
can’t believe this is what i thought i wanted
just waiting for the next day
now it’s too late
only with you i want to stay
somewhere in the world at one moment
my part of the world turns to face the sun
you send me out to wander
while my mind strays
to find the thing that will take me home …

Read more →

Half by accident I hit a rabbit
Deep in the grey flesh of its thigh
With an arrow
It sat there still as if nothing had happened
Breathed a little
Its nose trembled a little too
Quiet as if in thought then it
Disappeared in a rustle of russetbrown brush
Between two oaktrees with flayed black barkMy brother said that it would crawl off to die
And I knew this as he said it
Might be killed by larger animals
Unseen
And might have a family or children to take care of
Because it was a large rabbit
Not a baby
And I stared a little while where it had been
Like staring at stars too many too bright too far
Away to see at onceAnd I had not been surprised…

Read more →

Shall I compare thee to a bad TA?
Your language is more foreign than
a fresh grad student’s from Thailand,
writing papers titled “Relevance
Logic brings Hope to Hypothetico
Deductivism” or “A Nonpsychological
Realist Conception of Linguistic Code”-Your specialization and your niche
is a nail and the consequent nailhole
into which you’ve driven it.
You and others like you have been hammering
these buildings together for so damned long,
insulating the thin walls with
all the papers you can write.While the grad student will some day lose their pay,
you have tenure; you shall until your death remain.
And as long as some minds follow your path
good students will suffer its pedantic wrath.