july 19, 2012

I feel the same way I feel everyday.
Again I thought about taking a roundabout route home, through Boston or San Fransisco. Again I though about running a red light and again I felt the urge to tell someone a truth that would get me fired in an instant.

My fingers are not pretty. They're gnarled and awkward like snakeskin hanging from a wall, lumpy and scaly. They're bleeding. My fingers are bleeding and the blood tastes nothing like copper. It just tastes like the inside of a body would taste.

july 18, 2012

they tell me I worry too much,
that my heart will skip and shrivel too early,
that I'm losing sleep and sanity
and I worry they are right
my arms float out in front of me,
dead as sunken ships
barnacles sucking blood from my wooden body
stiff and rotting, anxious even in death
about the sponges and the sea they soak in--




Sometimes I drive and I think about driving past the place I'm going. Two miles after your house and I'd be a mile closer to the interstate, within reach of any state on the east coast. I could drive until any exit, even- or odd-numbered, or I could drive until I reached the end of the road.

But I hate pumping gas.

july 13, 2012

I am not magnificent. I am simple with warts for kneecaps, a tawny frog hopping along the wet streets and dodging the skin of bare tires screeching to avoid me. I am not magnificent. I am not an artist with a paintbrush between my teeth, pondering the yellows of a sunset or a bowl of fruit, the curves of a dream I had or of a lover's face. I am holding my head close to my chest, listening for a heartbeat. 

limes

you spoke to me in cinnamon tones

your tongue cottoned with just a teaspoon of the stuff

boiling over like a kettle of stick tea

your voice sprinkled in sugar and shaken

you looked at me with lime in your eyes

veins and green and flesh white rinds

speckled sweet and acidic

sparking sour and wrinkling my nose

your teeth clinking like the jar of cherries

shivering against the olives in the refrigerator door

your words plump and drowning in red syrup

sticky on our fingers and knotted stems

you said to me in black pepper

serious and tickled and cracked

you said to me “i love you too”

and sneezed