there’s a quiet rage looped around my neck— i’ve been a cowering dog, snarling at impermanence. at night i hide under lamplight from the three knocks on my wall. i cover my nose to ward off phantom roses—i pierce papers with unforgiving black ink and hope something stays… i wanted
Every day my body wears me and I am worn out by its weight, by its incessant need to be real. I am a girl half-seeing and half-seething, kneading my cheeks, grabbing fistfuls of my back and trying desperately to recall the conversion rate from loose flesh
In Kerala, there are no boats, no palms, drupes, canals or streams — only those who build and tether their faith in kettuvallam dreams. My hands are anchors: I smother turmeric on sacred snake groves. Come, Nagaraja. Come, Vishnu— and station in her craggy coves. I pray softly,
Lysol. Old lint. Sterile doorknobs. I’ll be here, in this corner, licking the smell of madness from my wounds, forever. I hang immobile, suspended in air halfway between insanity and moonlight, listening to the step-steps of the woman who will take my dulled pencils away from me. I don’t tell
“Space is only noise if you can see” –Nicolas Jaar a lake is strung through with braided wire fence posts trail placidly like dead fingers participating in their own wake seventeen-year cicadas stir in the thorn a wet season’s parasite load and the pack beast stops eating exposed wires in
in the Easter- yellow-tiled bathroom of our one room three month lease he tells me while brushing his teeth about how his grand- parents honeymooned here (converted motel) (Birmingham Alabama) (Big City South) (view of the parking lot) I think of their first-time missionary and wonder if it hurt or
Every letter in my mailbox is addressed to the previous owner of the house. Every tree on the property has chosen to branch in high places, providing no opportunities for even the most industrious of climbers. My neighbors are building something in their backyard; it is tall and casts its
if you split your tongue down the middle & tied the halves together if you sliced the floral tattoo from your thigh & dried it on the kitchen counter if if if you were anyone other than who you are right now would you have shoulder-warm seaspray or
