a glorious fucking head fucked thing

create, squeezing through meat grinder after meat grinder

so that my raw skin may leak what they call art,

so that they may look upon my collected, sour fluids,

skim away the vitality,

leave me to deal with the remnants.

I pummel and knead the softness of my brain;

poetry is the cold grease rising to the top, jellolike,

after I have offered myself up,

green like your eyes. buttery like your hand on my ass.

nests familiarly in my palm,

weight firm and reassuring

as long as it is there.

i forget for a little while.

let my hand wander

over your clock and roses,

(they mean nothing, you were 18 and just wanted to look badass) 

trace the scar under your chin,

hook my thumb in your lower lip,

you taste smooth and nutty.  

nights with you, i ask

god to fuck me again and again.

i don’t know your last name,

but i know you like it when i call you daddy, and i know how to 

make you breathe heavy,

and my body knows how to arch up to

meet your touch.

we’re easy like this.

this is not miley cyrus’ malibu,

and believe me, Bowie is the only god

among these bones. flesh burns and they say l-ve smolders; what is it to stop from disappearing

completely? so gather your milk teeth and all the skin you’ve ever shed,

put them into ziploc baggies, label them “teeth” and “skin,”

make two small children and a leg. use spit to make them shiny and new.

breathe in and you will not smell the past.

is there not something like God in / these children that you spit on,

something like magic

in a double helix, something like good in teeth and skin?

I am ------, and will be dead at

forty two, and underwater i can almost forget the painful

familiarity of closeness.

(your father brushes hair out of your mother’s face, ketchup on his cheek moves up

and down as he speaks)

some call it l-ve but I want to turn away.

yes and no;

thank you, and fuck you!

i will not be the alaska to your miles or the rebecca to your maxim,

for this is not our malibu.

in the nondenominational chapel, / the thing with feathers

asks you to believe that / we’re taller in another dimension,

one where it is normal for the people you hold close to have purple hearts,  

but today i cannot bring myself

to / eat men like air. instead i bite my nails,

eat the parts of me they can never know.

(communion for the anxious is vore for the parvenu)

each bite brings me closer to blood and memory:

80’s new wave and paper bags and the aftertaste of kiehl’s cucumber toner,

sunsets and nav and I-95 through my fingers, hotel railings and pizza and soundcloud rap;

blood is red, blood bleeds grey.

eternal

then and Now and forever

please explain why

feelings taste like bubble gum and latex-free gloves, why they are alive and cruel and

resolve themselves into my flesh,

hum and fold as i move.

artificial words stain my mouth and rust my throat,

pineapple does not help the taste. pineapple is blind:

your tongue is a slab of meat that he must digest, the vessel is more

sinful than what it contains. move your lips

to the Pineapple Prayer, and on the moving sidewalk

beneath the v-rgin, the vessel is more

sacred than what it contains.

for this truth and maybe others,

you / hurl yourself at cars, flirt with blonde cadillacs,

play the sax, shoot up and pull the trigger for frances,

try to reject life and your body will reject you.

/ don’t let the sun blast your shadow, don’t hate the l-ve that

burns everything you know because it is

more

alive than the phantoms that sing inside of you:

will you be fish or will you be bone?

will you drown out your heartbeats?

will you hate that which gives you life?

will the cat feed on its owner when he is gone?

sarah touches her head to the floor and asks for straight A’s,

mother tightens her grip on the door frame and prays her child will return alive,

lauren says all she wants is to be pure again.

we would give anything to forget, to forget,

and to forget. our memory-ghosts do not sleep so instead we

watch the moonlight make love to the ceiling.

god wants you to get off of his front porch.

forgetting will not make you clean again your insides are slathered with hate,

we will never be clean again.

silence stains our bedsheets, forms perfect half circles under our nails,

eats us from the inside out.

we scream and shake our bags of teeth and try again.

meanwhile, little boy says to hell with that.

