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memento mori I.memento mori5 years ago in Philosophy & Perspectives More Like This
Death has been standing outside my house all night.
Last night I wiped my eyes against the cool glass and I watched him out the leaves of my window; watched while he circled the perimeter, his hands dancing near my rosebushes, giving light touches to the leaves and breaking them off along the neon vein lines. I touch the patches on my face and I try to make out the lines on his body: hooknose frame, dark lidded eyes, nailed mouth. The ceiling of nighttime rushed over him like a blanket and a smile, and I fell asleep with the crook of my head against the sill, images of his dead-star hands floating on my eyelashes, dripping off
i'll let you in on a secret: You suffer.i'll let you in on a secret:5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
I know you do; you know you do. I've always been here for you. I've seen you cry and I've seen you yell and mostly, I've seen you dream. I am the one pinching your lids closed, I am the one wrenching your lips open, and I am the one squeezing the tears from your drainpipe eyes.
You don't need to tell me, because I know. I have you all figured out. You're sick, you know that, and you're nearly dead, always nearly dead—but you persevere, and you hold out, and you're so beautiful, and I'm just here to h
pencils and knivesOur getting together was a roll of the tongue, a curve in my nerves.pencils and knives6 years ago in Short Stories More Like This
We played clever and intelligent and poetry-slam line break, smiled at our own pretentious predigested words, coffee and donuts and hardly a table between us. Your eyes flashed white and my smile flashed red and I pretended to be without makeup, and you, without frowns.
We discussed Small Things, work and play, and we discussed Big Things, God and philosophy. We faked thoughts and I made petty arguing comments just to sound like a brain was in my head.
It was perfect.
You said you believed God was a woman, for people are so wonderfully flawed and couldn’t only a gir
a moment of your time I am a writer because my mother says so.a moment of your time5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
I am a writer because I am teaching myself to look for my pothole blue eyes, fat stomach smile, and popped-bubblegum cheeks in mirrors, television screens, and reflective surfaces. I am a writer because one time I had an innocuous crush on my second cousin and I still cherish all of his two-line emails. I am a writer because I am the stereotypical, spoiled, overloved only child.
I am a writer because my grandfather, who
the other sondear james,the other son5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
your name means "hold the heel,"
among so many other things,
and i think i could list them:
=
dear james,
your eyes are funny. during saw v i saw your pupils
and i thought, hazel. his eyes are definitely hazel.
and they aren't: they are green-gray, they are gray,
they are tinted with blue, they are stung with brown,
but mostly, they are a soft, indecisive green, and your
lids are permanently half-closed, lazy, and you continuously
look like you may be waking up from a dream, and i am
continuously wondering if i was in it
=
dear james,
i can recite things about you.
all kinds of things. your middle name is
david.
take my hand. I.take my hand.5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
It all boils down to fear.
You just watch. Your depression, your anger, your terror: fear (manifestations of, lovers to, expectations within). I know you have these things and I know what you make of them, because no one knows you quite like I do.
You sit and you are afraid of dying and you are afraid of madness and you are afraid of losing an
anorexia nervosa. _part one a.anorexia nervosa. _part one5 years ago in Biography & Memoir More Like This
There is something you should know about me, before we begin:
I have anorexia nervosa.
b.
The denial was thick.
Anorexics, I believed, were skinny girls with even skinnier bones, combing their falling-out hair against mirrors where they appear as a sliver of a profiled coin, dying as the air beats them and hating their folded-paper bodies. Anorexics, I thought, had to be girls who achieve your standard perfect grades and are incredibly athletically-gifted, all the while going on zero calories for days at a time. Anorexics were built of disgusted strength, sickened
when jesus ate my house1. do you hate me?, she asks.when jesus ate my house5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
my legs are in my face, pressed in the
crevice, earth-break, ripping of my nose, hanging
between my eyes like an extra arm, curling
in on itself. i feel sick, dizzy; the world is
a dribbled basketball, a honeyed ham,
an empty soda bottle, a gutter and
a staircase. i could grab her face,
stretch the skin, vomit.
no, i want to say. no, no, no. please,
don't think that. why would you think
that? no. no, no, no. please, no.
never.
i sob and shake. she wracks her
brain for reasons to hate
herself. i can't respond. my mouth
slows and my head fevers, paces.
i shiver. her eyes melt.
