october.2009

we are fire, lungs autumnal with
stinging eyes into the dawn.
we have no legs to rest beneath us,
but turbines cutting against the ground.
now we’re spitting in the stairwells,
surrounded by another’s sound,
burning between the bricks and tree trunks
learning how to stick around.
and with our fingers thin as wire,
we’re strapping on our shoes of pin.
our necks bent towards the graces,
asking how to keep our stretch of skin.

{johnny halfway january.09}

i can’t talk sometimes without her tumbling out it doesn’t happen on purpose. i used to remember her when she was sleeping right next to me so i could open my eyes and immediately know relief. i let her trace “hero” all over my body but. i was always so scared to touch her. i thought maybe she would feel someone else in me or maybe she could feel that i would never lie to her i was eighteen but still too superstitious to say her name out loud. things got uncomfortable before i was ready but i felt it and i felt her stop… i felt her stop something from across the divide. i tried to squeeze back into the skeleton i wrapped her around with numb fingers when we were still strung out on each other but backed down, i tried with everything i had but i kept listening waiting to be let in, i lost my balance when she exhaled.

i spent weeks next to windows telling myself i should have seen this coming when i let her apocalypse-dream beside me, telling myself i meant every sound except for the words. i locked myself in clean rooms and i unclenched one glazed eye in the springtime to find that everything was angular and disjointed and nothing was flattering. i went home and my sentences got shorter for the first time. Folded around muscle and bone i convinced myself that this, what i encapsulated between two callused palms, was all i could ever really know for sure.

i saw her after a spring and summer of isolation, internal remediation, i fell right back into step. out of nowhere she existed before me, i turned the corner and she was spot-lit with the long list she taught my piano when she used my lungs--
and when i listened to you, anonymous in the crowd, i heard my words knife out your mouth and i felt safe because at some point, you were here and i felt safe because you knew what hurt is i want to tell you everything like you’ve been wearing me backwards this whole time, we’re all made to switch places just let me see that i’ve had some impact and i imagine that you’re listening to all this, letting me pour my words over and letting them roll down your back and maybe, maybe stick all-morning-after like to your hair your clothes just let me see i’ve left a mark--

deep breath.

some nights after she showed up with a bottle of wine and promised adventure but we just ended up following empty September streets and when there was nothing else to say i said too much. i let her justify everything because even though i prayed for her to blister with lack of me, i didn’t know how to stop waiting to hear the right thing, it wasn’t smart i don’t like to talk about it but. my skin still remembers everything, i still have scars from when she pulled me too tight and all i could breath was her so i grew gills and i still have marks from when she pushed me too far and i stayed up all night shivering skylines but.

here.

here between these two callused palms i’ve created my own constant in the incredible tension of breath when i’ve run out of things to do to myself and i’ve run out of things to look at. i would have wrecked myself eventually. it wasn't just luck that it was for her. but then again, there’s no clean way to sound the hollow.

One fist clenched and both lungs blackened i met Johnny Halfway in a moment of truth, of forties, of fabrication. She dampened my teeth but dreamt of soil as i aligned my spine against her foundation. She mismatched our elements beneath taught skin and slow knuckles.
Johnny Halfway, last i checked, kept her mattress on aching floorboards, teetering below the Holy Father and a bent bottle cap collection. Behind her back i drew myself into her freckles, behind her back i scathed my bones.

Johnny Halfway held her fingers under the table and counted to 3 before i knew it.

Johnny Halfway was never up to any good.

{daybreak march.09}

{framed july.08}

photograph 8'' x 10''

that winter i fell into girls like relief & nicotine. i turned myself inside out looking for more to give while i pinned victory vertebre to sunken walls above blue ribbons and souvenirs. i knew all my sounds but forgot my cues & exits in the rush.
strung out between iron and ice i spun the bottle, fingers crossed for spring.

{chrysanthemum october.08}

chrysanthemum
the first words you learned barely
dribbled from your tongue
now you’re pushing off against the
setting of the sun
i won’t let you loose after all the
banners i have hung
chrysanthemum,
hold on chrysanthemum

i pressed your freckles in my palms as you
cascaded across the tides, and i,
I undid the masts that
tore you all too wide and i,
i painted your lips
with the winter’s hum,
chrysanthemum
i'll follow you,
chrysanthemum

{r.c june.08}

ink, watercolour 11'' x 15''

{hansel & gretel july.08}

ink, 14'' x 17''

{i feel it most in the sun may.08}

my mother spread her shoulder blades along fault lines and fossils before heading east and heading out. daughter of avocado-tinted contradictions she followed hollow-engine wrists over alphabet cities and garden skylines. my mother folded cardboard castles in nostalgia's stony backyard before strapping on tradition for travesty.
sometimes I feel her wanderlust waxing warnings between bones and sun-tight skin but. it's not a need for change just another excuse wrecking myself under the pretense of knowing better next time. I hold on to space after I know it's dangerous and I still gravel-down-gravitate to places I know can hurt me but like her, I just want to keep looking.

happy holidays y'all

{it is the worst thing in my mind december.06}
ink on business card (stock), 3.5'' x 2''

count it up

in my long list of faces i've held up:
little one
baby
sugar
cunt
shorty
witch
beautiful
kid
sweet lips
ani
rootbeer
slut
clementine
deluxe
slow talker pillow queen
impy
sage
cheeta

it's great to not have to write my own resume.