Den of Thieves
Unholy plucking, putrid vines strung
between pews and moth bitten bibles
methamphetamines swiped across pages, passages
marked in brittle blood. The plaster prays
for reconciliation, for the stroke of mercy,
swabs melt angled staples, rusted nails, thorns
pinned to the spine of each teetering bench.
Bodies litter alters, dousing the pulpit
in toenails and lion claws and plates
meant for reaping mana. Rather,
the stains of nectar were bleached,
the well bubbled up with muck
to saturate the lot where hallowed
steeples once surmounted the dawn.
Where were the stacked fingers, layered hands? Brutal
palpitations vibrating beams until we balanced,
braced against thy neighbor, supported by a singular
swatch of white. Sullen windows sigh under centuries
of palms to sheets, sobs sent skyward, shredded
socks patched with yarn, and promises of unlit sticks
dangling from stale lips. Stain glass stings the most
when the stars light the sky instead of the sun.
When I look up in the sky and see beams of light shooting down from Heaven, I see God.
At seven, the clouds were passageways
for prayers, for pleading, for palms
holding hope between slick skin.
At seventeen, my grandma died—
passed away
As milk jugs were passed at the doorway, flowers
and long forgotten photo albums poured
over in tedium, fortified soil, soggy sweaters.
She said I should expect her
at my college graduation, this year
a spoiled dog sits at my feet,
muddied paws planted beside a ball
of yarn and ripped socks.
She would have been ninety.
The dog still leaves piss stains on the carpet.
At twenty-one, my chest tightens as she watches me,
speeding down 65, sleeping wrapped in stranger’s
sheets, foreign fan spinning, popcorn ceiling, sighing
as I swallow Prozac and Barefoot at the same time
even though the prescription tells me not to.
I hope she remembers instead when I asked
for forehead kisses rather than shots, when Charlie
kept guard, as night storms raged against the shutters,
stuffing settled into the arm of her couch.
Do the clouds work both ways? Her gaze
weaves in and out of focus. I fear
chains of wisteria cannot smudge
the rows of writing that decorate my arms
and the salt that still clings to my cheeks.
I remember the day I found out that being an older sister is about more than just living first.
My mother used to remind me to brush my teeth
every morning, when the minks scurried through glass
pond water, dripping with algae, remnants of the bottom feeder’s
breakfast. Sometimes I wish they would slither
under my bedroom door, their oiled torsos collapsing,
to pour cough syrup down my yearning throat before I wake
from nightmares of apartments ablaze, acid
seeping from boarded windows onto the bald scalps
of my brothers passing below. How do boys their age
grow a beard? My nailbeds tingle with a need to shave them
in my bathroom sink. When I wore mismatched socks, I reread
Tuck Everlasting. My hiking boots are predisposed to drowning
in forever puddles. I weep for the youngest whose wheelchair
wraps itself in a shawl of string lights meant to disguise shriveled
bones. Winter, it seems, is a life sentence when God welds sneakers
to our base camp as a warning instead of burning a path to the summit.
Therefore, I keep my poems in the basement.
The rabbit splintered my blinds yesterday, and I wept to a deaf landlord pawing damp cheeks. My room is still tiled with matted tufts twisted into labyrinths. I rake the fibers into crooked lines with shards of broken Ball jars I had left perched on my lacquered windowsill, sticky with remnants of mama’s peach preserves. Blue: the rabbit and his boxers. Both remind me of the first time I admitted defeat tucked into a tilted camper, cards splayed across prepubescent thighs. The patch of grass that separates the right and left lane reminds me to vacuum. I always regret pulling those pilled sweaters over my head, just to fill my mouth with wool. It’s probably better off in my skull, closer to where unkempt hair belongs. Once, I deciphered a sunken language uttered only by pulverized bone, back pressed against the gritty floor of a lake afflicted with tidal waves. Afterwards, I lost myself to sand dunes marked NO TRESSPASSING. That night, I taught him to speak with stones; three strikes became synonymous with uncorking vials of Saturn’s rings, shattered moons poured out of our sagging eyes as constellations trailed across dilated pupils. I’m so full of words, they seep from my nostrils in the shower. I try to memorize each line before the stream slows. I chant, sink your teeth into a potted snake, but the rabbit won’t stop chewing on the woodwork. And poems keep me tied to rotting fields. The weight of this chisel welds me to the foundation of our apartment, all cockroaches and skittering lizards. Something about the plank that skewers me keeps all of these beer bottles full of spoiled tears.
My therapist calls it rumination, but I call it nightmares.
I can’t sleep without silence.
Eyelids movie screens
for scenes of suffocation,
sheets still, hollow chest.
My cupboard acts as an asylum
for thrift store teacups
filled with Percocet,
substitutes for a threadbare pillowcase.