little boy watches deadpool and gets off on

i’ll put a bullet in your skull and fuck the brain hole,

spits death from the gap between his front teeth.

meanwhile, your gods walk on earth

they are nurturing and pretentious and everything they should be,

do lines of privilege and institutional injustice with their

platinum american expresses. you let them buy your silence

with those platinum american expresses.

now heaven only holds empty chairs, and

we have named the death rattle billy. billy visits often. billy is not

a goddamn concept and will blow your arms off for

threatening his rights.

when billy grows hands, we do not stay around to see

what happens. he tells us that we are not fucking works of art, that

we are made to be taught and touched and loved, but billy’s loving

does not feel like loving the way it’s meant to be.

today we pray to our gods but the words stick in our

mouths like sludge with sentience.

we feel inadequate and want to please, hours slip past our jelly fingers

(time is not your bitch)

we feel inadequate and want to die, ghosts weigh our

feet heavy with longing

our eyelids smolder because we are damaged. because we have forgotten.

god tells us anyway- we are not

fucking works of art, we are made to be taught and touched

and loved. we are not fucking works of art, we are made to be taught and touched

and loved. we are not fucking works of art, we are made to be taught and touched and loved.

the fire alarm goes off

i think i hear firecrackers                                                            they are gunshots

                                                                                      i text my parents goodbye

just in case.

in this universe                                                              i sit in my last period class

the bell rings, i go home

check the news (17 Florida shooter)

                                                                                                                    i say oh

mygodthis is awful.

and by awful what i really mean is seriously?not again what i really mean is

thank god that was not me.

america, do you hang your head in shame today?

birthed from the fight for representation                         your children fight to live

we have learned to state our noble causes                                in 140 characters

                                                                                   to follow fear instead of love

                                       to absorb what we are told and move on with our days.

it is so easy to forget pain and to ignore mistakes                                      we say

we are important we are needed we are too busy

we are america the great.

                                                                                                 inside, we fall apart

at a million multicolored seams clutching our death machines to our chest.

whipped unseeing into a frenzied fear, teeth bared in a protective snarl.            

reality at odds with the self

who are we?                                                                                           who am i?

what do we know?                                                                       what do i know?

what do we want?                                                                         what do i want?

we regroup, we reassess, we change, we heal, we forgive.

frosted balloons, and pink ribbons, and red cake for the blood that has not left the womb for nine months,

red for life and for pain and for lipstick,

and when the blood and the life leaves the womb it will be swaddled in soft femininity and it will feed on the teat of patriarchy. they will say you’re a sinner for letting her touch that toy truck, you’re a sinner for teaching her to defend herself, you’re a sinner for

letting her leave the house like that, but all she knows now is how to

gnaw on barbie’s head until it’s chewed and slimy with saliva. you don’t claim to be god but

you won’t bind her hands with pages from the bible.

and today it’s the second day of kindergarten. when a boy steals her unmellow yellow crayon it’s because he likes her,

and tomorrow she passes through the freudian phallic stage without losing her sense of identity, and when she’s thirteen her dad’s friend slides his hand onto her thigh under the table

keeps it there the entire dinner because he likes her, and she still

can’t smell lasagna without gagging. when she’s sixteen she lets her friend’s brother kiss her

because the boys at school call her pancake chest

his tongue tastes like an ashtray limp and slimy in her mouth, and after she brushes her teeth three times she lies in her bed and cries. God, she says,

God why am i here? and he says one day you will make a penis erect and you will know.

the next day a suit on the subway undresses her with his empty eyes,

so when the barista asks for 3.99, her number, and half of her soul she complies. splits it down the middle where the bone is and hands it over in exchange for

a soy milk latte.

by seventeen she is tired of lugging god’s most precious gift to

school and work and back so she gives it to a boy in a walmart parking lot, cuts off her hair for good measure and

now she knows. men keep her hair long for easy grip. so she goes home:

how was your day/itwasfine i’m going out/not in that you’re not/whynot (she knows whynot) puts on a potato sack, packs a suitcase full of underwires and razor blades and tweezers

throws it in the pond for when the fishes say mommy will i be pretty one day?

