What are the constructs we’re born into, and how do we conform to or evade them? How does being a woman today dictate the way we move through the world, as we’re taught from an early age how to be: to always be smiling, to have thigh gap, to be apologetic, to comply with conventional […]
Read moreblack leather boots kick fine soil down from a cliff-side perch – disperses into an ill-coloured cloud, the way my brain feels.
Read moreThey tasted open to me. Her fingers tasted open as chopped lemons; me squeezing the juice into the cuts until she says stop, it’s okay. Fill me with you instead. And I say, awesome, I’m glad you’ve agreed. Time for me. Then all the smoke blows: I every destination of direction.
Read moreOn the picnic blanket under the oak tree my father turned to me and said: “We hope you always come back here,” where the shade eases the Southern sun on our pale skin, where we sit in favor, and I felt this birthday’s finite weight: the ratio of lie to light, and the brevity of […]
Read morehair spilling / like crowfeathered blood / razor hums wiping away / ink-scared wrists and mama says / no more girl / no more woman i wake, and she is hanging by the ceiling fan / again. bloodless girl ripping/rippling apart / like still water breaking.
Read moretoday my coworker Brian touches me without my permission & I imagine rending his head from his body with my bare hands / I can blame the impulse on a customer / Joe always asks what scary thing I’ve done to myself today / I always answer in movie titles // in The Exorcism of […]
Read moreMama binds my wounds slipshod, drippy-wet, I watch crow overbalancing, crow flailing, crow falling off the wires. In the dining room, Papa rubs at the sangria stains. The guests calcify under my gaze & I trip, dissonant
Read moreBaby duck imprints a mother on the first thing he sees, would stream through a lake with a goose, bear, human single dad. Glazed-eye after- noon, red tide. Last seen
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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 […]
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Cancer We laid on our backs and pulled shapes from the sky like reading the letters out of porno magazines. You had all your vaccinations and went to Sunday school every Sunday. You memorized your catechism and realized you were witnessing an execution When I walk down the street widows throw signs warding against the […]
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I. My arms stretch to the heavens pre-destination lengthy torso stunted by chicken legs The nurse begged me stand tall; wall and back kissing; head and neck reconnecting inward like best-friend secrets. “Five and three quarters” It takes women in my family incessant earth-moon rotations for them to fall down permanently in love with the […]
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conversely she was my saturday night my bathroom stall drug the cigarettes butts on my back porch. you are my sunday morning my lipstick stained coffee mug bleary-eyed kisses that taste like toothpaste left, right, you left again. i lost all desire to be your/china/doll your sixAM/hotelroom/smoke little bitch, don’t call me ring/voicemail/ring/hangup rinse, repeat. effloresce i am full […]
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Home. Come home my love to gentle rains, where fire hearts breathe you in. walk among the feathered pines with me at your side. Be blessed by love’s tender touch swim with lost memories of days swiftly flown and scattered upon the breeze. We miss the sanctified song of your soul exalted among mere mortals. […]
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Majid from your wine-stained lips meem alif jiim daal م-ا-ج-د you print the letters on my palm and close my fist around the syllables. ت-ح-ب-ن-ش you love me like the Prophet –salaam– loved Fatima –beloved– and I love you as a brother. ت-ض-ح-ك you laugh. be my wife. و-ق-ف habibi, I […]
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Futile Morbidity I imagine my funeral to have a punch bowl of regrets and scarcity of people the place would be drab, not much different than my own life my mother would burst into tears every second or so and my sister would be handing out tissues that would end up unused I hope the […]
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california did you forget scratching off your skin on the floor of your parents’ shower, home from a chilly vacation with a warm girl? a text at three am: “I’ve peeled all my skin off do you still love me? can you still love a mess of bloody muscle, viscous trails, teeth, teeth, teeth?? things […]
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Out of ant hill, rolling over itself in unison with the white grains of sand was a green caterpillar. I’ve seen the desperate search for a home before. Reflecting off its eyes and down its cheeks hoping its tears will dampen the sand enough for a child to build him a castle. Only to have […]
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Salesclerk i feel like i am fading away everything irritates me the sound of my space bar at 2 am is my worst enemy right now and the fact that this isn’t a poem but i’m still making it look like one is making me sick to my fucking stomach i just drank a can […]
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VAGABOND CITY 