Ugly Numbers

I watched you wash your hands
like it’s a delicate procedure,
you counted to twenty-five.
I said that is how old I am right now,
and that I want to die
more than you will ever know.
You added more soap,
and counted to eleven.
I said that thirty-six is an ugly number,
you agreed.

I couldn’t wait to be underneath,
with my organs rearranged
in alphabetical order.
Every room is blue, and white,
you said to think of Christmas,
because that’s how I look on the inside.

I dressed in the noisy napkin,
my evening gown,
I took my bow but the fat lady
isn’t going to sing.

The strip tease begins.
Remove my lungs, first, please,
and then my shins.
Take me apart in no sensible order.
I beg and beg until you put my
voice box beside my lungs, and when
I am almost completely dismantled,
I would remind you that I am twenty-five now,
and you would say that
I should never be thirty-six because that is
such an ugly number and
I am already ugly enough.
I agreed.

Originally published in the 2019 Poetry Marathon Anthology and in “Aurelia.”

Frore

This is the most Decembered spring,
I’ve brought my buckets and my
silk flowers to the mourning patch.
The fog rises, sure, but not at dawn,
and I am eagerly washing at nothingness
on stone.

Why do I need a place to lose you?
I could’ve built a church from the sticks you left,
the only evidence that you tried to burn beside me,
and the holes in my legs show that
I tried to stomp you out.

I was dancing something ferocious in your place,
but I got us back to green and believable, sometime
and that is where I bring the bucket—to rinse the ash
and the flowers—to make sure that I
was not responsible for winter this year.

Season’s Aggrievements

I could put a gun in my mouth
or you and all your furnishings,
hang you about my neck
like a big, dumb bird,
beak stuck open
collecting flies

I could swallow poison,
or you and all your decorations,
hang myself with your rib cage tinsel
as you put the best of me into ornaments
for the seasonal display

You choose how to lose me,
in pieces or all at once,
I could breathe in the ocean and
it would meet you in my lungs

Originally published in the 2019 FACETS at the Butler County Community College.

Teaclutter

Where is the laugh in owning so many
teacups but never owning any tea?
It’s not the absence of sugar.
It’s not the ants,
it’s your taste buds
and the time of day.

We skip Saturdays so often,
roll them up like rugs and
feed the dust through the windows,
I never asked for tea,
so why are there teacups
on my front porch
and sitting on the lawn chairs,
circling in the microwave,
hanging from the curtain rods,
filling a cavity and most of all,
cluttering up my countertops?

I still don’t have any tea.

Originally published in the 2018 FACETS at the Butler County Community College.

Sleep Tempest

In all of this, I may
have been the thunderstorm
and the best part of the rain.
The gentle roars,
the ballet of droplets,
the dim porch lights,
a cool flicker,
the strip-tease of lightning,
the sleep weather,
the gray.

Originally published in the 2017 Poetry Marathon Anthology.

a little excitement

I bought a dollar store match box,
half price because
the box had a tear in the side.
It had lost a few matches and I did
about anything to save a dollar.
I knew the first time I pulled a match out of
creased cardboard that
I had bought an extra burn.

The first stick, she was humble
the Red of her face tickled against the grain of
such a flimsy box.
I used her to light a candle,
but I know if I let the flame flicker,
she will take down my house.

That’s what happens when you
get what you asked for at night
when you are on your knees praying
for a little excitement and
just a spark enough to engulf you
and she comes to you
blending, in and bent
but better at burning
than any of the lovers
in your bed

the ash at the end of the story,
wall space and door frames
photographs and memories,
none of them of you

Originally published in the 2017 FACETS at the Butler County Community College.
 

Until I Ate the Baby’s Breath

I am Sick in my fingers and out of my mouth!
I can’t open it to foul strangers
I whisper like wolf, teeth bared.
My heart sits in my throat,
I roar and it metastasizes.
I hemorrhage
my prefrontal cortex, the abuse victim of
women on the sun!
Without shoes!
In skirts of straw and satin.
Oh, God, do they burn.
My eyes used to be blue, you know.
Until I ate the baby’s breath
Oh…. the innocence
Until I swallowed.
My eyes are green now, you know.
I am practically a snake!
And about just as good at climbing,

They fear my poison but the proper word
is venom and I do not bite
I enhance,
submerge, swallow
and singe, siren.

How Big of Us (or Cloud Conscience)

The sky is full of you and me,
and I think it’s rather big of us
to be too busy raining to matter
who we’re watering and who we’re drowning
I think it’s mighty of us to stand still
and place our droplets upon the sandy
and the snowy places without asking the feet
which weather they can weather,

I don’t feel so good about starving
out some flowers and letting the other ones
uproot in the storm,
stems and leaves carried down the drain as it were.
Others remain intact,
but still we stand.
Forgetting to consider anything
How we ever got to be clouds, I don’t know.

