the body never lies

i think you wanted to know
his moonshine eye, his cliff-noted past
i caught you looking through his pockets
planting seeds, stabbing your skin on 
hangnails- he was ripshorn and scarcely
alive; you loved him for the weak pulse,
the saline drip of his nose, degeneration
of his eye, where rolling stones fumbled
slowly, wet and dark and hollow.

i think you wanted to know
what you were up against: a war
you would not win clamoring against
your rib cage, a hurricane state 
in the immune system of your heart
where invaders would never be silenced
or your father ever be wrong;
he called you a slut faced bitch
i slapped him twice and took you home.

your favorite poet was Sexton,
reading her suicidal confessions, her calm
representation of madness, premeditated
murder during the childbearing years
i know you hated her for failing as a mother,
now i'm talking about you again
although you tell us how you can't blame
them forever, how you have to grow up 
and take responsibility, to forgive

to forgive the cancer that mouths it's
gumless seams against your wounds,
to forgive the blood rot that licks
sugar off your ribs-
or to forgive your parents.
why would you do that?
deny your body it's truths.

the body never forgets
how your sex foils itself again and again
your arms ache and your stomach broils,
hot plantings sewn into the curve of foot
cold buds wakening in the slip of your mouth,
headaches, dreary Sunday monsoon
flashes it's wet tears against your dry eye.

i think you wanted to know
what it was like to be un-loved
in a million different ways
this mission was your alone
torture yourself for as long as you shall live
in his arms, where he would never know
*never give a shit, want to be inconvenienced, love you*
and you would never remember
and everyone would be so pleased you forgave

it is so much easier that way;
don't you think.

where are we

at night i write a story
erase the middle and tape together the beginning and end

here we are remembering
here we are living in remembering
here we are still in rememberance
here we are, still.

it is quiet in this house
there is no youthful screaming and clawing
an entire poem of missing items:
Sunday morning breakfast,
sex every day, late night tv, late night fucking,
late night love making,
laughing until crying, crying until laughing,
tumbleweeds of family, rolling over living room floor,
your hands enormous over my rib cage,
your heart enormous, a dialect between two,
hands together, after work together, always together.
an entire lifetime of missing items:
you disappear and i disappear with you.

where are we?

maniac heartbreak

the rain deconstructs on its own
the limbs of trees, wings of bees
birds that have flown

why fail here
when i am offering it all
hairy leg, shaking fingers, limp hair

buried in the ground there is
a reminder
not like bone, nothing as new as flesh

but a glass bottle perhaps,
a broken glass
something broken

i dig it up easily
soil now mud
and hold the thing hard,

i will deconstruct myself,
i will bleed at my own request
my own power.

and the blood makes
such pretty little rivelets
down my wet wrist

curling and thinning to pink
around my arm
like the bracelet i wanted for Christmas.

although you do not love me
you will feel something hard
and now it begins.