i
for my motherYour daughter is afraid to go downstairs in her pajamas because she feels like a balloon animal inside of them. (Do not take this as an excuse to go out and buy her new ones.) Your daughter would extremely enjoy the sight of two men kissing. (In fact, your daughter is somewhat of a homophiliac.) Your daughter has only seen porn twice, but she has read porn more times than one should count. (The second time was in the corner of the screen during American Psycho; the other, on a stumbled-onto-out-of-curiosity Web site.)for my mother5 years ago in General Non-Fiction More Like This
Your daughter is nervous about a lot of things. (Including, but not limited to: drugs, tornadoes, fire, insects, heights, pai
o balmy breath "Everything became quiet. Everything was the same as always.o balmy breath4 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
'No, not everything—tomorrow you will come,' Cincinnatus said aloud, still trembling from his recent swoon. 'What shall I say to you,' he continued thinking, murmuring, shuddering. 'What will you say to me? In spite of everything I loved you, and will go on loving you—on my knees, with shoulders drawn back, showing my heels to the headsman and straining my goose neck—even then. And afterwards—perhaps most of all afterwards—I shall love you, and one day we shall have a real,
our descent into heaven1.our descent into heaven5 years ago in Socio-political More Like This
He leans in and shakes his drink, and the ice cubes rattle into each other like old brittle bones, dancing and bumping haphazardly into the other.
You have to watch the quiet ones, he tells me, taking a swig. Everyone thinks it's the noisy ones you gotta be careful of, but that's wrong. The quiet ones'll get you if you don't make sure.
I wonder if he is a loud drunk, a mean one. If he likes to hit his wife, fuck his children. If he trips up crying to himself. If he likes to dredge up and whine about every bad, black-stain memory. If he's a giggly, excitable drunk. If he'll want to dance and sing and kiss.
If I'll have to quiet him.
I.
fear of butterfliesI have discovered that I am invisible.fear of butterflies5 years ago in Philosophy & Perspectives More Like This
I think about this in the middle of a crowd. It comes into my head, a gray and blue thought, and I hesitate and stretch my forefinger out before me. I wrinkle the skin on the side of my hand and I brace my knuckles, white and red. My bones leap out of their skin and I close my eyes, so the sun is a big silver-white flattened circle on my eyelids, and inside of it, I can see spots of black and orange.
I think about once, in the fifth grade, when I heard my first curse word: shit, uttered from a mouth with fork prongs for teeth. I think about the girls in middle school who called each other whore and the
senses poemsSenses Poemssenses poems5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
1) meet it halfway
when hope finds you it is yellow,
and it is underfoot, leaves crackling
like a spine,
and the earth cries it out,
spilling it from the green-smelling
tree branches, and it is
pacing around your room, hands
quivering with prickly words and sweltering language,
exploding stars inside its mouth,
and you expect to see white and gold glitter
fall through its lips, but
there is nothing; and
when you open the door, metal in your mouth,
it turns around and reaches
for you.
2) that other organ
the bluejay hits your window with
his wings spread out, eyes open,
and you listen for the sickening
slap an
cat-burning one and a half.cat-burning5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
i cannot teach babies to speak, cannot take their lips into my fingers and impress the words upon them, cannot summon the voice with my nails and form it between my fingers like loose ripped cloth, syllables dying their tongues pink and brown as they speak until they turn white and die, legs snapping like frictionless fingers. once i close my eyes with a little palm curled around mine and i heard him, talking to me, and he said:
&
manic depressive the sky has shed its coat, blooming gray before me. someone is releasing the rain from their palms, sliding down their knuckles, melting off of their fingers. the water is clingy, and it hits the ground with a full-body slap, quivering the life out of it, sending it up to the stars. the lightning extends, three thousand arms reaching, afraid of all that it will touch. the thunder growls, a cat with its toy, a stomach that has not been fed in weeks.manic depressive5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
it cries, bleeds, a thrashing wave of terror, a living creature storming. my hands begin to shake. outside the rain whips through the screening and throws itself onto the porch, fright
anorexia nervosa. _part two o.anorexia nervosa. _part two5 years ago in Biography & Memoir More Like This
I lean back against the rim of my bed and dig my feet as far into the floor as the carpet will allow. The panic leaves me like an ocean wave, scraping up against the sand of my head and leaving me breathless. I want to hurt something. My arms settle neatly around the other, touching on my wrists, rubbing down my forearms, clenching my hands together.
Someone should have shot me as soon as I made it out of the womb, I think, and my hands settle around my neck.
p.
Sometimes, I broke.
