Envenomed

he braved
great dangers

he wanted
to be valuable

bring sustenance
to his children

contribute
to his community

but he didn't know
what we knew

he was beguiled
by our deception

and what began as heroism
ended in devastation.

and that's how we solved our cockroach problem.

leap of faith (hebrews 11:1)

the fall
from my hand to the fountain
is for pennies
a suicide leap

wishes drown in the well

but leap they do
from my hands
like rain

after the last page

has been turned,

after the last fluorescent light

cools to darkness,

after the last echo

is swallowed by night,

there is nothing

but the beating of my own

green heart

--longing for the sound

of your silence

sleeping next to me

i always lock my car doors,
chain up my bicycle,
turn the deadbolt
because i don't trust anyone
in a town where V-Rod leaves his
engine running

one day
i will steal his truck
and he will learn
not to trust anyone
either

A Womanly Poem About My Insides

no one seems to talk about the

week a month where there is

a haze that clouds everything

fuck fuck fuck

ah, little egg, you must want to be fertilized

but that boy Jade would look better

as a rock on my finger

Lessons from an involuntary muscle tissue

Today in anatomy lab we took each other's blood pressure.
Air hissed out of the dark blue cuff that choked my arm
I felt my blood thump thump thumping
as my heart forced it back through my artery
and down towards my hand again.

My heart will always have to beat.
This makes me want to lie down
curl up in a ball
and quit breathing or something.
Give my heart a vacation
Let it have a little rest so it doesn't wear itself out.

So I apologized to my heart
saying I'm sorry you have to spend every second of your day
slaving away for me
but there's really nothing I can do to lend a hand.
And my heart just kept on pumping and said

You don't always need to be the one in control.

I look to eat

I was dreaming a new dream.
We lived in my gardens.
I was rich, too.

My gardens were dead.
The fruit had fallen.
We found it later,
black stains in the earth.

I throw a rock down the street
and tell him I would like to be
Burned at sea

I tell him I would like to
Burn him at sea as well
He laughs

I say that I would like to
Light him up

So all of his wax seals
Come undone

the post office in the sky

great-aunts send
birthday cards
so that when they are dead,

people will notice the
sudden lack of humorous
and adorable statements
referencing the
correlation of hills to age
and ask,
"Gee, where did Prudence go?"

someone will answer,
quite Prudently,
"She's in a better place now."

the truth is
the truth is
she got tired of addressing
her own mortality
along with
all those f**king envelopes.

I get used to the phrase

I'm doing good

and I'm a confident liar.

Winter approaches

like a killer from the basement

in this scene the tension is thick

only a bare light bulb

illuminates my sallow face,

and I look terrified.

I keep feeling a painful shock

in my left shoulder,

like I was electrocuted,

I am learning mortality

and I can't stop looking

in the reflection of the mirror

hanging on the wall

because I can sense something

is about to happen.

In the closing scene of the film,

I stand on the ninth floor

of an unidentified building,

and watch all the lost people

like a killer

through the curtain.

terrorists are people too

dismantles an ink cartridge

parts in a perfectly

straight line for inspection

opens a .pdf with instructions

how to do something clever

with utmost precision

bangs a head against a wall
clenched teeth may shatter
resolve/intention