The 3-year holding of breath
Before they discovered her remains.
She was still infinitely alive and everywhere.
Could have been anywhere.
Do you know this woman?
Have you seen her before?
Were you watching closely?
She is an ordinary single woman
The doors and windows all locked
Normal locks
The same as you and I have on our homes
The same as I have on my home.
You can check them yourselves.
Did I mention she was alone?
Did I mention I live alone?
Will you check them yourselves?
Will you check on me?
Watch
Closely.
Please,
Don’t let me disappear
Too.
SLEEPING GIANTS
For Leo, For Myself, For Anyone who has ever been too big to be seen
There are so many stories that demand the giant must be felled
that the small are righteous and deserving of all they can
take from the massive beast
that all the golden things are up for grabs
that the riches must’ve been ill-gotten to begin with
You colossus
You behemoth
You titan
You who can shoulder the very earth
who are you to alter this narrative?
They’re already looking for ways to discredit regular survivors
You make it too easy
Your body, its own defamation
They’ll say you are too big to have been raped
That victim is not a shirt that comes in your size
They’ll laugh at the idea of you being overtaken
say you are too much mountain for anyone to move
They’ll say you have so much weight to place behind your No
say one flick of your massive wrist would’ve brought
the whole thing to a stop
They’ll say that you must have wanted it
That in fact, you are a monster of wanting
your mammoth body laid out as evidence
for the way it feasts so greedily on the space around it
They’ll say you stand a lighthouse of untruth
in search of attention
a bitter leviathan,
and anyone who toppled you earned that conquering,
that they must be a knight, an Argonaut,
a future king coming for your severed head
Your truth sounds too much like thunder
frightens the whole village
frightens them into taking up torches and pitchforks
a swarm to chase you to the edge of the cliff
a mob come to tether you to the earth to pluck out your eyes
for what they refuse to see
They’d sooner pry open your mouth for the gold fillings
than take your word
that you were but a sleeping giant
who was not awakened nor deemed worthy
for something golden as consent.
SPOILAGE
Your sweetest love asks to borrow some silence
& as if on cue all of the forgotten hurts, preserved
in previous canning seasons,
begin to erupt in the cellar.
Every lidded mouth full & pickled with insecurity gives
over to the swell of rancid things
pushed into the dark for much too long,
an exorcism of jarred ghosts,
an oozing display of fireworks coating the walls in a
layer of vinegary mistrust.
As you apologize for the noise & promise to keep this
messy doubt from sullying the peace you’ve promised
them, an especially potent wound rockets thru the floorboards
trailing a comet of sour molasses & lands
on your patient love’s lap
still whistling from the pressure.
HOW TO EAT YOUR FEELINGS: ANXIETY (FROM BEING TRAPPED IN A DEAD-END DAY JOB AND NEVER FULFILLING YOUR POTENTIAL, PROVING ALL OF THE JERKS FROM HIGH SCHOOL RIGHT)
You will need:
-To have eaten M&Ms somewhat recently
-Cleavage
When you find the errant M&M in your cleavage (because there is always at least one) consider it as you would a cyanide capsule that could end all of your suffering, right now.
Slowly.
Let the hard candy shell melt like so much
hope in a windowless office.
When it does not kill you—consider this your new lease on life. Take the rest of the day off work. Go to the park. Eat a gyro from a cart. Feel the wind in your hair and the sun on your face. Commune with nature (unless there are birds nearby. Fuck birds.)
Pretend you never have to go back to work.
Feeds:
One Cubicle-Damaged Soul.
SOLIDARITY WITH MISS COLOMBIA 2015
(after the host of the 2015 Miss Universe competition, Steve Harvey, crowned Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutiérrez, the winner in error)
And they will talk about how gracefully she stood there
while the crown was plucked from her head
just as she felt the satisfying weight of it resting on her skull
they will call her strong but she did not come here to be strong
there are means to strength that are not heartbreak
he said the universe was hers
until he said it wasn’t.
SETTLE
So maybe one day I’ll just settle
in a pastel senior citizens’ home
my life reduced to what can fit onto a dresser top,
a life raft.
Some nice man and I will bond over the side effects of
our blood pressure pills
and then just settle in together like ribs after a deep sigh.
He will absent-mindedly call me by his dead wife’s name.
I will turn down my hearing aids.
