Poem – “Detective Work”

I was born blinking in blinding bright,

meek and morose and mortally wounded.

I have spent my entire life thereafter

blinking, trying to adjust to the light.

I had a whole puzzle splayed out before me;

the white room’s door closed until I fixed it.

But if I cannot see, how can I place things

together? What if I blink and miss a spot,

a crucial hint, the kingdom’s key? What if I

lose it in the crystal-clear carpets?

I am the princess, poised for perfection.

I have to build the palace.

So I whet my tongue and teeth on words and wonder; I get paper cuts from the stained glass walls when I shatter them with stones.

I let blood stain the looking-glass pale pink;

I build my shelter in the image of guts and glory, magnificent and mystical and mortally

wounded by the fact that red is not the

rainbow nor the full spectrum of existence.

So I try again, but with a different color.

I bleed my life into the making of a home.

But can I truly thrive upon a sacrificial pyre?

Is this just another bust for a wolf-crier?

With hands rubbed raw, sweat and salt pour into the painted patio railing. I straighten out

the horizon in its frame of the windowpane

so that the future flows into the vivacious

valley of dreaming dolls, like me, fast asleep,

aiming to ascend to the field of shining stars above their patched roofs and blotchy faces and eyes running with the rivers in the

greener grasses that make up the picket-fenced front lawns.

Poem – “Buried, Alive”

I.

I rabidly rip my skin open, hoping you’ll crawl out / but instead I bury my broken bones deeper in my damage / last September’s soil is now rusted and rained upon / devoured by dirt, I return to the maker / I relive my raw unbecoming night after night with only the stars to keep me company, but too far away to provide comfort / too distant to deliver me from damnation / I stare up at you living, in doe-eyed disbelief / How does one guide themselves through evil? / You exit the grounds of the wrongdoing, wringing your hands, viciously victorious / I choke on my own vomit / left tangled within a casket of bedsheets / you did not leave enough visible damage to warrant a proper coffin / but a tomb is a tomb as the knife blade twists in the back / a grave is a grave when the trigger finger tests its range, its rage / Death is Death even in denial / a funeral, a burial, one in the same

II.

I visited her unmarked headstone today / with my scars that stitched skin back together with cobwebbed clarity / I took the journey to her jeopardy / Jane Doe, an unnamed tragedy / but Jane Doe is still a name / I speak her voice, vehement in my empathy / I lay my chest against the growing grass, the wistful wisteria, the fleeting forget-me-nots I picked from the phantom meadow / I wonder if she knows we share a heartbeat, and that it is still going / that bruised bones still heal, even if the heavy hammer leaves a mark / that it is a calamity of the cosmos that I could not save her / but that I shall keep her under a constant cover of care; that I shall be, for her / that I shall soil myself and stain my flesh with her prison, so that she may be free to feel fully, to feel the safety stolen from her / to someday sleep comfortably at another’s side, above ground, above mountains climbed carefully / nevermore deserted / she will get all she deserves

Poem – “Dawning”

Blue-grey tired eyes opening to technicolor;

suddenly, all was clear.

I could make it through, again.

The leaves falling off the tree, bright canary

in an emerald and rust-stained sea, are a

beauty in the beginning of the end.

I could make it through, again.

A cherry blossom tree boldly blooming

in the last hours of late October,

optimistic in the face of annihilation.

I could make it through, again.

The pipes above me snore with a sizzling

sense of solitude and serenity

as I exhale the exhaust.

I could make it through, again.

I could make it through, again.

I must make it through again.

I will make it through, again.

Poem – “Rope Burn”

Rash decisions are rushing waters

through my hands; I cannot catch the

depth of my doubts or jump the double dutch to safety; instead of no, I say maybe.

I wring my hangs and loop the noose around

my neck and kneel; pray for forgiveness, not

permission, as they say.

Flashing lights blur on the highway in a heap

towards the horizon, bright as my blue eyes;

electric as the vodka buzzing down my

throat, tearing out a scream into the stars:

I do not need your permission to play the night away! –

But I could never climb monkey bars anyway; my heels hit the prickly pebbles before my palms, before my chin. I bite the serpent’s tongue and draw blood; skin scraped and scratched raw; wind-whipped whiplash whistles in my ear, hidden in my hair. This will hurt in the morning.

Poem – “Cuticles”

I rip myself from my memories. The jagged

edge where I tore away stands tall and

terrible, tender and terrifying; the violence

in being vulnerable. The tartness of victory-

wanted, so wanted, so wanted- is ringed red

and rasps roughly; ‘tis unusual, a stranger

usurping my tongue. It’s gliding against the

groove in my chipped tooth, quite uncouth.

