Twitter Test. November 2, 2009

Testing the Twitter/ Blog connection.

Effigy (v.1). September 17, 2009

As poets, we require this:
The skull of his girlfriend
boiling in a cast iron pot,
the coed stuffed like insulation
in a classroom wall. We need
bodies, bruises apparent enough
to express what’s left obscured.
Tired, we bury each other young.
Surprise fails us. Nevertheless,
- although we note the priest’s
split lip, the mark of deodarant
against the mourners’ black,
the child who [...]

Pure Air (v.2). August 1, 2009

Betray me.
Continue counting the calories in your margarita.
Carefully pull back the transparent wrap
covering your plastic tray. Its contents:
all organic, all whole-grain. Clean.
Stand before your mirror’s smeared glass,
smack your stomach into place,
pull in your ass. Carve an image
who bears her secrets privately.
Be that girl who only blinks on cue.
I’ll slip, slap you hard, hoping for [...]

Fragment (v.2). July 28, 2009

Finish with a fragment.
Claim no sense from this
sentence through structure.
Choke on the breath
you’d follow with the bright side
of this shadow.
–The better place you know exists,
the second chance I can’t know
they can’t find.–
Swallow how
you know them when I share my memories,
you feel their presence, given they’re with me.
Allow their deaths finality,
the kind it kills me to endure.
Cut apart [...]

Do Not Resuscitate (v.1). July 23, 2009

We keep injecting the distance
between June and December.
Wait long enough, I won’t remember
I’m not calling you
                                                I do
dial the phone, dig at the scab.
When you don’t answer,
I can wait another month, –
three, maybe. I can keep at bay
the way your heartbeat played
an s.o.s. against my chest, forget
the CPR I never learned.
Leaving remains the privilege
I prefer unearned. I [...]

Pure Air (v.1). June 24, 2009

You do not mean to betray me.
Yet, you continue
counting the calories in your margarita.
Carefully, you pull back the transparent wrap
covering your plastic tray. Its contents:
all organic, all whole-grain. Clean.
Standing before the mirror’s smeared glass,
you smack your stomach into place,
pull in your ass, try to carve an image
who bears every last secret privately.
Try to [...]

Malignancy (v.1). January 22, 2009

You could nickname cancer,
write letters to it in your diary,
wrap elaborately-drawn hearts around
your blended names. Nothing would change.
You could introduce it to your parents,
invite it to your prom, buy it a ring,
without changing anything,
without making it one molecule less
a tumor, its malignant weight resting
against your pulse.
Or else,
you could call me, snot-clogged sinuses
dripping, gut-ripping screams stifled
by [...]

Gravestone (v.1). January 18, 2009

You make the first tattoo
seem easy.  To mark you here,
where I question beauty, constantly,
to complicate eternally a memory
that time has simplified.  To memorialize
complexity, that struggle for beauty or a scar
I recognize and don’t regret.  To forget
the distance between your name screamed
and your name sighed.   To realize
I have only one body, and you
have just one name.

Selfish (v.2). January 8, 2009

This much must be mine,
my sister says. These eyes
must correspond with memories
I’ve known them to inform.
This heart must stoke the furnace
beneath the loves that I hold dear
and only those.
This much must be mine,
I apologize, to the child
I fathom rather than conceive.
For growth to be a victory,
every cell I feed must be my own.
I partner myself, [...]

Selfish (v.1). October 18, 2008

This much must be mine,
my sister says. These eyes
must correspond with memories
I’ve known them to inform.
This heart must stoke the furnace
beneath the loves that I hold dear
and only those.
This much must be mine,
I apologize, to the child
I fathom rather than conceive.
For growth to be a victory,
every cell I feed must be my own.
I partner myself, [...]