Lilith
Something like a woman, I believe in her ability
to harm me. Sentinel,
I give my power away. What do I know about power? Clutch
of snakes with synchronous hearts,
black ditch of my sleep. I promise you this love poem
where no birds appear,
winged messengers capable of abandoning us
not in cruelty—in spite of it.
Descending neck deep, on top
she covers every inch.
Of reflection, of waves, she touches toe first and begins
to see herself, terror.
hot clamp, hissing, O, Angel, you make me
hunger like
a mortal girl. I light the wick of a boy within me,
I moth my female gaze burns holes
in the night, I suck her
dick to life
You
you are the only one
who knows
what I mean
who I was
Don’t let me
down
Tulip Poem
How come a mother
is always the same
mother in the kitchen
weeping into dough
Seems like all daughters
are all-seeing, look,
girl-shadow, long and
leaning back
Why is it so hard
to be a person
I check my mailbox
for Xanax, I check
my mailbox for Adderall
All my friends
are angels
seeding the dark
I tulip every April, I only
need to be buried once
I don’t know
what being loved is
said my therapist
whose hair trails long
and dead behind her
An angel came
in my mouth
Don’t worry what
my hair looks like
I was a lump of dough
now I’m a tulip
and no one knows
what tulips know
but me, I see in dirt
I burst, am born, besides
my mother is just
like your mother
Yes, she is, but worse
because she’s mine
Water | Fire
You said, let’s make something new so, in a slip and heels, I put meat on. Thick cut.
A woman lights my votives, devotion blackened on both sides.
Monstera decades old in the room where I slept for you, thicket of bad dreams.
Even that room was another girl’s room, her breath still fogging the window,
her dog’s crate empty by the bed.
The Jane, The Empire, The Royalton, the third floor of that house, mornings without
light. You packed up plainly as if at the end of a meeting. I was a girl who came into this
world fully formed, a body without waves, lake you leisured into and walked out learning
nothing.
Waiting to see the heron’s wingspan, you would not bend space and time for me again.
Feeling small feeling small. Hummingbird comes, sucks nectar where it likes.
Why should I be sweet? Broken glass is sharp. Outside, the water round rocks: hard,
corrosive with salt.
Addiction to cruelty—excuses weaken my power
I shaved my whole body in case you touched me—your beholding—I prayed for it.
In your shut eye, your open eye.
There was a time before I knew you but I’m not convinced.
Led, I pressed my cheek to every living sound your tongue draped over me.
Your fingers, god’s searchlight, over and over you cum on someone else while I light the scene.
Inside the cavern, the ring, the amphitheater, one of us helps the other die.
You wanted ruin, a ruin speaks and in speaking is beautiful.
Imagine: once walls, wells glutted. Dry with thirst (here
the girl wants to be warmed) stupid with fire
snuffed out like a wick.
Around my voice, red string I tear every time I’m fucked right. My dead walk
proud down fur processions, people the open market. Violent nothingness, my inheritance.
A cloud doesn’t exist that holds this much water. That’s why I’m alive, why I’m still here.
Living fox drags dead fox across burnt field towards heaven.
Our town disappears but roads remain roads, sun beating
asphalt so hot the air trembles.
How I wanted you: laid out
across distances. To empty
over on. To pound and
pound with rain.
Header Image Credit: “Birch” from the series, “On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees” by Hilma af Klint, 1922 (Public Domain) via wikimedia.org.
