Hey, look at that. Something redemptive.
If Bodies Are Speaking Vessels for God, Then This Is a Poetic Conversation We Had While You Raped Me
I am a country with hands and you
are a thing with a mouth. mandy,
was it? sorry my body is a burning
home, everyone wants out or they
want a redeeming story about the
arsonist, they want to hear the
interesting parts about Iraq, not the
slow pain, only the camaraderie, but
my friends are dead and your hair is
soft. When I was young and sad and
hungry I learned how to guillotine a
tulip like you with my eyes closed.
why do you look like that, angel?
you asked for this headlessness—
your neck, a white flower waiting for
teeth. Face all wide like a teenage
girl or a deer I shot once that didn’t
die right away—Look at me, canyon
eyes, whats-her-name, Look at this
drunken palace you’ve brought me.
Look at the world I do not have,
how it does not open to me, how
your thighs are closed like a golden
challenge I have always deserved,
how your June July Calendar hips
sang to me in the hall, asked me to
choke them into a waltz. I’m here
alone and I need a friend, an arrow,
an animal to kill. for fucks sake
look alive
Chris, my name is God.
You will not remember these
moments, these death maneuvers,
these horror orchids. How the shape
of your violentmouth turned into a
kiln born inside children that I do
not have yet—Watch when you turn
my please don’t into a knotted snake
around my neck, watch how your
teeth puncture my Every Morning,
the residual memorial of my body.
My please don’t sits cross-legged in
an underwater arcade, slurred—but
Chris, know that they hear this
please don’t in infinite heavens.
Could you bring me another year? a
different body in the shape of a
red tulip field—Oh, God. This is the
part where I laugh because I can’t
scream to shatter your bed, cannot kill my
father, cannot denounce the gift of
living or break you Chris: I can only
laugh high-pitched and maniacally,
curdle inside of the coffin of my
mind, can only survive. I will
remember you for the rest of my
life. how everything is glowing
white. You will not think of me, will
give me a different name and story
and I will wear it around my neck
like a diamond noose. When I put
on my jeans quietly in the morning,
Chris, don’t
mention an animal you killed when
you were just a boy. Don’t
say that it didn’t die right away.
Depression Is Finding a Peanut Under Your Boob in the Shower, When You Don’t Remember Eating Peanuts
A hundred times I have laid in this spot
for an hour too long. Like a dead dog or an arsonist
the morning after a good burn,
still and charcoaled in a warm bed
It scares me, this thing of overstaying—
the pirated comfort in the hazard of What Happens If
What Happens If I never swallow food
again, if my collarbones collapse. If I lay here
until the moon circles again and I just pretend I’m dying.
What Happens If I run out of medication
or evaporate into the carpet or my head flies backward
I tell my therapist things like this, things like
I’ve never been so great at living,
I just repeatedly succeed at opening my eyes
after nightmares, somehow fumble into waking,
do not leave the house, somehow feed the cat
I say, no one knows how many mountains there are
in the world, do they? She says, I’m glad you’re here.
On the Way to Therapy
I am at the intersection of 116
when something completely unexpected happens:
The town next to ours is having a parade today.
I am the last car allowed to pass on the parade route
before they close the street down.
My Subaru is the most special car on earth for five minutes.
the sidewalks are packed, lined with happy children,
waving at me like I am the town princess,
like I am here on purpose
the grandparents are watching the
happy children in plaid lawn chairs
there are balloons and american flags
and joy, trail mix and freeze tag
the air is all fresh grass and dogs and friendly neighbors
talking about their kids
some people start clapping for the show to start
the marching band is playing in the distance behind me
I smile real wide and wave proudly
as if I have done something worth cheering for
Brain Conditioning
All people are complex
All people want to be loved
However, I’ve found
that simple people are a gaggle of unicorns
Who have cut their complexities in half
They still exist as their whole selves
Just maimed in sad ways
from other assholes or dads who said
You can’t be a flower
Or
Your mother was an idiot and so are you—
But maybe two simple people
who have lopped off their arms
finally feel understood
when they catch eyes across the bar
What is the loveliest form of being
and can I be that
I Washed Your Hair in the Sink
A swarm of dragonflies break themselves onto my windshield.
I, too, was in a car accident. The sky is a melon and I am a brick at high velocity. I am a murderer. Then, more bugs, their full wings, Jackson Pollocked on the glass. This is where I start crying, “No! Please! I’m sorry!” I say I’m sorry at least twenty times while crying softly and I mean it. I really do. I want to drive slowly, but I have to exist in this world and the other cars behind me will be upset. My therapist says that I need to work on balancing expectations, so I keep driving fast and continue to cry. I’m a nice girl. I used to be a dancer. Just when I feel calm, a family of five geese splayed across the highway. I remember most the feathers: dreamlike in the air, hundreds of punctured pillows, crimson feathers dancing in slow motion. This is when I pull over. I say enough.
*
In my dreams I kill my friends. These real awful, grotesque movie murders. I don’t want to be this person. Scraped Scott’s stomach with a melon baller. I don’t want to kill the bugs. The family of geese are honking, burned red into my mind. I’m a nice girl. It’s getting moon outside. I wish I could stop. What a terrorlife, what a fluke.
*
I dreamt I stabbed you, love. I dreamt I pushed you in a lake by our old house. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know where this lives in me. Did I kill the geese? Did your heart die when I left our red room? Am I henchman or pallbearer? Am I breaking too? I’m sorry I was so selfish, so reckless. I used to twirl and have a musical laugh. I dreamt I was mud, had to hide your body in the dumpster. Had to bury you quickly, was not remorseful. How many times have you died now? The sky’s electric pink, I can’t stop crying. Just once I wish I would
kill myself in my dreams, but I never do. Maybe I’m a coward. I miss dancing. Ninety miles an hour. The impact. You loved dragonflies. Tina’s body. Brittany’s ribs. Your face breaking the window. I washed your hair in the sink. I used to be a dancer. I am always a brick of feathers in my own throat, apologizing to you for the things I have done, plumes of white floating out of my mouth.
