december 4, 2016: i am smoking, my lungs are leaking and my breaths are slowing and i may have taken pills but not without liquor / never with liquor. our breaths clash, like death’s cigarettes. it’s a smart kind-of self-harm. or at least that’s what i used to think. decay and destruction begin to rot […]
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When I was fourteen a blonde boy took me into a field and tried to fuck me in a hedge. It wasn’t a a suitable hedge; there were brambles everywhere. They poked at my skin, clawed at me like the boy who clawed his way up my legs. I lay there, semi-exposed in an English […]
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Time and its contradictions. Wasted time. Its dreaded passing. How can I use or save it more efficiently? Time preservationist. The soft rotted time of forest floors. Photographs and boxes of mementos. Everything is time-sensitive. I am time sensitive. One night during the first few weeks of my current relationship our watches sat side by […]
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Where are you from? Columbus, OH What are your hobbies? I’m usually creating something, photography, dance, and I’m always up for trying something new! What kind of dance have you done? I did Jazz and lyrical in high school and then I choreographed in an organization called Ayo at Cedarville University. When did you start […]
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i. your american mother will unintentionally white-wash you. when orientation for kindergarten begins, her first instinct will be to put a little ‘x’ in the box marked ‘white’ for your ethnicity because her translucent skin burns in the sun, and she forgets that yours tans. when your father weaves stories of el chupcacabra and la […]
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There really is no good time to tell your mother you’ve never liked boys. Closets do not relinquish their grips easily but I have always instinctively hated dresses. So when my mother asked me about boyfriends again as we wrenched the tails from luscious prawns and cracked their shells with our teeth, I offered the […]
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I am thawed. Deep in winter, I am warm for Emily & she knows that. The sky stays stark & she knows that as well. I am thawed & I still invite her to walk across me. She prefers the shore most days. I can only be the lake & most of my invitations aren’t […]
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your name tastes like the ocean in my mouth the highest arch of green smoothed by sun then white foam fizzing out snapping bubbles kiss my ankles you go on for miles if I think about you and nothing else I can taste you whenever I want my lungs s […]
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my twin, my twitch – prettily you demonstrate your lazy eye the rococo latticework of your scapula – you are most beautiful in braille my hammock, my summer my opium glitch, my tambourine din i’ve been cat-tongued in places you have never lived in tantrums you have never nursed you are killing me to death […]
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Sometimes I suspect I am nothing but a hotel. My mother stays in my lips. My father sleeps in my eyes. My last lover stumbles around With my flowery bathrobe flung on. Yes, there are guests lurking In every floor of this high rise, Even the uninvited ones. My ex-husband twists around my intestines. His […]
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August presses against me like something thick and heavy, sweet perfume clinging to air swollen with humidity. Thunder roiling in clouds like wet wool, apricots ripening and rotting in a blue bowl on the kitchen counter. A shimmering haze, thick enough to taste like herbs on your tongue, with bones weighty and bruised like thudding […]
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I have these memories my mother & I bleary eyed in your southern kitchen, the cicadas chorus as you offer us toast waking us jet-lagged already dressed in your coffin, that bathrobe. I don’t know if it was really there then but I dress you in it every time you are alive in my head […]
Read moreThis is an apology. I’ve been throwing my hair over my shoulders for too long. Sometimes, I remember how to be still. I’ve tried, but I don’t know how to talk about her. Last summer, my nails were short and I spoke to people about who she was. The backyard of my parent’s home and […]
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VAGABOND CITY 