August

I leave the door open.

It prefers the lack of closure,

Despises the sensation of being

Part to a whole

It prefers to swing by its hinges

And scoff at my smelly melancholy.

It creaks and mocks my old woman moth lips,

My little girl nerves with gnat-like stature,

The movements that slither slow and sag as

The daylight fades

The only real feat of this heat.

I should choose to be caught in the rain

Instead I shrink away and

Avoid touch eye contact.

Outside the wind creeps faster and howls in hot

Bursts of breath like the second orgasm

And inside I am screaming

Caught beneath

These falling trees

My bowels are twisting, begging for release from

The burn of my mouth,

This wretched thirst.

I am tired of waiting and

Tried of saying something for the sake of nothing

And tired of staying dry, so tired of

The need for perfection and disrespect for silence.

Outside the cars creep by and sigh in recognition

Of an era drawing its blinds,

The rain starts again and their headlights flicker

To life

To something bright for someone else

But me,

I am building a shell and crawling inside

Until all the trees are knocked down

In the wake of October.

Ashes,

Ashes,

We all fall around.

Lately it is consuming.

A sleep that falls hard and

slams flat into the slates of

shuttered eyelids,

they hide the choking cry

of these brief alien nights.

The onset of decay, the first leaves flee

tread lightly

and shiver, fluttering sweet to land

and lie flat, static along

those cool tiles

The only reprieve

from a summer that bleeds us out

Dry

and empties its energy like thick sewage

onto our slicked skin.

The sweat is the only reminder

we are still alive.

And dark was the night in the

suburbs, when we slid naked

through the shadows down

the stairs and inhaled the ashes

from one another's chests,

Your eyes of fire do not see into me

deep as the autumn

when you go there, go,

but I will let it go.

Tense measurements of time that

barrel into such splintered bones.

If i was pure, i would hold it close

to my chest and run with it

But I am not, I am afraid. I

will lie alone tonight and in my mind

dance

You dance

dead and hot and old and droning on

in summer,

summer of nothing, of a near birth

that shrivels in memory

out to sea tossing and wild

This cresting ache.

I have the metabolism of a bull.

My eyes harden like horns

and sharpen, then fade when

the exhaust pipe pops

and shrieks in protest of the temperature.

I put my shoes on

and trembled for the first time

my memory could touch,

but you did not come.

The walls shook

and the storm invaded

and dissipated with the sound.

49




Surely
we have created everything with fate.


On days like these,
it all falls together so effortlessly.
Days, they fall suddenly
like a grandfather's 81st birthday,
like melted cupcakes and
broken down vehicles and
sudden sex on dirty sheets,
like a whistle stop red wine and
a small puppy's subtle cry or
a 49.49 in an herb shop,
the cardinal number squared
or something with the kind of meaning
that cannot quite be grasped.

Surely there is more to this
than
a simple definition.

A small sign breathes into me,
life
a quiet and odd reminder
after months of (an endless sort of) aching
and
an unquenchable emptiness
meant to gather speed
only slows
as
I regain control.

and now
I see (clearly)

There are cycles gripping every inch
of this place.
One need not be well-versed in
the language of the divine,
a simple 49
can transform reverie into an eerie sensation
of infinite connection.

We all long to thrive
The sensation of
withering,
it gnaws our wretched bones
and we wind up
unconsciously feeding
from one another's energy,
not understanding why
sometimes
we feel so empty
so drained,
stagnant.

My father, he lives in a place
where the internet connection
fades
when the rain rolls in
from the tropics.
The heat today
is unbearably near
to my skin,
the electricity
of water and iodine combined,
static tension packed tight
pushing deeper and
embedding
like the seed of new child.

I've got shoes made of
rotted wood and nails and
my insides are curdling,
curdling.

possession

I watch the water boil
and I swallow the silence,
tuck it beneath swollen tongue
It is all so simplified
this way,
but so heavy in the night.
Books with smoke pages
and so much alone,
so solemn
a commodity
that it nearly kills itself to sell.
I'm not buying.

Shock treatment


An empty ice-less icebox
strange to taste
and a
loneliness one can only
grow to love
on such days
All this
Brittle, stilted, artificial
stuff.
Thunderous silence but
I sense it
beneath your strong,
turned back
And alongside a tumbling stomach.
Fingers which
twitch and tremble
in pockets
of gold
cold to the touch,
the lack thereof
of
of something and
Absolute blind fuming sick.
Humiliation and insulin
trances and
false post-partum depression.
I will pull your tonsils out
as you so plead
but only to trade you the ache
for a surging burn of acid
in my body
These nights, they keep
twisting me into balls and
a small, very small word before bed.

