on loneliness

When I was 19 and my peers started having children on purpose, it felt to me like hearing a classmate say a bad word in front of a teacher. My eyes would widen in astonishment as I considered the possibility that I would have a kid one day, probably not too far in the future. Of all the ways I’ve grown in the last 6 years, that apprehension has remained steadfast. Children are fragile and expensive. If my car broke down, I couldn’t afford to get a new one. How could I possibly afford to support a human being? To factor another mouth into the budget, two more mouths even, and one fewer paycheck. The math doesn’t work out. These are the considerations that come to mind first when I envision reproducing—the tangible and apparent limitations on my ability to be the kind of mother I’d want to be. That is what outlines and reinforces my choice to be childless. But something new has started to happen, in my daydreams. Sometimes there will be a child in them, and I am explaining to her how money works. I am talking to her about her father, dotingly, about the days before she came along. I do this in the kitchen while I sautée mushrooms, while our dog naps on the floor hoping that I drop a piece of bacon. Often they are visions of two individuals—me and her—and I have to remember to add the father in. In my unconscious imagination’s conception of motherhood, there is no father. If you want something done right, you do it yourself. I see my future offspring hazily, without too much detail, except she has brown hair and green eyes. The path to this life is unclear, like a vacation to Europe: one day, someday, when I have the money. To think of embarking on such a journey before then seems completely foolhardy and irresponsible, even though I know neither would kill me. These questions usually stay tucked away, surfacing mostly in the shower, or while driving, those daily activities that leave one briefly alone with few distractions from one’s own thoughts. They are laconic, a snapshot, yet they leave behind a strange loneliness. I stand naked under the faucet missing someone I’ve never met and hope not to meet for several years. I am filled with dread.

Samsara

The curvature of his spine is ingrained
in the muscles of my hands. I can sense
when he is ill-at-ease, and if we are
alone, I will squeeze the back of his neck.
I apply the right amount of pressure.
Sometimes I wash his hair in the shower
and I will love him until I am dead.

And if there is a soul, and if I should
reincarnate, the person I become
will love a man she cannot remember.
Her mind will be etched with his silhouette
like a shadow, scorched
into a brick wall
by a bomb.

word salad

she is made of words, and they grow around
her. plant stalks of f, syllable thickets—
heliotrope; narcissus; hydrangea

they photosynthesize. their nourishment
is light. her footprints become round vowels
sinking into the topsoil as she leaves.

she is deciduous. when winter comes
they fall from her hands and chest and face and
decompose with no regard to structure.

Codes

1.
An eye for your mouth, one for each corner.
A milky eye of mother of pearl, an eye for

style. An eye outfitted with ocular armor.
An eye for an arm. You cost

an arm and an arm. You cost me
both arms.

Fashioned from cloth, I come up
like dough. Yeast is a phoenix,

rebirthing and rebirthing and rebirthing
in warm, dark places. Place in a bowl

and let rise near the stove.
I built this nest of cinnamon and myrrh;

I waited five hundred years
to turn my body into bread.

And I count the noises crickets make
and I count your aspirations on my fingers.

And I count one, two, three, four, five, six
seven, eight, nine, ten, and I calculate,

and I convert kilometers to miles.
I learned to memorize which star is where

and in relation to what. I drew
Punnett squares and learned what chromosomes do.


2.
We grew a brood of fruit flies
in the bottles by the sink. We never

meant to. We went into battle, never
doubting we had a clear advantage.

We had the capacity for strategy.
We had a prefrontal cortex.

We had bait. We had traps. We had vinegar,
and honey, and rum. We were overrun.

Our enemies wore headphones in their bunkers.
They listened to our whispers and they listened

to our codes. Our words were prisoners
of war. Our words were spies.

I bound and gagged each syllable, and I
dressed your throat with my tourniquet mouth.

And I counted to thirty, and heard nothing
and I counted to sixty, and heard nothing

and I counted to one hundred. I gave you numbers
for morphine. I slid them under your skin

so you could sleep. I dabbed at your lips
with a rum-soaked cloth. I watched the oscillations

of your closed eyes.
Dreaming, you counted dead flies.