Darkness is identical to reruns
of diverted eyes drifting across
the foot of my bed. I count
the seconds before they combust.
Rust clings to my throat
texturing my food with grit.
I welcome searing metal as relief;
who says I must wake up?
The stage is never ending
when I don’t know where
my feet belong. The ceiling
caves, and yet my fingerprints
become the floor
—lines of texts ripple across the wall.
I scrape the fibers from my carpet
with jagged nails ripped apart
by creatures tucked away
in my closet at home.
At night, they feast.
Sometimes, my mother
will ward off demons
with rosaries draped
across the door frame,
midnight screams echoing in their shadows.
I don’t know when fear
crept into the vapors of my inhaler,
but watch
and soon mine will become
the only pair of lungs still filling with puffs of poison.
Remembering a soldier I want to forget.
I’ve flirted with Queen Anne’s Lace—
shawls tipped
with flecks of butter
melted
until the edges burned brown
and my mom scolded
the cast iron
for daring
to scar countertops
where markers already labeled the space
Maria’s.
How dare you take what’s mine,
Plucking hairs from behind wet ears,
mesmerizing
the rabbit until he comes on command
to a hand full of dried grass
harvested the fall before I knew
you
and your fingers dripping with maple syrup
sliding into parted lips—
a sudden dependence
on melatonin directly
after chardonnay.
I begged you to stay,
but you ran into gunfire
to bury an arm you never wanted,
dragging a fisherman’s rope
wrapped around my ankles,
forcing me into foxholes.
I gasped beneath unfamiliar bodies
and bombs crushing my chest
like trophies when I just wanted
the bitter gnawing of blood where my heart used to be
tethered to my ribs by spindly fibers
that gave up when you said goodbye.
Lobotomy
I’m just a guy sitting in his apartment having a staring contest with his phone and losing. Remember when your face plastered teeth on my TV? The hole in the veneer a bullet in a static screen: sheep’s brain, salivating folds, surrendering to sulfur sleep. Imagine the flicker of motor whine when the voice in your head is mute. My thoughts weigh three pounds splattered on the scale. Some days, doll houses line the rim of my skull, drinking in mouthfuls of slug tracks, smacking their lips together over pools of saliva, puddled in a reflective sheen. When is a satellite strapped across my chest considered part of Earth’s orbit around the sun? Perhaps it will make sense when you use that scalpel and scoop out a spoonful from beneath shallow skin. Unwind a skein of matted wool to hide your temples before short circuits shock both sides of the half and suddenly sanity slips your mind.
How do I come to terms with this sack of my own flesh?
I can only write meaningless lines
full of empty letters and shit
brain cells bouncing around on a page
like I mean something profound.
I am only skin.
Thought is simply salt flooding
axon walls, waking up at 3AM,
fearing oblivion, icy tentacles
palpating aching temples, bioflix
a screen-bound savior.
I live in that synaptic cleft,
between a pointed toe
and a never-ending nap
tucked into the folds
of neuron's branched spindles.
I miss cocaine numbed systems
collecting dopamine in my bedroom
to wrap me in flannel disguised as fur,
synthetic comfort my favorite drug.
Poems are a side effect of fabricated
stimulation, tetanus a toxic concreate
coagulating underneath tense body bags.
Rehab revoked my entrance fee, requesting
instead, impotence in exchange for an exorcism.
An argument against a poet studying Biology.
Somewhere across the tilted tile bled a sacred
squelch of boots through innards splayed over hours of second-rate
remnants; toe shoes beaten so that the box becomes
a matchstick’s hidden grave among orchards blooming bitter fruit.
Then lock.
Then melt.
Skylines sway to acid-laced melodies driven across town
by mules wrapped in cellophane plucked from chilled
aisles of a buried morgue. Hey, what did you call me inside the womb?
Little Bird
whose knobbed knees pierced the soft between the ribs.
I was born first, before God separated the X and Y,
like picking leeches from pimpled skin.
I shrivel.
I wane.
I kill shrews that scurry under the tires I’ve pasted
to my heels, so that hospitals may have abundant organs
to sew into lab coats. I kiss the doorknob, begging
creatures to crawl between my teeth and suck
on the supple tissue of my cheeks.
The anti-thesis of life and savior are one.
Antibiotic.
I savor its shale nectar
with my morning coffee.
Breeding Stock
come on all you ghosts
steal inflating lungs from newborns
tongues that never melt sweetened strawberries
where do americans eat their young
when polls close on feeding day
disguise those blister packs as greeting cards
hello, please kiss my empty uterus
and be sure to soak your tampons in dish soap just to be safe
I will be voting for Christmas trees trimmed in nexplanon
their message bold cheer blinds senile eyes
don’t pay attention to surgically removed midriff
when they devour benjamins in exchange for breedable bodies
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