orangecloudsraining

i think there is something under my eyelids that stings when i close them, and imprints tiny holga photographs where i couldn't possibly see them. the indie girls give me dehydrated headaches in powder form and expect me to take them in apple juice and not know the difference. their evil counterparts simply kissed my breath away and stole the larynx from my throat, as if my teeth or state of mind really mattered. the lego avalanche took my cake away! damn legos. and of course the little plastic edges and buttons and seams where someone fucked up in the production line scratched my already scarred skin and i had to make believe the cat from do

something in the glint of the child's eye reminded me to pay the landlord, so his kids ate that day. the banister left my hand with a friction mark that stung when i took a bath. so i smelled for a week. it started to hurt my eyes and i made friends with the little black dots that choreographed ballets in front of me, but never shared the music. it forced its way into my dreams and thrust parsley sprigs into my fists, like a banner of pride that wilted and grew mold. the notes leapt across my amygdala and splattered fruit fly footprints that obscured my voice. the dusty steps left an imprint on my jeans, di

run-on sentences are comforting when the music drys out and the dog has fallen asleep, the commas fluttering like disembodied chickadee wings. and sometimes my chest tightens with the sheer number of souls- a dull feeling like four willowy men striding towards me, brows knit and eyelids stern like dreams and a dinner too large. and things glimmer in the dark, and things fly when they shouldn't, and things decide to break when the china can't be glued, so now the floors are floral and feet-shredding. so we decided to run away with twenty three dollars and a ratty backpack filled with books, but the bus was late and we slept huddled

hi darling. i tried calling you, but the phone said you disconnected and this was out of service. i believe you. the cat needs to be fed tonight. can you do that for me? can you open the door and not peek through the keyhole- it's awfully lonely in here.

sorry, i don't want to read your pretty pieces. i don't want the little shreds of your heart spilled across an index card and painted across your face. i don't want the birds twittering in your ear and telling you to fucking write the universe. i am not sorry, and i do not want your pumpkin pie and whipped cream with nutmeg on top, i don't. i don't want the god damn world plus your mind and a bike in two stanzas.

so we sent the packages off, wrapped prettily in white paper with jute cords that smell like the earth and all the people in it. they didn't make it through the mail- the delivery man stole three and made off like someone who smuggled cocaine in tiny cardboard envelopes made to look like cards. kitty raised her ears and yelled so loudly my ear-drums tore and she wouldn't let me wipe the blood off. the slick feeling of screaming comebacks shoved my tongue down my throat and i almost swallowed my lungs. the next day i noticed pretty bruises on my forearms from trying to stop the shaking.

i tried to write a morning poem, but now it is 12:01 and i cannot say that anymore. so here is an afternoon poem that isn't a poem. i quite enjoy my tea backwards, with the sweetness on the end. i still write too much about tea and smoke and eyelashes. there are too many colors in my clothing and i need to work on my hand-writing. i don't put line breaks where you pause, i put them in a single format that looks nice, but makes 'real poets' write me off. it's quite entertaining to write sentences where every word begins with w. sketching faces with no eyes or names or thoughts is also a time-gobbling pursuit. i remind my

and tea left to boil so long it leaves a flaked residue in the pot and the moment when you pull the coat out of the closet and it's stained. dirty and unwearable and that sets off something you'd rather not talk about, so you wind up on the swing outside, talking to the funny little robin that's always there to listen and cock his head. they had porcelain beds to drain the blood of humans and they removed eight ribs because her lungs were bruised and had to swell, were infected, need to heal. and the pond has frozen over, you can skate on it and tap elbows and grin frosty grins and tentatively try moving from child to

your bone-drip words and hummingbird mouth ache against mine, this is trying to find someone in slabs of fog, this is not yearning this is human instinct trying not to be smothered. we are not together, our eyes cannot meet because the dancing is not to songs but to plaintive orphan cries and the screams of a woman being shoved onto the floor. although we cannot see we are trying your lips moving so fast against my ear, saying this is all right, it is now saying now is all, stay here don't, leave, nownow now now. i can't breathe but for your thoughts your whimpers that don't belong to me or you or the collective univers

tiny origami bones huddled into a delivery sized package and racked itself with sobs. i couldn't look at her without reaching a finger down her damp cheekbone and trembling. lips the translucent shade of babies' eyelids, moving quietly with only some words. pearl nails, bumblebee eyes, fingers that bruise nervously, and nothing ignorable. i wrapped her in lace trim and tucked the thought away for later, because there was a comma without a sentence. moth wing beats twisted themselves into my braided tongue and choked. i scribbled notes on my arms and people wondered why i became mute with frantic eyes. a paragraph threw itself against the wal

The sun tattoos a faint opal just below the wet dip between your collarbones and the emptiness between us becomes as translucent as rain, as rapt as stained glass. The twitch in your neck betrays your heart and makes the corners of my lips ache. A pale locust shape vibrates as if stuck in honey between the veins in your wrist and the inside of your elbow glows like rinsed celery rubbed onto yellowed paper. You taste all over like seawater and wet earth and I am just a half-broken spine, a single glass bone yearning, as all glass does, for more light.

the sand paints a cleft into my back and the sky can tell i am not listening. i wish i could be anywhere else. i wish i could be underwater. the amber horizon loosens itself, the daylight is approaching, i am no nearer to where i needed to be than i was when the night came, i am no nearer to where i needed to be but there is something stirring in the cavity of my chest, a cancer perhaps or maybe just a call to arms. the madness is coming. small cells bewilder at its approach. the blood beats itself into my fingers. the body hums and runs. i am not new to it. the madness, not the body. i am very new to the body. i have swallowed the chaos be

In my childhood home I stood at the bathroom mirror with a pistol.  Two pencil- colored blemishes, one beneath my right cheekbone and one just above the tip of my nose indicated where I had shot myself. I entered the dream standing there bloodless and frightened when I should have been dead. I felt as if I had just woken up and immediately realized I wanted life. My fingers went to the back of my head and I panicked when there were no wounds, when I realized the bullets were still inside. If they had just passed through I might have survived but like this, there was death in me. I shook and wept.  The pistol turned to wood

i. I am a natural lucid dreamer. When I was sick, I dreamed away whole strings of days that burst with causal power, as if the sun, shining past my silted eyelids, had spilled a home behind them. You watched how well I played that girl: high heels, sparkle eyes, sitting on his work desk with my lips curled, legs crossed, booze at needle length beneath my skin expelling floral tones, pectoral blushes. I pretended to fall asleep on top of his blankets so I had access to my concave nest, a place without his hands on my stomach, no, and without his mouth on my shoulder. Now I am not even here and he doesn't know, not at all. ii. My res

but I believe to seek unbecoming is more cultivated than stretching out the leaky fibers of a semi- circular self-image until they spiral into uncontrollable forests, cauterizing eyelids; yes, unbecoming, like picking bones out of a salmon's chest.

Fold goddaughter cloud/ into subsection of ancient draft/ read in sleep drowning gelatinous jaw/ (swallow pulse of infant whale heart)//