Grown
It is Summer. I am six. I accidentally swallowed
watermelon seeds in our backyard. I am sweating
in my shame. I am sure that I am pregnant.
The tree in the yard says “how pretty, how pink”
I hate pink. I hate my dad. I hate pink.
We don’t have a yard. I didn’t even eat watermelon.
I am on the playground, repeating the phrase
“just be a kid, learn how to be a kid”
Everyone I know is fascinated with the Earth.
But I don’t care if the rain makes itself again
Recess is meant for chasing possible bachelors
to evaluate whether they could be good fathers.
I am in the foreground of the backyard that we do not have
I am pulling grass from my front teeth.
When I say grass I mean I didn’t want to be kissed like that.
The garden was choking me.
Someone cut holes in my flower dress.
I am an incomplete.
ete/ete/ete
Incest is a skipping stone
Cutting me with a memory knife before bed
I am a child falling off of a bar stool
I don’t have a backyard. The garden is choking me.
Stop it. There is no garden, Mary.
I am drinking too much.
I am throwing up. I am throwing up my
Hands, I do
I do want to know how clouds are made, I like
pink and I want a yard
I tattoo flowers on my arm and I missed it all
Jesus
I missed everything.
The Good News Is You Won the Lottery, the Bad News Is the Lottery Is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
what if I told you trauma was a stalker
follows me room to room
visits
me at work, leaves
dead animals on my day planner
texts me knives, licks
my memory before I have a chance to get it right
I am on all fours digging into the carpet
learning how to make wool imprints in my kneecaps
this is how I learned to dance
with half of my body on fire
there is not enough whiskey in the world
to make any of this bearable
but i have been digging in the basement
of my trauma
trying to find a window a light
a string a sound
something that doesn’t read helpless
something that doesn’t read sad girl crying all the time
a wreck in a shower
a wet mess huddled in a bed
don’t look at me like that
like i can do better
like this sadness is a well that I jumped into on purpose
nothing is on purpose
my mania is so stupid and marvelous
it sits in a glass jar
teetering on the kitchen counter
I am always one slipped rug away from losing everything
Before
the farmer grew tomatoes and they were beautiful
they grew in the sweat of summer
the farmer loved the dirt
and she watered the plants well
the bees happily flitted around like
kids at a birthday party before social insecurity
and everyone was grateful for the rain
how it coaxed the burns of the sun
And when the farmer harvested tomatoes,
it was a red parade
she sold them in the market
and the people loved them
her children ate tomato sandwiches and stews
and she canned them for the winter
at seven o’clock the table was all green beans
from the neighboring farm
and peaches from the front yard
and there was space for everyone
and the tomatoes were honored,
and the children were happy,
and the farmer was filled to the brim with sunshine
and the sunshine loved every bit of this.
After
we eat shit
then we feel like shit
then we shit on each other
we live in shit and we drive shit cars
and then the shit cars shit on the earth
and then we treat each other like shit in our shit cars
that shit on the earth
while eating shit
and we look around our world and cry and say
wait what happened
because i hate to feel and it is all so much
and if we knew how far away we actually were
from true goodness
it would be a continent of hurt
When I Say Mental Disorder
I don’t mean
I don’t mean
Read this book
I don’t mean here is a pendulum
I don’t mean padded walls
I don’t mean try harder
I don’t mean to speak for anyone else
I mean functioning is functioning
until the day you wake up and your heart is a broken boat I mean to say I am drowning in the enormity of my own missing pieces
I mean I can’t move from this spot in the bed
I mean I can’t put on a clean shirt
I mean I was only forming brain synapses when
my brain was opened and then closed
dad’s devil
plucked the sutures like a harp
I cut holes in my own clothing
No one knew why I was an island
No one to stitch them up
I will wear all of these things with holes in them
Cut out like a map of only oceans
I don’t know if I will name it joy
the brain does not work today
because the brain does not work today
because of the brain
because of the brain
because he
I Believe You (Sixteen)
I was sixteen and had a boyfriend that was an idiot
which was okay, I was also kind of an idiot
My friend and I snuck into an army barracks late at night
She was dating an older guy who lived on the base.
She slept in his room and I became a prize.
A building of a hundred men
drenched in America and sweat.
I’m not saying the military raped me—
I’m saying I was sixteen
and I was on my period.
I’m saying I was sixteen
and I didn’t want to.
There were three wolves in the bedroom who circled me
without ever flashing their canines
(Isn’t rape funny and tragic like that,
I have to speak in metaphor in order to get it out)
In the morning I told myself that I drank too much
and that I cheated, that I was so sorry
and boys will be boys
Weaved a different story in my head
Painted it like glitter in the swamp
Forced a laugh when I said
“rough sex”
I wonder how many girls have giggled
while they were raped.
I bet a lot of them.
Sometimes when I’m washing the dishes
the hairs on my arms stand up
thought memory turns physical memory
I don’t know the science of
that kind of thing
but I feel my eyes close scared
and the movie plays and I softly say
no and I don’t
laugh uncomfortably this time
then afterward, the fury comes like a wave of ashes
and I pretend I am the biggest,
most powerful fucking phoenix
and as my hands wrap around the
coffee mug in the water
I pretend they teleport through time
and space to that night
and circle around his neck
and I say “no” a whole fuck ton louder than I did
I guess
what I’m saying is
I don’t apologize like that anymore
Years I Have Forgotten
wow look
my left hand floats through my memory
and the particles lift