#58

Did you want a bitch, or a super-heroine? Or perhaps just a mop and bucket for sticky linoleum, for hangovers that crawl into high-rise offices? Whatever it is you want or need, forget me, I’m not the “it” tagged in your game– I claim me as my own, sister to the shapeless wind which calls me away and further away still, toward the raw and permeable unknown.

#3

She thought about it at least once every night. What it would be like if he wasn’t there, if she, with delicate blankness befitting a housewife, mixed his cocktail in a new way a different way, just once, then watched him slip into an absence that didn’t require faith or tending.

#32

 Some women waited for men to light their cigarettes for them but never her— she, the one who netted her own desire, and blatantly committed a most lovely heresy by balancing a small piece of the moon on her fingertips until her cigarette torched and underscored the legend of the woman scorned as a witch by men who didn’t know what to make of unclaimed fire.

It is impossible

to live up to the lyrical,

its angelmarked

bendings of antenna,

and sonic proofs,

to nestle

in the hollows

of pitch,

half-bird, half-wraith,

attempting the almighty bait

and switch,

to con the heavens

into granting you

a seraph’s amnesty,

to sing down the stars

with a parched, mortal throat,

ambitiously widening

to swallow the sea,

or at least gag

happy

on the sea’s coral-racked

dreams

and wrecks

(how beautiful

a death

if one could taste

Atlantis

before fading

to black)

Lyricism’s

double standards,

and inordinate demands

on day to day

living,

might be best

left

to pages,

talismanic rants,

and undersea dreamverses,

where direct commands

from queenly blue stars

leave enough time

and space

to do

the goddamned

The secret to becoming

a true revolutionary,

lay yourself

out upon

the world’s limitless altar

 of secrets,

and praise

the hidden roots

of everything

you encounter

daily,

heart bared

as proof of light’s

My stubborn

when growing sawteeth

fierce as fuck

rails against

the moon

and sun

and sea

and me

bracing that

double-edged notion

to have

to hold

in trying

to shape the music

of air

into something

that leaves behind

a forget-me-not trail

of scent