Tire

Tire

1. To lose interest in; encourage apathy;
to be bored by; to discontinue the expenditure
of energy toward. For example:
I am tired of picking up this mess.

Also tiresome, adj: monotonous,
dull; repeatedly and increasingly
annoying; causing weariness.

2. To wear down or deplete;
to drain; to use up all given resources,
usually through overuse:
I am too tired to give a shit.

3. To cease to be dynamic;
to draw the fun from a room;
to become a strain on others:
I am tired of you.

4. The circular covering that fits
around a wheel, providing
greater shock absorption and safety.
A necessity of transportation.

Snap

The smell of an egg frying
saturates our house. The white blinds
in the kitchen are open,
the windows raised, rare for night time.
Outside, hundreds of wet frogs can't keep still.

Right after breakfast it's time to open
presents. Glint from the icicles blinds
us worse than the sun sometimes.
My grandmother was frying
sausage upstairs with teeth like stainless steel.

To an alcoholic, time
is irrelevant. You're frying
bologna for dinner. You took down the blinds.
You told me your grandfather had a still
and made moonshine. I left the back door open.

I'm sure that if I stay still
long enough, I can project my quiet, one second at a time
to the other side of the house. My closet is open
and the orange shards of streetlight slip through my blinds.
A crash from the kitchen: a cast iron frying pan.

An egg is frying. The blinds are open.
This is the time for inaction. Be still.

elfie

You said you had to get out of the house.
I put you in the passenger seat and
bummed you as many smokes as you needed.
When we reached the interstate, you warned me,
“Don’t let this freak you out.” Face to the wind,
you screamed out all the air in your lungs, and
the cigarette smoke, and I was quiet.
Unfamiliar sounds came out of your mouth
like laughing, twisted; like the way you cry
and are brought to your knees by a punch line.
It made me nauseous. I pulled over so you
could take a piss.

One night that summer, you
sat on the trunk of my car and pressed the
lit end of your cigar into the skin
just above your left knee. The air was damp
and smelled like maduro smoke and singed hair.

You were different before the hurricane.
The water rose in the gutters and you
stayed anyway.

On the fourth of July
you took up the cans one last time and wrote
NO GODS, NO BORDERS, NO FLAGS, NO MASTERS
on a piece of plywood in the driveway.
We rigged watermelons with explosives
and chased each other down the cul-de-sac.
The pear tree in the front yard left pigeon-
feather-white blossoms all over the place.

shift

(I actually wrote this some time ago, and just realized I haven't posted it. Luckily, it's short enough to jot down from memory. It's a bit of blank verse that my poetry instructor said should have been longer, but I couldn't help it--I don't decide when they're done.)

In French, one says "clavier" and means "keyboard."
In English, "clavicle" means collarbone.
I wonder if, when one is being snapped,
it sounds like hands producing poetry.

the linguistic anomalies of south american tribes

you talk so much that most people don't notice how you never say anything. you're alive with the glory of never being called out, outspoken, speak up. don't mumble. tumble, babel, tumble. pick a language and stick with it. are you ignoring? are you flooring every new fish you fish for? complements to your wardrobe, confidence stokes your bedposts. holds your mattress off the floorboards. keeps your eyes locked on the scoreboard. five concussions? try for one more. watch your head, watch your head, watch your headboard rattle. it's still missing chunks of wood, right? in lines that would match the ones you'd find on your back if you could put your eyes in the back of your head and look down. look up "hookup" in the dictionary and rethink whether I qualify as an easy fuck.

you called me cheap. fixed up your jeep. left me alone for two months and wonder why you can't sleep.

whatsit

this is a perfect day for packing a bag and getting the hell out of dodge. the only problem is my undying need for stability / that "common-sense" my mother gave me / my superegocentricity. who needs dictionaries. who needs maps or budgets, i've never been a fan of research. my hair's still wet and my clothes are dry and it's time to take a trip. (good) college students only do (good) drugs because we're promised this other world when we get here and find out that books are just books and papers are just papers and no matter what kind of new connections you make, you're still in fucking clarksville. or chattanooga. or massachusetts. anywhere is the same as everywhere and it all periodically smells like sewage.

i guess i'm a little disillusioned.