The callus is thick in my thumb, ragged; I

run over and over it, with my fingerprints

coating the crime scene. Cut from the

corner; I am here. I am here. I am here.

Poem – “fever; biography of injury”

I spent the rising of the sun in bed after you dragged me down with the moon, taking the spoils of her harvest. There is blood on your hands and a snarl in your smirk that strikes my soul so suddenly I am all too well-aware of the sour lemon yellow blossoming on my right breast; evidence of your stay. It blends into my skin but it is not my skin. This is not the skin I’ve loved and lived and lost in; that now shudders and chills and kills any wills. These are not the same sturdy shoulders that now jump and jerk at a simple swipe; this is not my body. This is not my body! I am stark naked in the summer heat yet winter squeezes in her freeze. I am in her vice, her glare, her ice. I mutter madness. My eyes are rose and blown up with bursts; frost burns at the edges of my stretched smile. I am a martyr, now.

Poem – “October”

Autumn arrives and life once sun-kissed,

once lithe and lush, lingers in the dust.

Fields of blonde grain and gold wilt when

the light falls; leaves crushed under wheels

litter the highway. The sun fades from

freshly-cut stems that bury their stomachs

and secrets in the sand that slips through

my fingers and settles as I sleep in stone

walls and red-brick rooms. Suddenly,

the whispering wind snaps back at my

soliloquies, sharp and ready to take a stand

against my screams. Early mornings have

edges and curves turn into corners;

evenings are eager to eat me alive.

The ethereal is now existential.

I shall parry it with newborn potential.

Poem – “It’s been a long, long time”

Coming home one midsummer evening as the sun settles slowly for sleep, abreast in the band of evergreen on the horizon / dawdling in the burst, the homecoming; / your favorite slow song, a ballad, burning at both ends; / the candle wax oozing outward, but you can always quickly (quietly) clean up the mess –

And hasn’t it always been the aspiration to exist in this eternity, the beautiful era before the break? / Come warm yourself by the fire, free yourself from the chip on your shoulder chiseled in by the crisp breeze / hear the flies buzz and blink brightly, blindingly / Haven’t you always wanted this? / Haven’t you always wanted this?

Poem – “LETTER TO A BEEKEEPER”

(THIS POEM WAS WRITTEN AT A POETRY WORKSHOP RUN BY SPEAK THE WORD POETRY) (MODELED AFTER “FLOWERS” BY POET JAY BERNARD)

Will someone whisper to the bees,

hum to them hymns of harrowed hours

with fears fleeting as fallen flower

petals on the pavement?

Hum to them hymns of harrowed hours

and see their anticipated answers –

petals on the pavement

passed through the buzzing breeze between branches.

And see their anticipated answers –

a prick of the finger on a honey-dipped hairpin –

passed through the buzzing breeze between branches.

Will they be benevolent or blanch and bristle?

A prick of the finger on a honey-dipped hairpin;

an old oratorial omen of knowledge.

Will they be benevolent or blanch and bristle?

Will someone whisper to the bees?

Poem – “HOUSE / HOME / LIFE / LIVING”

(THIS POEM WAS WRITTEN AT A POETRY WORKSHOP RUN BY SPEAK THE WORD POETRY) (MODELED AFTER “THE KITCHEN” BY POET JAY BERNARD)

I went back to the living room –

                Although more living was done in the den,

                This room itself had seen life, too –

                in bookshelves packed with litanies of children’s lullabies

                and lined with legends, in the carpet on the floor wrinkled and frayed

                at the edges from a constant cover of flying feet, in the

                graciously grown-up grand piano perpetually out of tune, and in

these portraits covering the walls:

                high school graduations; my twin brother when he had short hair

                and a rare capture of my gaze not behind glasses and my baby brother

                all grown up and my parents in their two-toned finest on the precipice of their

                life together. The hallway lined with yesterday and days gone by and years’ worth 

of memories looking down on me, knowing who I’ve become. I wonder

                if they are pleased with me as they watch me open

the door to my bedroom,

                decorated with posters and paintings and half-peeled-off stickers. As the only girl,

                I was the first to be presented with my own space. It is both a holy haven and a 

speck on the horizon, far from the mainland and mired in memory.

I will be this for my loved ones:

                one foot grounded in the golden old and one galloping into the new.

                Someone to spend spans of solitude with and to repeatedly return to.