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

On Eating Nothing But Fish

ah, father, I wish you weren't
an engineer sometimes.
your thoughts work strangely
like a clock and if I could hear your
innermonologue I hope it wouldn't sound like
the pendulum I see swaying back and forth
when I look in your eyes.

good night to you
and the next day
good morning!
i'll perpetuate this cycle

i hate when you say toil till death
i'd rather not
die that is

and toil
well we knew all along thats what life was

it seems funny now
rocketing down this hill
pills up to my throat

I feel like a prisoner but I might just be a fetus.

I'm scared.
I live in a bubble.
I'm not content to stay here, oh no.
But I've gotten used to it, you see.

So when I leave to see the world
Will my lungs collapse?
Will by blood run thin?

I'm in here where I can't even experience the changing seasons
Or remember the months that go with them.
The world outside spins and changes
And all I hear are muffled noises.

yahrzeit candles

on Sunday
we lit birthday candles
none of us could sing
we sang anyway

my grandmother’s candle rests
on the windowsill,
a funeral pyre
where passing thoughts burn

some nights I wonder what would happen
if I turned my steering wheel
slightly to the left

we are all burn victims
we lick cake off the candles
and pretend not to notice the uninvited guest in
the room