to find me rigid and begin nibbling at the
drying skin of my fingertips.
Wouldn’t that be a luxury,
to not have to witness you leaving me also
to never find that you’ve slunk off to the basement,
curled up behind a box of Christmas decorations
and betrayed me with the shuttering of your heart
leaving me here,
belonging to no one
WHAT IS LEFT
(For my Grandma)
The doctor said it could be malignant
the gumball mass removed from your jawline
radiation to let it know it is not welcome back here.
And then you discover that your taste buds are a valley
of dead radio waves
not a dance to be had on your arid tongue
until, like an overlooked present found when taking down
the Christmas tree
a lucky unscathed tulip after the bomb smoke clears
one lone tower filling the silent dark with the best song—
Chocolate.
You can still taste chocolate.
You can actually only now taste chocolate
a love note from God that he sees you and he
remembers the little things
a communion in Hershey squares
breakfasts of fudge swirled, double-scooped envy
a wealthy lover buying dinner every night.
Your tongue is a golden ticket that Charlie Bucket
would run thru the streets for.
You’re pretty sure you wished for this once
in childhood at the malt shop,
which has long ago stopped being a malt shop,
when your father leaned down and told you that
you could have whichever flavor you wanted
and everything is malt shop now
because you said
Chocolate.
A LITANY ON BREATHING
For D.P.
You are mopping up your mother again
and holding your breath
You are learning how to take a punch
and holding your breath
You are not living up to your potential
You are skipping school again
You are dropping out
and holding your breath
You are broken water 3 times
First for a serious blue-eyed boy coated in apologies who
will understand all of this one day
Then to a school of angry minnows in the shape of a little brown girl
who knows too much
and whose father reminds you how to take a punch
Last to a son with moth-wing eyelashes and a mouth full of light
bulbs whose father is lost in the sofa cushions again
and you are still holding your breath
You go to work when it is dark
and come home when it is dark
and you are holding your breath
The phone is jangling, an aggressive beggar’s cup
The children have eaten the plates and filled the sink with snapping turtles
There is sand in the carpet
The windows are cracking from water pressure
and you are holding your breath
On the night you are pulled over in a swerving car
full to the roof with river water
You wish the officer could see how good you have been
at holding your breath
and holding your breath
and holding your breath
and holding
You are sure that this is the time you will turn blue
That the blood damming in your eyes will burst to hemorrhaging until it is dark
That the seams of your lungs will rip like overstuffed plastic grocery bags when your hands are already full
That you do not have one more push off from bottom left in Your concrete legs
And then, instead,
you sprout gills.
Today I am wearing your watch faces like trustier knee caps
I am eating peanut butter straight from the jar
and I am letting the rage blossom in me
like a sickness of dahlias
Later,
I will hurl a loaded dinner plate against the wall
I will name things unfair and complain to the moon
I will sneak down to the basement to eat ice cream
like the sweetest mistress
whom I was told to give up
like I wasn’t going to die a cursed man anyway.
THE BODY SONG
In the subway last spring in New York City
I heard a man playing Edith Piaf’s Je Ne Regrette Rien
on the accordion wrinkles of his aged arms
his smile so serene.
I lie in bed at night and callous my fingertips learning
this song on the guitar strings of my stretch marks.
NO ONE’S
I stand at the very edge of my yard clicking my tongue to the backs of my teeth and making low coaxing sounds in the hope that at best it is resting and at worst it is just injured, that this beckoning to the dog on the curb will stir some sign of life. The flies starting to congregate do not muster even an ear flick and I already know but I won’t step off my property line, because in this spot I cannot see the dog’s face and without seeing the dog’s face I can entertain hope. I consider the swollen belly, bloat so soon? Or was there a handful of blind possibilities also now dead?
I call my mother to ask
who one contacts to
collect no one’s dead dog.
She says that the dead dogs
she has handled have all
been her own, the ones
she has carried upstairs
when their hips got too weak
or whose mouths she has
spooned baby food into
when their kibble became
too exhausting, each one
of them ushered with
loving strokes to their loyal
and domestic fur towards
a sleepy death,
nothing so violent,
so sudden as this dog
someone hit and left on the curb
in front of my house
this dog I am trying to will the rise and fall of a flank out of,
just one shallow breath from, some flicker that I am wrong,
some sign to unglue me from this spot
and send me down to the curb,
to reach out, and have my hand met with something warm,
something I could comfort or at very least
for the ability to blink,
to turn my head, long enough for the dog to be spirited away
by some means that will allow me to believe that it got up
and
went home
where it is
loved.