He will have the best hard candies in the whole joint.
I will quietly hope to die first so as not to be left again.
His children will politely hate me,
bringing nice though impersonal gifts at Christmas.
It’ll be fine.
Just fine.
THEY BOLT THE HEADBOARDS TO THE WALLS THESE DAYS
Last night at a Days Inn next to a highway on-ramp
in small-town Ohio we were “those people,”
the howling inconsiderates of room 126 who made
the travelers in the rooms on either side and above of us
turn their televisions up,
made the traveling businessmen uncomfortable
in their double beds
the trucker longs for someone warm
the arguing couple pause and laugh and remember when they
were “those people”
and because none of them banged on the wall
or complained to management
I wish them the very best sleep of their lives tonight
because I cannot and would not
give them back last night.
A RESPONSE TO THE MEN OF OKCUPID ADAMANT ABOUT SHOWING ME THEIR COCKS
I.
I do not wish to see your dick on cam
Nor on Tinder or Instagram
I could not would not on a phone
Nor on an iPad, please leave me alone
I do not wish to see your cocks
Not in your hands, nor in a box
I will not see it on a boat
Or side-by-side with the TV remote
I would not could not watch you jerk it online
Not on YouTube, FetLife, or Vine
Not on GChat, Tumblr, or Kik
No, I do not wish to see your dick.
II.
A Working List of Places I WOULD Like
to See Your Dick:
• Thrusting towards the spin of a rusty fan blade
PARADISE
I promise
I have tried every method the body zealots insist
will make me worthy
the loathing
the withholding
the pain
the castigation
the flagellation
the suppression
the obey
obey
obey
and still
I am this feral landscape
an orchard of gluttonous fruit trees
and was cast from the paradise of my body by the shame gods
banished from reveling in my own flourish
rolling hills
secret valleys
the tree-trunk thighs
heavy sugar-apple breasts
I am sick for the springs I missed while exiled into my head
as though a country separate from fleshy hips
It cost me years of knowing my own clay
and now that I have clawed my way back into this Eden
I intend to bask
O’, I intent to feast.
ODE TO ALL THE MOTHERS I BORROWED
There were years I spent wandering the west side of Columbus, a sharp-tongued girl in too much eyeliner and flannel shirts from the men’s section that were only outsized by my too-many, messy feelings
Your children brought me to your doorsteps
a found and muddy thing
And you made space for me in your homes,
at your tables, in your plans
Me with swear words stuck between my teeth
Me, feral and ready for a fight
Me, chipped nail polish and crying in your bathrooms
You,
returning me to my own home as late as you could because
you caught the confessions I draped in crass jokes
You, seeing the unmothering in my fingernails
chewed to the quick
what a ghost town I would have been without you
what a collection of unfocused photographs
what a loss
WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD
Every spring before I fell in love with you
I inevitably found a dead robin at my feet.
As robins mate for life I took this as some sad omen
of another lonely year
and when you did leave I was certain
red-breasted birds would drop at my feet from the sky like blood
sticky teeth from God’s own mouth.
I read once that losing teeth in dreams is a subconscious
fear of losing one’s beauty.
It has been 2 years.
So far the road is still not paved with crimson feathers.
So far you are still gone.
So far I am still beautiful.
FOR FAT GIRLS WHO CONSIDERED STARVATION WHEN BULIMIA WASN’T ENOUGH
Mom says that my teeth are perfect.
Perfect brother has just gotten braces on his top four front teeth
a tiny railroad bridge connecting nothing
and mom says that my teeth are perfect.
At last my quiet mouth, the overlook, the swallowed
feelings have all paid off
and cultured something perfect
and mine.
My mouth is a music box
stuffed with pearls.
Perfect brother is tall
and lean
eats whatever he wants.
One time a whole box of oatmeal cream pies.
But it is clearer each day that my baby fat
is no longer baby fat
but just fat.
It is clearer each day that I will not be a ballerina.
I had wanted to be a ballerina.
My mouth is a music box.
A small girl spins gracefully at the back of my throat
on point.
I am sure if I can just reach far enough back I could still
have her grace.
I reach for her every night after dinner while the bathtub fills.
Until one day the health teacher shows us a photo
of a mouth crammed full of broken, yellowed dishes
says that a side effect of Bulimia
is ruined teeth
but Mom said that my teeth were perfect.
