Tag Archives: alt lit

Heartbeet

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She held out a heart like a cold beet,
skinned & pickled, with two tiny hands
at the end of stems which held a little heart also,
with tiny hands which held another
on and on
through the blunt scene
of hearts hurled blindly down halls, against
rising water, against nail-dotted walls
against computer screens, against chests
sagging-
or slashed up,
against heaving, sweat-slick breasts…

we experienced a love that was new
there was at least that, if not the rest.

Thub-thub, the beet droned and its stammering-
it moved through us like hammering
as our animals lay down beside us, in gardens
or in grass- in a kind of memorial
we imagined their death
in terms of sacrifice & lest we forget
when we should have seen it coming,
seen them faltering & starving
neatly dropping at our feet while we ran on
without them…

not noticing their hearts were beat-
we had been running all this time without them.

A Version of Thorns

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Behind a sinking, healthy & back-lit sun
A sort-of-game played with your feelings

That is why you are this person.

One team wore white, like brides & napkins
Their lips shimmered dully
bruised stars
an aversion to thorns.

A second team is everything the first team could only hope to be
The team loves you, and their hearts match their red socks
and the way they held you
and still getting dust in your eyes
the sand kicked up to last, and last, and last…

You can’t imagine how they loved you into becoming this person.

Your split-lip self was a consolation prize
& You were not supposed to go down like that
& You are turning to face me in the library
And you do not show your face
it clings fast to your skull
your hand curling out of a cloak
into begging & being
the bloated fingers
of a man

who’s blue hand

has been swimming for days.

you’re welcome

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Out of a long list of lovers
Someone’s neck smelled like gingerbread.

Yes, it is possible for someone to follow you down the elevator
There is such a thing as laundry room etiquette-
flip through a magazine and know it.

There is half of a welcome mat outside my door
I put the other half where I jump off the balcony.

I am on the eighth floor and the squirrels still find me
They are welcome because I am nuts.

This is the Opening Paragraph of My Autobiographical Novel as a Wealthy British Man who has grown Long in the Tooth

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It later occurred to me that had I awakened that morning not as a hysterical prisoner of damp and twisted sheets, but having instead been deposited by some dreadful means into the scene of a recurring nightmare. I shouldn’t have regarded the day’s events as any less extraordinary, for by that afternoon, I would find my circumstances so frightfully confused that I wondered if I might have fared better as the doomed victim of my own tragic hallucination. Disturbed as my condition was, the prospect of a watery grave had grown increasingly attractive, and I wished desperately to be stirred into the reality of that slight, trembling boy balanced precariously against the cliff’s edge, whose terrible anguish had the haunted, distanced quality of a dream. Resignedly helpless to the brutal activity of crashing about the jagged rocks, salty thunder swirling inside my skull- consistent with the unforgiving manner with which the wind had taken to whipping about my helpless form. As it happened, the day could not have got off to a more unremarkable start, save the noisy rattling that had quite suddenly begun in the old house, startling myself (and, I believe, the house, for she groaned as if to explain that she, too, had slept fitfully).

I’m Afraid of The Idea of You, If Anything

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Learning not to be the best at learning by doing.
Learning to swim.

Staying under the radar, red lights
smoking & popping
& licking & wrapping around
the ankles of spooked calves-
slicing palm hearts
into quarters before halves.

Leaving without asking & before taking
Leaving with an ugly rash and more medication

Making friends with criminals
You walk the line, hypocritical
Your voice carries from here, reaching
a small child
left alone in a plastic pool
drowning in 3 inches of water
at low tide.

Elma

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I should just write on my face
EATS WHEN SAD-
The Sharpie would probably
Stick in my cheeks 

I’m sick of the bubblegum girls
And their Ring-Pop tits
My tits are a backpack
In reverse-mode 

My armpits
Have not made me friends
Well, it depends
Not on the subway, but
They’ve kept panzerottis
And take-out manicottis
Warm for a friend.

It takes just about all of me to pretend-
Because everything tastes bitter
But I eat it in the end.

The Family Meeting

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“My vote is for coleslaw,” Greg announced to the table, sliding his green thumb along the edge of the placemat. Dad snorted, opening and closing his fist as if he held a great clump of fertilizer in his palm. Why we needed to have a family meeting for this was beyond me, but I sat in my chair anyway and twisted my ivy hair to make sure that Mom could see that I was bored out of my tree.

“Violet? Honey, we need your vote…” Mom gave me a kind of pleading look and I saw that her eyes were the colour of milk bottle beach glass. I rolled my eyes and got up to leaf.

“Violet! Sit down this instant. Finish your spinach.”

“F*ck you, Mom. You never cook what I want.”

“Well, what is it you want?” Mom groaned, pretending to hang herself with a green onion noose. Greg and Dad went hysterical. Dad laughed so hard that his big belly bumped up against the underside of the table. His brussels sprouts hopped up and down on the plate, rolling out in a dozen different directions.

“I want eggplant, tomorrow night. And you’re all going to eat it right along with me.”

“F*ck you, Violet. That’s far too exotic. Do you think money just grows on trees?”

I could just kill them.

Little Cuts

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this proud little home
bare ankles moving in
making it our own, jet-lagged
covered in sawdust
air mattress
giddy empty

possibilities.

the kitchen was perfect
cool barefoot and wine-drunk at night
pancake batter in the morning
shattered jam jars
lovemaking, jarring
little cuts and cereal boxes
clogging the pantry
even the glass bowl heaped high
with overripe mangoes

and underripe avocadoes
and outside a garden hose
black-eyed beetles
under a stone
who cares?
about an old painting
under the stairs

behind your ears
the sour smell
coming from
inside the furnace

in the corner
where the dog
we name and love
will
die in its sleep

impossibilities.

Relocation

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Our city becomes another’s city and they don’t even live here.

Our city becomes another city that will one day glow, for miles underwater.

Our city has strategically-planned streets, and accidental cobblestones. The neighborhoods have their symbols, their light-pole banners, their car washes and coffee shops. Clogged drains and stray dogs and condos and bullfrogs. A little fence to keep the heart in. A garden. Ten Thai restaurants in a row. A bus stop and a newspaper on every homeless porch.

The neighborhoods remain separate, or they collide. Some are ramming into each other, smash-mixing, in the time it takes one body to fall from the observation deck.

The streets below the streets are daunting, gurgling with sewage. A black-gloved hand motions outside a window. People are coughing, steaming into each other’s faces on the subway. No one has a face unless it is cut out of a magazine.

I moved out of the city. Now, my neighbor is the one whose name I forget every other conversation. His neighbor is me, and a young family with closed blinds and a yard full of broken plastic. We circle each other like dogs, not saying anything. But the truth is that we live with our families and this is a nice neighborhood, close to schools and shopping.

I moved out of the city and now I don’t even live here.

My neighbor remembers how bright his city glowed too.
Our sons are jerks and we are embarrassed by what we thought we knew.

 

This poem of mine was just published on uutpoetry. so this is basically a cross-blogging platform #reblog.