The Disease
Womanhood and all the iron teeth
Of its hairbrush.
Womanhood a disease;
Hot tumors growing under the taut skin and call attention and
Craving pretty sheep coats instead of our own leathery and hair prickled skin
No matter its upright disposition.
Running hands over buttery stomach and wishing the fat could crawl out
On its hands and knees.
Lining insanity with powdered sugar never made it better, just wrapped it up in a digestible manner
to cover its atrocious taste.
Leafing through texts of
America and its jaded wings
What is meant to be moon snails
And dusty lange
Turns to pink ribs and cut feet.
The True Hues of Memory
We are what we can’t forget &
(What I once could not forget was the curdling of egg yolk on
Curled fingers &
The joy of being accepted in the loud, big Spanish family that one summer & the dusty pall under
bridges & blueberry tinted mornings & the cuts on curious fingers
& all the oddities of being a stranger in all this rubble.)
We are what we can’t forget &
Who on earth would have thought that a creature of skin and liver
Just like you
Just like I
Could make the unforgettable so unbearable & take the sweet
Fantasy from fingers to iris
The unforgettable is a dark, dank room
& a hand over the fishbowl’s opening
Leaving the water acidic and a limp body
With a wool-soft underbelly
Floating in its bitter bile.
The unforgettable is that
One body
Was worth not more than a chipped dime and
A plastic smile.
We are what we can’t forget &
Though the curiosity of the sun still
Calls to me
somehow
All I seem to wish for are shadows to make me forget.
Milkshakes Rejuvenate
I once had a creature crawl out of my intestine
And squeeze its snapping jaws out of my navel.
My very own squealing lump of lard
Together we watched the long fog of new day yolk over the
Sea and
The red neck’s yellow apples
Ripen and rot.
Together we watched
The nuns embroider their scripture into each other’s back
Together we drank milkshakes on
America’s bloody concrete
(which we later regurgitated for we both liked the glamour of ribs)
And watched the sky churn a
Vivacious perse bruise.
Together we shriveled like raisins and once old,
We did our laundry together in Chinatown
And reeked of panty hoses and clementines.
We ate perogies for we
No longer cared for the 90s
And once our time came we shrouded ourselves in the
96% Polyester & 4% Spandex Charmeuse of heavens glow.
My intestine creature split me cleanly
Down the middle
And gnawed my tendons until I lay
Across the oak wood flood of our rent stabilized apartment
In ribbons.