it's nighttime and all i can feel is my stomach lifting and falling with each breath. i can't see my skin but i know that my nipple would be patterned from leaning against the fabric of your jacket. it's pink and bumpy and occasionally it's darker after your touch. but i can't see it and i know it's there and would stand out in the sunlight that is coming tomorrow. an orchid that only unfolds when your finger is tapping it gently or pulling. but i can't see you and i know you're there pulling the covers softly as you turn over restless, again. everything comes in pairs and when you turn, i gently pull back hoping you'll know i'm here too John Timmons' Day 6, Susan Gibbs' Bernina, The Big Hearted Woman, Billie Willams' Her Father's Orchid, Amrita Mishra's Six.
Friday, May 27, 2011
7. all i can feel
Thursday, May 26, 2011
6. lists.
she writes down the list. again. coffe ketchup eggs toilet paper ziplocs if we are what we eat then she is emptiness. the hollow form of an empty coffee cup, grinds staring back at you, a million beady spider eyes. she cannot stop it, again, and she knows. the unending pattern of phonecalls and velcro unclenching and seatbelts pressed into her back digging rivulets of red skin the only mark of the self-inflicted cycle. phone call yelling cursing asshole bitch fuck you this is the last time then crying crying crying and a freckled shoulder surrounded by the halo of the moon and soft bite marks as he is inside her, again. but the spider eyes keep looking at her calling her name, and she cannot answer them because if she does it will all be real, for once. Dylan Ingraham's 5ive! a view above and away from all that shit, Katie Bentley's The Tenacious Reordering of the Universe, Emily Ayers' Brunch Haiku.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
5. henry
north east i looked up in the night sky and all i could see was one solitary cloud; amorphous in shape but i named it henry despite the fact that it lacked a face or any qualities lending to a human or pets' name. i watched as henry slowly dissolved, drifted apart into the millions of water droplets small particles of dust and pollen and skin and trash he was made up of, turned into what he had come from. i slowly turned my face away unable to bear the massacre any longer south west Yan Wang's 5., Kevin Calisto's Day 3, Stephen Hasting-King's no.4, Mindy Bray's Day 4.
4. ratios: self:flour::rising:
you were the one who taught me how to bake, the right combination of flour, salt, sugar, what have you. you with the pulsing veins beneath your skin, the blue rivers of red blood cells rushing along their own small superhighway. coursing through your skin. you were the one who left me here alone, to fend for myself in this garden of persons and spices and flowers and all those things that i cannot even begin to name. being alone smells like yeast warm rising in the oven. yes, just like that. we will leave so much left unsaid, like the sound of your blood moving me. it is what keeps me still, in this space. i am stuck; the dough pressed against the silver rim. i must wait, here, rising in my own private oven; until i have doubled myself, alone. Dylan Ingraham's exchanging histories, Yan Wang's 4., Steve Ersinghaus' those often chance meetings we have.
Monday, May 23, 2011
3. Thursday at Topanga
Thursday at Topanga we would sit and face each other; hard lines over cups of steaming coffee, maybe a chocolate chip cookie unwrapped next to the plate. Steaming too, of course. Recently removed from the blazing oven. But where were we? Our sad ritual, once a month where we'd pretend to know each other, dreaming of a connection lost when they invented telephones. Actually, probably when they first invented phones with flashy yellow cases, neon in their desires to pull us apart. As humans, you know. The coffee cups keep steaming, trying to give us something to talk about besides silence. This Thursday would be like every other before it, an open bracket of days unending; the cavern between our packed little hearts. Packed with stories we will never tell, tapping their aching hands against the hardened muscle walls. Clenched so no more can escape. No more than that first call, the first grasping at straws, the first time you called me (on a neon yellow phone) asking for coffee. Billie Williams' thursdays at topanga, Yan Wang's 3.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
2. re-appropriation
she's drifting along through the cracks in this universe. an eggshell of cosmos, hardened and off white in the distance an inevitable barrier she will reach someday. but for now, her feet just soar beyond the ground; appearing, disappearing in the distance. tails drifting through the clouds, contrails realized in molecules other than hydrogen+oxygen: carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and the other elements of skin. since she is soaring in the distance we must remain here, butting our heads against the exigent cage and as she leaves, we forget. slowly, we forget the fantastical, remains re-imagining the reality of our prison. it goes back to being day to day. teachers reminding us to leave our poetry in the conundrum of new oldness, images of our own with words passed down from our forefathers, forever keeping us locked in this pattern of re-appropriation and re-defining all that has come before. Yes, she is another space shuttle, another cummings setting off for that hell of a universe next door and she is her own blue dove, learning flight for the first time. Amadaun's Cracked Pearl, Beth Stone's This One Stings, Steve Ersinghaus' the poetry teacher,Susan Gibb's Freedom.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
1. a river runs through me and i cannot
a river runs through me and i cannot say no; the slim cuts holed between my limbs allow it. the box of my chest outlined in negative space, holes of collarbones, rigid in their permissive emptiness. a river runs through me and i cannot cry; tears stretched into oblong drops join its flow. swirling through my toe holes. the purple reflection of the sky cries back at me, in loops and drips passing through my calf. its shallow voice asks me why i have carved cutouts of lace doilies in my bones. a skeletoned body: white orchids of ribs blooming outward and connecting inward. a lacework of calcium hardened by the briny waters rushing on all sides, encasing. a river runs through me and i cannot explain my desire; i need its rushing and crashing and mumbling in my bone holes, moving me forward in the currents of its flow without a tumbling into the complete end of purple and drops and cavities and roaring just the nameless rush of neverending waters Inspiration from Beth Stone's Papercut, Sabin Aell's 1st Day, Carianne Mack Garside's Day 1, Steve Ersinghaus' the end of the world and the beginning of everything else.
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