WHEN WE WERE KINGS, ONE DAY
When my niece is 4 years old
she stands on her chair in a Wendy’s
to give me lessons on how to roar like a lion.
She shows me how she pulls the sound up from her feet
gnashes her teeth
a smear of ketchup turned gazelle’s blood
at the corner of her mouth
tells me, Girls can be Kings too!
She is making her fiercest lion face
when a man walks up and tells her to smile,
that she is too pretty to have her face all screwed up like that.
And she obliges,
but she does so as a lion
with still-twitching prey clamped in her jaws.
She locks eyes with him and growls until he walks away.
King of the Jungle is she.
Now my niece is 6 and skipping pizza day because she
all of a sudden worried
if she’s
thin enough to be a queen
or just pretty enough to be someone’s trophy.
The tallest girl in her class stoops
from being told to make herself smaller
smiles mouth closed to hide missing teeth,
not to show imperfection
swallows the right answers in class, not to look too smart.
She is being tamed for the poachers and I am undone.
I see you, Patriarchy.
You gas leak, you pickpocket, you wasps nest
in the attic, you virus of glass,
you hothouse minefield.
I see the 2 short years it took you to hollow her
defiance into something ungainly.
I have already spent too much of my reign
a circus act of obedience
with your head too close to my teeth.
You will not have her too.
This is the notice of your dismantling.
I will split wide the bellies of men who have
plundered us for our growl,
build stilts out of the femurs of men
who expect us to shrink for them
and stack crowns worthy of only girl kings out of the teeth
of men who tell women to smile.
We are coming for what is ours
and we all will be kings again, one day.
HOW TO EAT YOUR FEELINGS: LONELINESS
You will need:
-Your prom dress (if it still fits) or some other formal wear
-1 OkCupid account
-1 jar of Trader Joe’s Cocoa Swirl Cookie Butter
Get dressed up like it’s prom night and your whole young glamourous life is still ahead of you. Eat the cookie butter. Straight from the jar.
Surf OkCupid. Weep hard and ugly
at the options laid before you.
Pass out in your formal wear,
your face mascara streaked
and chocolate smeared.
Feeds:
That Gaping Abyss in Your Heart because
ANOTHER one of your Facebook friends just got engaged and you will likely die alone with no one noticing your body for weeks or even months because you have become somewhat of a shut-in these last couple of years, how could you possibly expect to meet anyone this way?
FORM LETTER TO MY EXES TO PREPARE THEM FOR AN ONCOMING PLAGUE OF GIRLS WHO WERE JUST SO SURE
Greetings <Enter Applicable Ex’s Name Here>
You are receiving this letter because at one point in time you dated one, Rachel C Wiley. She may or may not have told you she loved you. You may or may not have broken her heart. Regardless she at one point thought you were “the one” and the whole thing probably ended very badly.
It has come to our attention that after an accident in a lab there has been a recent outbreak of former Rachels. Writhing up thru the ground after 17 years like a swarm of fresh cicadas, covered in the dirt of heartbreaks long passed. There is a chance that one or more of these Rachels
might still think you are “the one.”
There is a chance that she thinks she can
“fix things” between you.
There is a chance she is on her way to you right now. Perhaps one has already appeared to you, in her prom dress on your parents’ lawn, or waving an outdated cellphone full of thirty-five-cent-apiece text
message love proclamations,
or stuffing small cardboard Valentine’s Day cards into a shoebox she attached to your desk at your place of employment.
Things are going to get awkward.
Should you encounter one of these shell-skinned Rachels we ask that you contact us immediately with her current whereabouts. You may approach the Rachel to try to keep her in one place but try to avoid
eye contact as these former Rachels
do take this as a sign of affection.
In the event that you have already re-rejected a Rachel and she is standing in front of your home scream singing I Have Nothing by the late great Whitney Houston* and holding up photoshopped renderings of what your children might have looked like please advise your lovely wife and children to stay indoors. The heartbroken Rachel can be lured into a shed or garage with a jar of Trader Joe’s Cocoa Swirl Cookie Butter.
Once inside you may barricade the door and contact us for removal. If your Rachel is from the early 2000s she may be soothed into an angsty vegetative state with any Fiona Apple album and a box of wine.