West Texas Wedding Singer


When you've been drinking
your face turns red,
cherry round and warm
And your eyes look bluer then,
your teeth stand at attention
White and endless and
fierce in the light.

This place in these days


This place is sinking quicker
than the oil can leak,
and we're all sitting pretty
until we catch the heat.
Hotter and hotter these days
and I sleep harder and rounder
only wondering how long
it can possibly go on,
washed in the fury
the horror and the sound.
The sound of voices I believe to know,
they echo and rise higher
around//
Me. These desires,
they break wild and
travel far from the places,
these places I go, I go and
grow to know and
cradle
and loathe,
These days.

I know the clouds


An orange glow is lit behind the gray
And no rain comes,
but I smell it in the distance,
screaming
And I still remember the meaning
of every formation and
coloration,
because I learned meteorology
as a child.
I wanted to chase all my fears
like tornadoes
until they spun out of control
and became obsessions,
or tore down the walls
revealing the foundation.
Sometimes
in these slow days
I like to imagine
I'd still succeed at tornado-chasing,
But most times
I just wind up cowering in my bedroom
staring at the clouds
waiting for the rain.

Wax and Wane


She was sometimes more
like a glass teapot
than an old woman,
Heat steaming and building
more and whiter,
So brittle and trembling
beneath the fluorescence
With fingers dried and
cracking,
Her fungus nails like
diseased tree bark,
Dried blood crusting and
gathering tight like
water spots beneath
Those powdery roots,
Crumbling
like the mildew of
ancient herbs.

The age in her bones
Seeps into her ovaries and
Her only companions are
her fat cats,
Wax wheezing by her side
and Wane wailing
at the front door,
Splayed across the cool tiles with
cool eyes squinted and
Begging to be let out into
the dark.

Suitcase Pop-Tarts

I can't remember how old I was

But I still had my plastic pink

Minnie Mouse suitcase

with the silver stars

and broken zipper,

but I threw a handful of pop-tarts

inside- probably the S'mores flavor-

and walked straight out the

front door.

I didn't understand

why my parents

couldn't stop yelling

at one another,

only that I hated the sounds

and surely I felt the angst

of being utterly misunderstood

and attention-starved

as most little girls do-

or at least, in one-child

"families"

when parents

are pre-divorced and

too occupied

to spoil their punkins anymore.

So I left.

I thought running away would set me

free,

that I could start over

somewhere else

and this time I had no intentions

of going to Nana's.

I just wanted to leave.

So I did.

I walked up the street

quickly enough so I could get a

head start

before my mother noticed my absence

When in reality,

my mother knew

from the moment she heard the screen door

clammer shut

what I was up to,

She just let me go

like a good mother would

surely knowing what was coming,

or maybe not.

I made it to the end of my block

and stopped

I stood there

and wondered if she had seen

my empty bed

If she had called my father

at wherever he was staying

those days,

called the police in a terror

crying over her fear.

I imagined her face

her open pores and

freshly plucked eyebrows

and I stood there for a good while,

waiting.

After what seemed an eternity-

four minutes at most-

I sat down in the pale, thin grass

of the lady with big dogs and a

front patio garden bed

and unzipped my suitcase.

The zipper got stuck

and I stuck my little hand inside,

pulled out the pop-tarts

and ate them one by one.

Then I laid down in that

dry and scratchy grass

and fell asleep.

the lost river


She drove her car into the river,
they say
one night she just lost it
got in her car and went,
smudged tears seeping into
her round cheeks like black oil
streaks burning the streets
in the heat of summer and
She was lost in its waters
like ashes of incense
and pictures of life.

She thought of her lost child,
they say
and the nights just crept on
longer and longer
until the only thoughts left were
of the days,
counted days and measured
time like a phantom
that drove her wild
drove her wild like her car
into the Blanco River.

lowercase

drink water
sleep-
for more than four hours
(for once)
run in the fresh air
get my shit together
pack
stretch
make love
swim
yoga
paint
write
READ
for leisure
(extensively)
sweat-
a lot.
these are things
I should be doing
now that I actually
have time to breathe
but instead
I'll drink a beer
and sit here
and remember everything
and be a little afraid
of what, i don't know
maybe of everything.