but when the time comes for her to jump she changes her mind and gets on a greyhound bus

to new york city, it is dark when she arrives but the streetlights

float above her head like small suns and keep her warm. she walks past painted ladies with civilized but asymmetrical briefcases, walks past people eating each other’s faces in the shadows, walks until she arrives at the last flat building plugging the holes in the sky she enters the elevator and presses the top floor.

by the time she gets to the 35th floor she has swallowed 35 advils, and when she reaches

Not Heaven she has swallowed her tongue. it smells like old spice and clementines. the angels say don’t worry, we eat out of our collarbones here; try the clouds, they’re made out of windex and taste just like tacos; love is when you shoot smoke into your brain and it cooks your heart.

she hates steak so she lets her nails grow to the floor and sacrifices herself to the newtonian universe

lets gravity lower her back down to earth, to the middle of eighth avenue where suits walk around her until someone calls 911.

the next thing she remembers is white ceiling tiles. the hush hush of voices next to her.

doctors (nearly all her bones were shattered upon impact only god knows how she survived) mom (unintelligible)

she learns to walk again, to talk again, to live again

paints her eyelids with kohl to be beautiful for herself, to be strong for herself. uses judo on anyone who dares lay a hand on her. eats lasagna every wednesday night and loves it.

by now she has developed quite the talent

swallows them dry swallows them three at once swallows them discreetly in polite company

they make her feel better safe better

camera cuts to girl with eyes squeezed shut, fingers double crossed, chanting: “i’m doing great mom the test was great mom better than last year mom i promise mom”

the chemical sweetness coats her teeth and masks the taste of the numbers

girl: always the f***ing numbers

that skitter across her tongue and once upon a time she made a game of biting down on each one before

they fell down her throat but! the

disturbing crunches like the exoskeletons of tiny bugs, rich and earthy inside

the taste was too alive for her liking and left her with cold feet

so now she lets them crawl down her esophagus and drop into the waiting mouth of Dread

girl: i haven’t tasted anything in fifteen years

Dread is a friend who gnawed away her insides long ago and now it lies at the bottom of a gaping cavity

coiled like a tapeworm distended and lazy from little white lies

swallowed dry swallowed three at once swallowed discreetly in polite company,

it chews and numbers crunch and shallow steaming breaths rise through the girl’s esophagus like an

afterthought

girl: i want to bite into a tomato. i want to get drunk on tennessee honey. i want to burn my tongue on a slice of pizza. i want to taste apples taste chocolate taste smoke taste laughter avocadoes nostalgia summer hot dogs night blood passion gummy bears. i want to taste the goddamn world.

scene: girl lying back, restrained at the ankles and wrists, full of white teeth and anticipation

girl: i want to taste the goddamn world.

in a solemn procession the suits march armed with vats of itdoesntmatter and itdoesntdefineyou

they pour the holy sludge over the girl who arches up to meet it in an image of perfect ecstasy who tastes

sunlight who screams as her skin bubbles and curls back and layers upon layers upon layers flake off

who desperately strains against the restraints, who chants like a prayer i’mdoinggreatthetestwasgreat betterthanlastyearipromise,” who arches up trying to escape the agony but there is no escaping

because it’s inside her the numbers are inside her Dread is inside her and she burns and

dissolves away because the numbers dissolve away because it does matter, because it does define her,

and she screams, and the suits keep pouring, and cameras keep rolling.

girl, smiling with black teeth: hi, i’m 93 means A means Not Good Enough, and i tosses back little white lies like amphetamines.

screen cuts to black

Thanks to the confused fear accompanying this war, the public face of terrorism is most often a vengeful jihadist, armed with a turban and a heavy accent. But according to the START Global Terrorism Database, only 2.5% of mass shootings between 1970 and 2012 were committed by Muslims. Despite this underwhelming statistic, we still stumble when it comes to acknowledging and addressing internal issues.