Finally, we cannot stress enough that the women before you do not represent the current state of Rachel C Wiley’s heart. The real-time Rachel C Wiley is, in fact, long over you.**
Kindest Regards,
The International Bureau of Unresolved Feelings
*Footnote 1: The Rachel duplicate is likely unaware of the death of Whitney Houston. Please refrain from adding this crushing blow to the bad news that you do not love her, it might be more than she can take.
**Footnote 2: Though if you are still by chance single she might be interested in seeing if any of those old feelings still exist, perhaps over dinner.
EXPECT-CUM PATRONUS
Another Climmerick
3 out of 4 women attest
for orgasms penetration is not best
with a swish and a flick
with your tongue, not your dick
you’ll be a wizard in bed
for giving good head
and shoulder above all the rest!
DRY CAKE WISHES AND TAP WATER DREAMS
On the birthday of the ex-boyfriend who told me
I was “too intense”
I wish him a lifetime swaddled in beige, skinless chicken
boiled, Kraft singles, steamed rice, and unflavored oatmeal.
I wish him a wardrobe of Polo shirts—tucked in.
I wish him sex, but only ever in the bedroom
always lights out and socks on and planned in advance.
I wish him safety scissors and mayonnaise
and the entire state of Indiana.
I wish him not exactly love but a like that could be mistaken
for love on a slightly overcast day.
I wish him slightly overcast days
and lukewarm showers, Saltine Crackers and skim milk.
I wish him a prefab house in the suburbs painted in
colors that resemble unflavored oatmeal.
Unsalted butter. One-ply toilet paper. The music
of Mumford and Sons.
A commute to work in colors that resemble unflavored
oatmeal to a job that requires him to wear polo shirts—tucked in.
I wish him a windowless office,
Plain Cheerios never Honey Nut,
turkey bacon which is neither as good as turkey nor bacon.
I wish him crustless white bread sandwiches so he may
never know that the bread saw the joyful heat of an oven.
I wish him Great Clips haircuts, half-mast erections,
and engagement photos in an apple orchard.
I wish him a wedding in a strip mall chapel wearing his
very best polo shirt—tucked in.
I wish him a wife that wears headbands for function
and never for fashion
who gives him halfhearted lube-less hand jobs and a
pair of dress socks for every anniversary.
I wish him a golden retriever that pees in the exact same
spot on the carpet—not every day
but just often enough that he forgets and steps in
it in socked feet on a Wednesday morning.
I wish a week of Wednesday Mornings.
I wish him a lifetime of safety and platitudes,
a soundtrack of florescent lights humming.
I do not wish him me any longer, though.
Never me again.
I do wish him all of the children he said
he was not sure he wanted,
including and especially a daughter, whose eyes remind
him far too
much of mine.
REJECTION #3
Dear MikeTheRaidersFan,
Thank you for your submission: I know you won’t message me back but I just wanted to say that your beautiful
but unfortunately the submission deadline for faux self-effacing reverse psychology closed in 2004 when we stopped waiting to be told we were pretty and got busy giving hand jobs to confident men.
Regretfully, you are not reading this rejection because self-fulfilling prophecy is a bitch we have drinks with every Friday during happy hour.
Good luck in finding a home for your cock.
Kindest Regards,
You Cannot Get into My Pants Without Knowing the Difference
Between Your and You’re Weekly
(A subsidiary of Nothing Is Ok, Cupid Quarterly)
JOYCE CAROL VINCENT: ILLUSIONIST
In 2003, 38-year-old Joyce Carol Vincent died in her London apartment. Her death and body went unnoticed for nearly 3 years.
There are 3 parts to every illusion.
First, the Pledge: Do you know this woman?
Have you seen her before?
She is an ordinary single woman.
She is placed in a simple home.
She lives there alone
The doors and windows all locked
Normal locks
The same as you and I have on our homes.
You can check them yourselves.
No trap doors, no smoke and mirrors.
Are you watching closely?
Have I mentioned she is alone?
Single?
Watch closely.
Second, the Turn: and just like that, one day, she is gone.
Could be anywhere,
in time you do not even notice.
And she could be everywhere.
You might try to remember when it was you saw her last.
But she is long gone without being gone
The doors and windows still locked
The same as you and I have on our homes.
You can check them yourselves.
Were you watching closely?
A large fat crow released from her palm.
Abra Cadaver.
Third, the Prestige:
The illusion is a success when they’re all asking how it’s done
A disappearing so unconcealed
An escape so mundane
Lock picker, knot worker, halter of time