slip off my skin and look inside do you think my bones are pretty? chalk white, moon-like, they piece my body together now that my heart has stopped pumping blood i’ve gone cold beneath the freckled constellations on my chest tie my arms up behind my head until my wrists are raw and weeping next […]
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It tastes like tin the chocolate cut with metallic tinge no tin ge I’m sorry I never told you I’m sorry I told you I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything When you kissed me all the colors drained from the room I watched them pool onto the floor and there was only you left […]
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When I was a girl I ate whole oranges The taste of sweet pulp and bitter peel like eating sunlight Before me there was Abuelo Picking grapes Before me there was Pa Picking oranges He must have laughed as he saw me The fruit of his labors in my mouth Alexandra Martinez is a […]
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i would like to sink into a hot bath the same way i melt into the early darkness that pairs with winter. sometimes i escape raw weather by going to house parties with strangers and peering through their bathroom cabinets smoking and drinking and seeping into the wallpaper like a stain from a photo that […]
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the promise land is the circle k when I need coffee the promise land is my shadow in the Arizona sun when it makes me look like the person I want to be the promise land is your face when I finally figure out what to call you its couples kissing on my Instagram feed […]
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I hope I’m around when an earthquake flips a tidal wave up toward Tsunami Lanes. Or when all the TV couples we’ve shipped get divorced, and whatever remains is dissected for our viewing pleasure. If you’re not here for this tragedy we call an after-party, why come at doors? All I’m saying is how perfect, […]
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uprooted at the bar mother takes a napkin that held silverware / now holds tooth blood mixes with tomato sauce tongue the gummy space that used to hold bone smile is unbalanced mother says I can have dessert if I let her take the other out it is not time / but I let her […]
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I am exquisite in the darkness— Never Blanche DuBois. Never so derelict, but maybe the same sickness; the same hunger for those tarantula arms. I am drowsing in phosphorescence lulled from these sinuous shores by those questions of divinity: The wound in the right side and the mirroring of fevered light. Flash cut: Streetcar reconsidered […]
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to swallow you whole. others it takes the voice of a former life. a forgotten voicemail, or an old youtube video. and maybe one day feeling my absence will leave your teeth aching, or maybe it will make you feel more christmas lights than brush fire and guilt. i think one day your name will […]
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it was always Seattle it was always in the dark our bodies in search of something a drink a dance an open doorway the four of us, one me two duos you with your pale eyes, your name I saw a love inside distantly, we four walked Seattle’s Greek row, four who would never arrive, […]
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me, my softness starts somewhere in my belly, unfolding like freshly pressed grass; it arises from somewhere you cannot reach by just the touch of my skin she, keeps tepid water cupped in her hands like kindness, adjusting to the temperature of her skin the longer she holds it close she tells me: this valerian […]
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Voices golden like my heart or wait actually my hands ready to swallow flames like hungry moths or wait actually more like a hawk, jagged insides, chemical-drift, the lisped roundness of your scoopneck soft shirt the one you wore on the roof as the moon licked your neck curled behind you like a small mammal […]
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I wish orgasm carried onto my eyelids. I wish I dreamed of rolling salt waves, pink sea, inky sky with ballpoint twinkles. Instead, left knee hooked over the side of our low mattress, I dream that I mistake watermelons for tomatoes and take the linguine off the heat too early. I crunch it at my […]
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on my morning walk I saw a man setting a small fire and I thought I could do that now that i have come home to the woods fire seems less like protest and more a friend of my dad’s now i think water might be the way to go having never lived thru war […]
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hanging out on Haiphong Street the beginning of my twenty-first year and the end of the 2016th year after death, if you believe in that sort of thing the moon has been brighter this year in an attempt to make up for all the dark the days I held a body with my body were […]
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an imagined empty room. I am surprised in a white dress, beckoning you. materialize next to me, all at once we’re in a pew, watching the organist you look at me with misty eyes. your weather implores me to stay. so I do stay. I’ll do anything to stay here with you curled up in […]
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Just before my 21st birthday, my brain is floating on less than half a glass of wine. “I’m saving the rest of the expensive stuff for myself,” my friend Mara laughs, pouring me a small taste of Barefoot before serving herself from a different bottle. I slowly nurse the rose in my fingertips. There are four of […]
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to give us this morning of shadow-cast bodies lumped under thick, stiff quilts, wooden blinds chopping winter-white sunlight up into more manageable blocks my beautiful wonder sprawled on her stomach we rinse out sticky wine glasses to later refill every flat surface covered with clay, candles and their coated holders, pencils and canvas edges, dead […]
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They come to me. Two flights up the stairs, above the kebab spot, opposite the stripped flesh the butchers. See how they run to me. A gorgeous cloud of need. I promise nothing. No refunds. Leave your guarantees at the door. Line ‘em up. I turn ‘em into water. Ever seen a man wearing hope […]
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When it is dark out, The sky closes itself like a window. I watch them Drink from the same empty stream. There will always be Smoke in the trees. We left fields and orchards untended. They withered as we slept. The birds will be dead by Spring. I will crawl Unhurt over their bodies, Only […]
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Say home. Say ablaze. Say bare womb of the loveliest girl. Say falling for that girl. Say exit wounds. Say sweet kisses and hair burning and curtains burning and flesh melting into a puddle. Baby I am just a stray god, I spend my days failing & sipping spilt milk. __ Giulia Boggio is a young […]
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At 6 PM in Tempe, I am thinking about kissing you by the tea kettle in a kitchen that smells like basil and outside the sky thinks I am too bold and she blushes all pink and pink and wine red. The air on my balcony is humming as the boys above me smoke. They […]
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Dearest, The god of my neighborhood is the abandoned grain elevator\ plunging into broken-windowed smiles north of the railroad tracks [a wasp between screen and window pane] Curved like rose petals, pieces of vodka bottles embellish the curb like spilled water [thrashing on the sill] If it could fit in an envelope, I would mail […]
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Two days after Christmas, my neighbors carry out their stiff tree like a dead body. They peer around to see if anyone is watching, then heave it into the dumpster meant for garbage, and walk away, pine needles littering the path like a trail of crumbs. The last time I saw you, promises dropped from […]
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The stars are serrated teeth that I wear as a necklace collected from all the nights that almost ate me as Cate is leaning backwards on the wooden railing calculated so her collarbone jutting into the night is a drawn arrow quivering in position. He is too high to ever notice but that’s not anyone’s […]
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aquamarine bead curtains parting in this pressure zone and basing nightly preferences on the girl with the fewest split ends. lines on the wall intersected, harsh and rebellious at paint’s fine touch like possums in the midday sun when book bags snap aloud. every bottle cap tossed aside and tucked in the folds of lifetime […]
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Veins are long lines of genes running through you, the last words of “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” in my brain tell my heart to keep pumping to my toes, she relives summers spent slumming. This is the question he should have asked his wife: How many glasses of wine before you […]
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find the scrapheap. 1998 hardtop jeep wrangler, lapis blue — more of a dirty yves klein now — but really, any old car works. tear it to pieces. scrap metal of the gods. stack armour on armour on skin. chrome grill on car door on collarbone. shred the passenger seat — remember that? where you […]
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your hair’s wet because we went night swimming the mothlight furring my forehead together and pulsing with the spectral heave of the moon these tides knowing me the way i know myself pensive and cold and slick along the insides. hoarse siren song and the fuzzy swan-curve of my neck the waves carving me into […]
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VAGABOND CITY 