I am valued only in triptych, in tandem with someone and the services I can provide. Rolling out like the underfoot mat I so often am, belly up or arse in the air, I aim to be agreeable and end up flat on my back, fucked like a newlywed. Not enjoying it,
Read more
Editor’s note – trigger warning for discussion of sexual violence I. buckle-punctuated tenderness, steaming vodka lips press to my neck / the church spire spears swollen dawn, i cry / make you drive me home, sneak inside before my mother stirs / thank you for not making me ask twice. II. your mouth melts gold […]
Read more
Editor’s note: trigger warnings for sexual assault, suicide a college student asked me if it was true that i’d fuck him for booze; he said he knew how i liked it,
Read more
smoke the bowl. it’ll put you to sleep. you and your best friend smoke out the window in the middle of the night and you both dream that the room is on fire. you’ve started having dreams that he’s kidnapping you. they stick in the back of your head even when you’re saying i love […]
Read more
Drifting Away Numb, and I cannot use this hidden shade of blue, Evening and the noise is everything but music, Mother is screaming, and I do not live for the bible, Mother is screaming, because I do not live for the bible,
Read more
I. I used to deny it Pretend I didn’t see it And now I devour every bit of blackness I lick my fingers clean
Read more
Few things give me more anxiety than going to the dentist. The moment I walk into the office, with the high-pitched whirrs of the drill piercing my ears, my primal instincts kick in to high gear, and I have to stop myself from bolting out the door. Even as I write this, I feel a […]
Read more
Editor’s note: I’ve decided to group these two poems because they respond well to each other. Be aware that there seems to be a theme of sexual assault/abuse. Honey Honey let us take you home tonight so we can rob you of your arms and then put them on again backwards so you’ll always remember […]
Read more
The girl next to me strains as though she’s on a quest, not an elliptical. Constant sweat, an occasional groan. She keeps murmuring, “Oh God. Oh God.”
Read more
“We’re going to be man slayers,” you told me, fox eyes glimmering. We were nine, on the playground. I knew you would be, with your sharp, fast grin and trickster ways. Already you were revolutionary. You moved through the woods like a sprite daring and limber among the sweet-smelling eucalyptus as we searched for fairies […]
Read more
Inner Thighs sext: I hesitate to use the word beautifully to describe the way you open yourself like a coral-reef in bloom to me, but I’m prismatic too; I fuck you like an oil spill.
Read more
The first man to name me “goddess” was twenty-one and drunk on gin. Breath heavy with lust and booze, he told me that most nights he carved poems into the walls trying to write me alive in the room with him, so when the light hit the scrapes just right, he could catch his breath […]
Read more
While the show swells forward through its scenes— the windfall of sex, and the sudden twist ending where all good fortune is reversed—
Read more
Sometimes I swear there’s a rock in my stomach. It shakes a little when I lie on my back at night, staring up at the starburst-textured cement ceiling of my bedroom. The rock is always there, but there’s something about the time I take to fall asleep that makes it want to be known, like […]
Read more
Sometimes I sit and stare at the coils of the bunk above me tracing their weaving pattern as if they were some sort of pathetic man-made constellation. And I think of all the ridiculous ways I compare you to others.
Read more
Like all of your ex-girlfriends swirled into one The Hippie becoming the Shaking Limbed The Almost But It Never Happened becoming the Fantasy Like your mother offering you a tangerine
Read more
The first girl I ever kissed had a mouthful of luring words and veins full of Percocet. I wore the potent perfume of pineapple vodka on my breath and wilted forward into her lap, all curled up at the edges like a water-logged book. We were perched on the end of a leather couch in […]
Read more
My first crush was in love with Patrick Dempsey. So I used to watch Grey’s Anatomy so I’d have something to talk to her about.
Read more
There are thousands of poems by women who were misunderstood with fears of either becoming an old maid, or of marriage.
Read more
Alcoholic Anonymous’ Thirteen-Step Guide on How Your Addiction Destroyed Her Life: {for best results, follow the curve of the theory. trace it to the bottom of its backbone so you can find how best to hollow out her spine.} i. get a young woman. be her father. tell her she’s your sun. your stars. tell […]
Read more
Love, unfold yourself like a flower unto spring. Let the sun cradle you when you ache for your mother’s arms. Do not weep when you trace your bloodlines but find only an empty picture frame hanging in your grandmother’s house.
Read more
The sweatshirt still smells musty at the third wash and my thong still in the corner of the laundromat floor where I left it. Does spandex decompose? I didn’t like the look of someone else’s blue detergent on my red so I couldn’t own the thong after I saw it. Thongs don’t get adopted though […]
Read more
Most mornings, I wake and imagine myself lizard— nails running over rust-gray puckerings, peeling centuries blood into dust when the old skin wears too ancient I never know if I’ll emerge— sloughed-off history showing soft new smooth, breathing fresh or when my mask will slip—reveal monster underneath: past deeds etched deep within each canyon crinkle If I […]
Read more
VAGABOND CITY 