Fox Moon

I fell in love with a fox
while trying to find
an animal to call my body.
I was shaped like nothing but myself
and lost in it too,
geometry failed to tell me
exactly what angle
my back is supposed to be arched at
when someone told me they loved me

I fell in love with a fox once but
foxes like that get tongue-tied
and so, I spoke in a detangling voice,
I told her my favorite phase of the moon is
a waxing gibbous
and that is the phase of a fox
almost entirely there
all bright and noticed
whole enough to light your eyes in it
but still
quietly incomplete

Originally published in 2016 in a self-published collaborative anthology, Because of a Word.

No Tower

I remember the first time I was in a hallway with shrunken hips,
both my hips and those halls were white and red.
A decoration.
I remember the summer that I half disappeared,
holding tight to my bones,
so they wouldn’t press out of my aching edges.
Another girl said she’d heard a rattle, she claimed it for herself,
but I knew it was me.
I wasn’t excellent against the wind and water,
I just was. Eroded and slightly slanted. A leaning, but no tower.
No shrunken head, no voodoo doll,
Just a skinny girl with a too-big soul.

Originally published in the 2016 Poetry Marathon Anthology.

Deciding Flower

every kiss had felt like it mimicked the last,
the final
so I cherished them like the ending petal on a
deciding flower
but in my triumph, I stopped being a thing to
decide about.

A flower, nothing more than growing,
not a verdict but I got picked—plucked
but not for the sake of watching me wilt
I am preserved, now
the hands that asked me
about love-me-nots
have pressed me
into a book

Originally published in the 2016 FACETS at the Butler County Community College.

Pre-Boiled

they could call me schizophrenic
for the ways I am keeping myself
alive—I stopped being human at
two in the morning.

my voice grew hoarse from
talking myself awake
instead of counting sheep
I send them to the slaughter
instead of night sweats
I wake up soaked in memories.

I was left to boil
in a pre-rusted pan
though after I settle
I am blamed for the rust.

Eight-Legged Eviction

the only way to solve a spider problem
is to treat them with sarcasm
ask them to stay the night.
like any toddler they only ever want to do
what you don’t suggest,
they package their hurt feelings on their backs
and move to taunt the next house,
usually apologizing with bitter biting
until they lie—underboot

at least she sleeps

Some girls pave the road with
getting even but end up getting
lost,
somewhere between he deserves it
or I did
or they all had it coming
she gets it back
her heart doesn’t heal
she sleeps in sleeves bigger than emptiness
but at least she sleeps

she takes pills bigger than her eyes
and her eyes are bigger than her stomach
and her lungs are smaller than her
cigarettes

she inhales
but at least she sleeps

Originally published in the 2015 FACETS at the Butler County Community College.

The Ones Who Choose to Die

some people don’t get to choose how they die
they just choose to leave the house
fifteen minutes early to stop for a coffee
and it ends in some kind of disorganized vehicular homicide
and people lie about how great they were
on the local news station
others, they drink beverages filled with
artificial sweeteners that turn stomach aches into cancer
some women are beaten to death in countries where women are the part of the furniture
and as disposable as the trash
Some boys are thrown to war with bones between their teeth like dogs,
digging holes to bury the bones and their bodies
some people don’t get to choose how they die,
but they do not ask for more mourning
they do not require better funerals
or charity donations
screaming in their honor
for anyone who may have had
the chance to decide
how to die—
the ones who drew it
carefully with a pencil
paper free of eraser marks—
their aches are not unaccounted for
their names aren’t carved on
gravestones
in a smaller
typeface,
hoping to be read in a whisper

You are Almost a Moon

You know, she is almost a wolf for the way she loves you.
Like the moon, she cries to you.

No one considers that every wolf is in love with the moon,
but he can’t hear them calling.
His heart breaks from its emptiness,
while hers breaks from being too full.
Too full of a love that is too far to touch,
but too close to ever stop loving.

So she howls, hoping that the moon won’t set again,
but she knows that like her heart,
his light is just a loan
So she howls, hoping that the moon will love her too
and he will tell the sun to take back her light,
he would rather always be dark and always love her.
But the moon is too selfish for that.
So she howls, painting the sky with her aching.
The moon always follows her home.
She will only find bigger trees to cover the sky,
and a heavier darkness to sleep in.
Even if she’s lost without his light,
it is better than lost in it.

She will stop howling someday,
the sky will know a new empty
because she won’t fill it with her howls
and the moon will never know another like he didn’t know her.

I Know the Kind

I know the kind;
she walks about the world
all hollow and unaware
announcing her differences
like party favors
and shrugging them off
to the wind

I know the kind;
she walks with steel and iron
among others made of
precious metals and
her fists are clenched
like white angry stones

She knows the kind;
she barely sleeps because
her body is only
entirely afraid of who she is
the sun hits her as much
when she is bitter and when
she is better but
they fade into all the same feeling
turn gray
and don’t ask permission
to be bruises

Battleship

you were a rival ship,
disguised as the lighthouse.
you were too big to change shapes
but god, were you were bright enough.

I heard your slippery sirens.
I mistook your voice for guidance
and in all the time
I spent etching explanations,
I forgot the shore existed at all
I forgot that
I could stand in places without water,
or you.

Originally published in 2014 in Issues 1 and 2 of the In-Flight Literary Magazine, now defunct.