The growing list of casualties of a domestic nature includes Sandy Hook Elementary, the Portland train attack, Charlottesville, and most recently the shooting in Las Vegas. These events spark questions about violence from the inside. What does it mean when Americans kill other Americans? Are we willing to acknowledge and correct the flaws of our system if it means giving up certain freedoms?

Domestic terrorism is defined by the USA Patriot Act as an internal act of mass violence intended to influence and intimidate a population in the favor of an ideology. Under this definition, events such as the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting are officially considered domestic terrorism: clearly motivated by anti-abortion beliefs, the shooter killed three and injured nine. However, even in clear-cut instances such as Colorado, the general public and the media largely avoid the term “domestic terrorism.” In cases like Las Vegas, where police and investigations are still searching for answers more than two weeks after the brutal shooting in Las Vegas, the term is virtually non-existent. Instead, they give the benefit of the doubt to domestic shooters, playing the mental health card as when articles surfaced speculating about Paddock’s alleged history of mental illness.

On the other hand, the media is quick to condemn international terrorism with attention-grabbing headlines. Even the US president, reflecting the sentiments of many citizens, propagates this double standard and uses jihadist groups as scapegoats for violence in America. He is quick to denounce the “loser terrorists” and “radical islamic terrorism,” but in light of the Las Vegas shootings, skirts around any angry accusations and sends his “warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families.”

This narrow center of interest extends to the government. While numerous anti-terrorism policies directed towards Islamic threats have been implemented, steadily rising death tolls from mass shootings reflect the fact that America sorely lacks internally directed policies. Neo-nazis and the KKK are not considered terrorist groups by the TSC despite their roots of hate and unspeakable violence, roots that the US should by all means condemn. Campaigns to prevent “terrorism” are focused on keeping the big, bad Muslims out rather than addressing internal problems with comparatively easier fixes, such as more comprehensive gun control regulations. As of now, background checks only involve a 10 minutes phone conversation, and personal transactions involving weapons are virtually unregulated: it does not come as a surprise that three quarters of the guns used in mass shootings were obtained legally.

Tragedies such as Las Vegas will continue to enter and exit the public eye. In this particular instance, without an apparent motive, we cannot determine whether  or not Stephen Paddock’s meticulously planned mass murder is domestic terrorism. Michael Goodwin from the New York Times argues that America is instead left to pick up the pieces of 58 lives without any sense of closure or direction, “a bleeding wound in [our] sense of security and safety.”

However, there seems to be an obvious direction to head in: the prevention of more deaths. As of now, the American public is overly concerned with classification, looking for a neat box to fit events into: Terrorist = Muslim. Freedom = guns. America = infallible. It offers us some comfort, albeit empty, to have an indiscriminate definition of the way things are. But in reality, there is no checklist. There are no neat labels. The flaws in our system are nuanced and complicated and hard to unravel, with many factors at play that cannot all be accounted for. It is distasteful to acknowledge such problems and difficult to address them, so each time a mass murder like that in Las Vegas occurs, we mourn. We declare that we must take action. Then, our outraged proclamations are buried under grief, and sympathy, and time, until the next wave of senseless deaths.

       In the face of events such as the destruction in Puerto Rico, it is quickly becoming evident that news organizations are following a dangerous trend of reluctance to address more weighty, potentially less “interesting” humanitarian crises. A prime example is the lack of coverage on the extreme ethnic cleansing directed towards the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, the overwhelming violence buried for over three years and only just now reaching the peripheries of public consciousness: while everyone is aware of Trump’s latest screw-up, not many have heard of the plight of the Rohingya. Similarly, almost no screen time is devoted to the nearly 30 year long civil war in Uganda, the critical food shortages in west Africa, or the crippling national debt of “third-world” countries. On the other hand, events such as the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2005, or the recent Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Irma, produced countless articles and humanitarian relief movements.

