Tag Archives: altlit

Autographic negligence

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A piece of car fell onto my head when I refused to believe in it. The gore was autographic.

The gore left a sore which I worried at my desk, with a tiny pink hairbrush and a math set compass. With a pair of slippery scissors. Without pain. For temporary decades.

There is someone named Kevin in all of my classes. He has a smooth neck and black greasy hair, and I can see from my desk that he wears glasses and eats his lunch in the computer lab, under tables.

His gaming habits, pornographic.

And as the car-song inhabits, I look for clues under his desk and nothing there is autographic.

The Seventh Son

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Seven sons was too many, and a girl could have helped smooth things. Ten years between the oldest and youngest. Ten years of hand-me-downs, rocks through windows, muddy sneakers and unsigned permission slips. After their father left, she kept the box around the house. With its crudely rendered front flap, it served as a reasonable disguise. She stapled straw hair to the top, and wrapped the middle with a torn blue dress.

When she dropped the box on their heads, her sons shrank down into feeble, trembling things. She longed for a daughter, who smelled sweet, like pineapples and cream.

Objects In Mirror

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The ambulance in the rear-view that makes you aware of
delicate bones & the crashing moments before flight.

You are too quick to find in there
the part where people grieve you-
you imagine coming to them
inside their heads
while they go to bed
thinking of you dead.

There is heat sliding over the air
there is always energy expelled
when something so large sinks-
when in the rear-view mirror

everything goes to hell.

Watching out for Birds with Ruin Written on their Wings

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I watched the explosion from my chair outside,
mesmerized by little paws, dancing all along the edge
of a wall
pushed out of hoof-chewed ground-

this is the way our town burns down.

Fire licks and whines along the edges
scarring streets and buildings-
our family home assumes the shape
of some small person
shrouded, crying

next to a house departed as ash.

It is the kind of winged migration
that rides the wind too far, too fast.

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.

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.

No One Belongs Here More Than You

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our limbs are only softening
around the joints
and in the end, having to
find not only one single place to be ourselves
but to live out the life of a circus
wicked torches and trapeze wires
delicate and bracing,
strong and self-referential
a homesick tiger, pacing

spotlights dusting below
the under-cup of your breasts
it’s wetter on the dark side of the moon
nothing grows and nothing glows
but the potential leans out at us, for life
from the cratered things
which taste of borrowed light
from other galaxies 

the same tired words
now exploded on our tongues.

Title borrowed from a story (collection) by the wonderful Miranda July, because it ‘belonged’. The rest is my own.