There were two months where, every Saturday and Sunday, I had Poptarts for breakfas
you have such a pretty smilei.you have such a pretty smile5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
it has been scrawled and every letter looks like a hooked crow's talon, and i am sitting with my jeans all rolled up and my feet are made of seeds and wrinkles like protrusions of stems and dreamy roots, and i am exploding stars in my mind and they shatter like yellow confetti, slivered gold glitter, and i read so slowly like the words might escape me before i can finish, the tail-ends of ns turning into legs and the es unfurling and falling delicately away and the m scattering away like leaves coated in sulfur and membrane and silk, and on the wall is scrawled a picture, a color, that looks like this:
ii.
my stomach opened up wide
a
tonight's gift(There is glass in his arm, maybe shattered.)tonight's gift5 years ago in General Non-Fiction More Like This
I've seen him, and he doesn't look like you. Someone is playing the guitar like they are weeping and all they know how to do anymore is fiddle with strings, bring music forth from their fingers. She is turning around in the car, looking past the window, and your name is suddenly on top of her lips, dominant. You are sitting next to me and pulling pink hair from the slivers of your neck and laying them before me: here, a gift you have made, a gift you have been given.
(There is glass in his arm, maybe shattered. You reach out, your hands a sinewed layer of white glare, and you reach for the latti
your skin likes the noiseHold a mirror up to your skin.your skin likes the noise5 years ago in Philosophy & Perspectives More Like This
You will be amazed.
=
I hold my hand before my face.
"The swept up, skinny bones of birds. The corpses of pieced-together, pink ants. Shelled and filled-up cocoon bodies. Tree-branches with God's stolen skin and slabs of white, dust-bone dough. Pasted, solidified pale mucus. The wrapped and tethered, life-given joints of dolls. Limbless and pudgy sticks, fleshed-out and caved in. Matchsticks coated, rolled and thickened with skin, virgin from the tongue of fire. Shrunken and weathered poles, scarred tissue of dragon, shriveled bone, poverty-stricken and skinned-straight gemstones, broken and bended fleshy he
existentialism in heaven1. First, we have a lesson in breathing.existentialism in heaven5 years ago in Philosophy & Perspectives More Like This
(I stutter, and in the back of my head there is a slide and small children are slipping down and losing their lungs, tucking under inside of them, and I came around afterwards and picked up all their organs and buried them inside the tanbark, hid them away in a little box that only I will have, every thought they expelled with their breath and would've liked to keep, and I press my fingers down and they are gathered around me and they say st-st-stutter with their necks like paper cranes for hope and peace and a hopeful mouth. They do not love me.)
She opens up my mouth, peeling back the ridges of my
the sheep and the goatsa. I like smoke when it pushes off from the water with bendy legs, and I like to rip the faint latticework of wings off of dragonflies, and I like to paint my father's ears red when he screams at me with the skin of his taut palms and his daddy-smirk cupped in the lifelines there, and I like to eat my mother's nails while she is asleep with her eyes open and her pupils rimmed in a shortened black.the sheep and the goats5 years ago in Transgressive More Like This
I like to skin the seeping fur off of small rodents and cats with beaded noses and sweaty claws, and I like to play war with the quietest in my family telling them stories of Santa Claus and ribbon-sashes and robots and the way your stomach smiles
love + the respiratory systemyou ask me what love is as it flees from your arms like willing water tumbling down imaginary stairs, traced in the air by wings and insect feet.love + the respiratory system5 years ago in Philosophy & Perspectives More Like This
she told us she and depth perception had a falling out after the war and she has not seen it since, though every once in a while she'll catch the glint in the corners of her eyes. he hugs diabetes close to his chest and when it tries to run off, he pulls it backwards and whispers sweet words in its stilted ears, his mouth full of words and frosting.
he and resignation have been getting fancy with each other, we've seen them on his porch with their hands stacked on top of the other, like some flesh
and, well,when i look at you i think of diamonds and stuttering and hands, but please don't ask me to explain that one.and, well,4 years ago in General Non-Fiction More Like This
you know sometimes i just want to learn about you, want to learn through the way you let your fingers covet your face and the way you speak when your mouth is very wide open, want to learn favorite colors and lucky numbers and inside jokes and secrets plodding around in your skull, twiddling their thumbs, and not because i think it would explain something great about you, like opening up your palm and reading the scratchy notes left there, lines of deceit and perky thumbs, not because i think i could read the naked future and its sea
of monsters and menTime does not wait for you. He walks down the train tracks with squared shoulders and looks ahead like he is going somewhere. In his eye you can see the horizons of concrete buildings dying for a touch at the sky, raising antennas up to grasp onto God's outstretched palm. Time is the seventh grade boy in overalls who walks unfumbling along the gutter with his feet like bound rivers, and if he were to stop and smell the roses we'd all be afraid we'd have none left, sucked up his nostrils into the secret garden of his lungs. Time wears wristwatches like snakes along his arm, traveling up to find his clavicles bent out of shape with want and desof monsters and men5 years ago in Philosophy & Perspectives More Like This
Sta.sh