      Faced with such examples, the focus of the media may seem arbitrary; however, it is in reality determined by multiple factors.

       At the most basic level, media organizations are producers within the market economy: as a response to a demand, they search for and provide novel information. In constant competition with one another, they jostle for an advantage and respond to subtle shifts in their audience. Despite journalistic ideals which hold to higher truths, news agencies ultimately search in order to sell, in order to survive, in order to search. Decisions about what to report on, therefore, are heavily influenced by the demands of the global market.

       Audiences naturally take interest in that which directly affects them. Locally and nationally relevant news stories satisfy the tendency of North Americans to focus inwards rather than outwards, and stories about Prince Harry’s latest adventures sell, so the media produces more. This mentality is evident in the case of the recent hurricanes, with news headlines dominated by stories of American people and businesses and sufferers in need of aid as opposed to the relative silence on the complete devastation of Puerto Rico: Trump picks a fight with the NFL, and, by the way, Puerto Rico is facing destruction from a hurricane as well as overwhelming economic and political instability.

       Besides relevance, alarmism and pathos also sell headlines. Body counts and starving children both do their job of satisfying our morbid curiosity about the suffering of others. Take the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2005, and similar natural disasters. Sudden and drastic, such incidents have the element of surprise and provide easy-to-capture, dramatic images that hook the attention of the audience. In contrast, humanitarian issues such as widespread poverty in Africa or Uganda’s devastating 30 year civil war are complex and dragged out, with no dramatic beginning or foreseeable end. Articles about these events can even propagate negative stereotyping, painting conflicted countries as parasitic, ignorant, and desperately in need of Western salvation.

       Obviously, the motivations of the media have many flaws, but there are also many obstacles preventing agencies from covering certain stories. Depending on the situation surrounding a crisis, it is often difficult to access enough reliable information to produce an article. Sending journalists to gather details firsthand can be costly as well as dangerous, and at times completely impossible due to governmental restrictions. Information may be also hard to obtain when an area internally suppresses or controls journalistic activity. Furthermore, the timing of a crisis in relation to other events determines the degree of coverage, as media agencies cannot report on all stories at the same time.

       The media has suffered a substantial loss- despite its ability to mobilize enormous audiences, news headlines are cluttered with trivial, downright inane articles relevant only in a national perspective and barely scratching the surface in terms of profundity. In short, the current state of media reduces devastating humanitarian issues to a body count, placed next to “Ariel Winters: Paparazzi Ruined First Day of School.” The discordance between the economic needs of media and the journalistic code of ethics creates a strange push and pull between what should be reported on and what is reported on- perspectives are constantly changing, public interest is constantly shifting, and the media shadows it all armed with a MacBook and a phone camera.

       folds toilet paper cranes at the bottom of the rabbit hole of self loathing; its hate is soft and damp and as absorbent as hamster bedding in this rabbit hole hell hole showers and fridges do not exist, only soggy cranes and desire.

       whispers iwantoutiwantoutiwantout until the letters stack themselves into a trembling ladder, neatly crams the letters back into mouth one by one until bloated with shame cries dripping tears of i can’t i don’t i won’t i’m not, gags on the bitter taste.

       lies motionless desperately trying to keep down the sour, lets sky dissolve blind eyes that see and love nothing  wastes away dreams grow teeth, devour desire devour iwantout devour tears devour sloth- then sloth is numb.

       hear the sighs rattling in skin shell until rain sounds melt toilet paper cranes fill skin shell say shhh rain sounds turn sighs into gasps for air, life giving sustaining miraculous air, and the air and the airtheairand thea irand thei ariraandohgodtheair and now

       sloth retches rancid dribbles of i can’t leak from mouth grabs its infected stomach and projectile vomits onto the cranes now toilet paper mush now bile covered toilet paper mush; heaves and heaves and heaves until only rain sounds remain.

seven letters carved to seven vicious points, taken from how to dump someone without being an ass 101 by asshole #4072,  sunken into my chest with an gruesome accuracy-

break its neck, quick and painless.

and i keep waiting for you to laugh but the silence is a knocked up teenager, three months swelling to six months, nine months, overdue- we’ve lost it all.

i’ve lost it all.