And my perfect is a ransom I cannot bring myself to pay
for the spinning girl
so I swallow her
and then nothing more for 4 whole days.
My mouth is a music box,
plays a low gear grinding that puts me to sleep.
When I do not wake up any closer to the spinning girl
encircled in pink tulle
but rather still a ravenous hollow encircled in overgrowth
I sneak down to the pantry and devour an entire box of
oatmeal cream pies in the dark
before going upstairs to brush my perfect teeth one at a time.
THE LEAVING
For Ben
If I get to be old, my body a tower of carelessly stacked dishes in polyester slacks that somehow makes it from breakfast to dinner and to breakfast once again without celebrating a milk-glass confetti onto the ground, my hair a wild bouquet of television antennas, my eyes a pair of bashful blue brides hiding behind ivory veils, my skin a well-traveled and sinking hot air balloon
If I begin to stand on the back porch and call in for dinner a cat that was found curled under the porch in a peaceful rest long before my teeth were pulled and replaced with ill-fitting typewriter keys that click and ding and must be slid back into place, I hope that my hermit-crab brain crawls up and into the memory of this thing between us that is love but not need
I will call the mailman by your name and swoon over the gifts you bring me each day
Every grocery list, a love letter scrawled to you until my hands fuse into conch shells I can only press to my ears to feel the hum of all of
the kisses blown from and caught in my palms
and in this way even the leaving will be beautiful
as beautiful as that evening I flew back home alone and untouched but never more sure that I loved you
The city, your city, that I love in the same way that I love you disappearing
a closing mouth full of gold teeth in the heavy-headed sun resting nestled on the clouds like a lover’s chest.
HOW MY FEMINISM LEARNED TO TALK
Its first word was predictably
No.
The neighbor boy has a growth spurt this summer
the wrestling becomes not wrestling
the point no longer to pin and tickle,
or to test strength and Houdini escapes
but now only to pin down and take.
At the park one afternoon,
you see yourself in the reflection of the hot metal slide
as he presses you against it
you see yourself the way he must see you in that moment
as though the subject of a photograph cropped at the neck
and your mouth instinctively deploys a flare
in hopes that he will return your head.
You shut your eyes and see a galaxy of flares
that he will never know,
and wake up aware of a new world
where you are simply told not to wear dresses to
the park anymore
and you push past the ash smoldering in your new
woman mouth to say
that it is not the dress
but the boy’s hands that should be removed.
BELLY KISSES
There is a beautiful woman in my bed.
After a lot of awkward flirting
we started kissing on my couch
then made our way up to my bedroom,
auxiliary articles of clothing
(cardigans, leggings, socks) peeling away
until all tha
t remains between our skins are our simple dresses.
My first instinct any time my dress is pulled over my head
is to wrap my arms across my belly
less in shame
and more a shield from the disgust the world
constantly promises for it
I love my body more days than I don’t and that is a long-
won battle,
but asking anyone else to love my body still sometimes
feels like asking too much.
Every time I’ve let someone fuck me with my dress still on
I laid in bed afterwards
and vowed that I would not let another person inside me
that hasn’t seen me fully—not just seen but marveled at
and pressed their lips to the parts deemed unworthy
a promise I break every time the need to be touched
outweighs the need for dignity.
I am still learning how to ask for what I deserve without it
also sounding like an apology.
When at last I hold my breath and plunge from my
dress into open air
there is a beautiful woman waiting on the other side,
and unasked she presses her lips to my belly
before I can reach to cover it.
And she marvels,
And she runs her hands over all of me like her palms
might just slough the world’s cruelty from my skin
There is this beautiful woman in my bed
and she holds beauty the same way I hold beauty
hard won with both hands, overflowing
When she emerges from the poly/cotton undertow
of her own dress
how can I help but love her body the same way
I have fought every day to love my own?
And now I kiss, I marvel, I reach
& her body answers my wanting hands
She is endless
We are both so endless and unshielded
and weightless here
in my bed
Weightless
but not the least bit smaller
thank God not the least bit smaller
BURYING MY HUSBAND
You sure have slept with a lot of husbands
to never be anyone’s wife
and at first this loneliness feels something like karma.
The wedding dream once dense as a tower of cake
stacked 4 tiers high and iced with buttercream is suddenly cultured down into a hard, sharp sliver on the tongue.