-ing
cw: implications of sexual trauma clench clench clench clench clench clench clench the doctor says I have to stop holding my vagina like a fist. I tell him I am a young woman: I don’t fight, I don’t have fists. I am just pursing: purse, verb, very, ladylike. e.g.: …
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the first national anthem : the last elegy
and what is our national anthem if not an elegy? we no longer carry cardamom to house parties, instead we gift the front lawn with cloves, tumbleweeding from our hands. present the open veins of sprig leaves as a peace treatise. we question every invitation with invitation; no home is …
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SHE SHARK [HOW TO CIRCLE A TANK]
Some sharks must swim, constantly, in order to breathe. That’s why, when confined, she circles the tank like a madwoman. [I go to see the shark at the aquarium, I find I am unprepared for her sadness] [How to circle a tank? Asks the she-shark, asks the soldier] A shark …
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Isolation
in my parents’ basement pretending the desk is a bar top pouring-can-into-glass acting as the girls who work the taps who are kind and smile for tips and are fragile as falling glass, smash. here i chew my finger skin and drink until i sleep because my teenage mattress in …
Read Morephoto of my grandmother climbing a fence
she wears the sky because the sky knows the distance. it is a blue cascade, blue as grief, as drowning. her hands are emaciated brown, holding her up. over the fence. over and over again, dementia takes over my grandmother. over my grandmother, dementia takes and takes and takes and …
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Are They Lisianthus?
My eighty-year-old mother says no, no, I think they just are. She doesn’t remember names, what was. Roots sunk deep, she just is. I dream of gardens: boxwood labyrinths where I might lose myself. Some place where the planted surpasses the planned. Untended blossoms become brambles. Brambly thicket, her mind. …
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Artifacts
I could tell you that I’m brave, but brave is a lie. I could tell you that I’m doing well, but that denies the very nature of loss. This is an archaeological dig, everything contained & conjured. It’s raining/blackbirds. I drag a duffel, grey, onto the porch & start …
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While He Works, the Electrician Chats
about disaster. Connections at switches twisted just a bit loose. Squirrels in the attic, sharp teeth and splintered copper. Breakers corroding themselves into spark. Outlets that smell like burning because they are. Now he’s sawing a hole in our sheetrock. Says the air behind walls can whip with current. Arcing …
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Worn
This distressed pair of cut-off shorts once belonged to my best friend’s high- school boyfriend. My favorite tank top? A t-shirt, sleeves sliced away, traded with a stranger one summer, dark of the dive bar hiding whatever we might want hidden. All of our clothes are falling apart. Did you …
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