“you’re allowed to hate me.”

because clearly you’re okay, as composed as always and i hate you for it, i hate you for everything i ever liked you for.

the room is too small and your tinny voice is too far and i am seven again, pleading my mom to not leave me alone in an ocean of unfamiliar faces i am pleading again, i am desperate again, i am lost again.

“you’re still the same person i liked you for, you and your spirit and your 
fucked-up-ness. I’m telling you because i value you enough that i didn’t want to 
pretend, and i didn’t want…”

the end call icon is my red life preserver and i grasp at it as i fight going under because this cannotcannotcannot be happening and i will wake up soon

just gotta wait it out, just gotta ignore it until it goes away- my ninety-nine cent philosophy for life.

the weird thing is that i am not sad.

those seven letters have cut off circulation to my heart and i have forgotten how to feel, but there is a twig stuck in my eye so i try desperately to dislodge it the only way i know how to and i collapse against the door as heavy sobs tear me into pieces of pieces of pieces

until i am hamster bedding and a heart.

100% recycled.

used.

i am not wanted but i want so much and this unbearable yearning has turned me into every paper girl who has ever cried over a paper boy, i offered my trust up like a pig ready for slaughter, felt more than i should- thank you for stepping all over it with your stupid eyelashes and your stupid idealism and your stupid kindness.

you broke my heart.

i am mother, you are child

on the sofa folded into yourself

like the dumplings you press into being, like you are trying to make yourself small

and suddenly you are not

immortal anymore.

ii. and when you sleep

i can’t help but see the stubborn creases

at the corner of your eyes you are forever trying to erase

the stray white hairs poking through the darker ones,

you still refuse to dye your hair like the

other mothers already do. instead

you pull them out like stubborn weeds-

they don’t belong there

you are still young

thirty-five and thirty-five and thirty-five

no matter how many september seventh’s

pass.

iii. names

you are

mother when i am frustrated with you, mom

when i am around friends, mommy

when i cry over boys.

iv. please don’t ever leave (me)

how you

throw yourself around as if you’re replaceable when you’re not,

how you hurtle around

as if you’re unbreakable when you’re not,

how you scratch absentmindedly at

mosquito bites until you

bleed.

v. i am a selfish hypocrite

i grab your wrist to stop you

and have to let go-

you are thinner than i remembered

be more careful for god’s sake.

vi. our souls sing to different keys

you tell me to sit with my legs closed

i sit with my legs spread open and dare anything to happen,

you worry about me and i wish you wouldn’t because

i will always

make it out okay.

vii. and the cosmos

i was your earth you were my sun,

so bright i thought you were perfection but you were just

burning yourself up for me 

like i was your everything.

i am not your everything.

viii. on love

sometimes love becomes worry becomes suffocation becomes i can’t breathe anymore

please.

i love you.

ix. how much i cried and how much you cried

it was

good for us it was good for us now we are

off-beat,

but it is a

good sort of off-beat like we are about to careen into better things.

one day,

i will return and visit with my

children and buy you a private

jet like i always promised i would.

x. i dreamt you died and your body was on display under the buffet table

i woke up sobbing and i didn’t want to stop.

xi. and us

all i want is

to be dissolved into how you smell like

home and warmth and chanel no. 2,

just the sound of your voice makes me cry sometimes,

the world has worn down the planes of your face but i swear 

i won’t break.

xii. near sighted with a prescription of -5.25 (and astigmatism)

i get so caught up

in now and this and me,

my stomach aches folding itself over with guilt

i’m sorry that i forget.

xiii. despite everything i have ever said you will always be my hero

gather now up and press it between the pages of a book

my palms are up and open to the sky-

protect her,

protect us,