thistlebreath

i’m trying to come back
from the place i have displaced language
the map was lost in a fire tornado
and anyway there are too many new roads
and empty buildings
nests without raptors
beds without rest

i just wanted quiet
i wandered a little too far

i tried to use the stars but wound up cursing
their indifference
the trees were too terse
i was too tense
buoyed out of my body by grief
and a rupture
and a rupture
and a rupture

loss everywhere
and a body losing itself
you can’t slip skin off
but you can mute it
frances 5 and loud
frances 15 and unspeaking
left alone too long
in a messy room
in a thirsty city

a place that can never be touched twice
a world contained by chaos
a quiet that sets in after
the fire tornado
digs a your house a grave

what does it mean to rebuild
once the shock stops calling lightning

 

unity
not to be confused with solidarity
is understood as
conceptually tied
to domination.

to the extent that
we learn to
perceive others arrogantly

or come to see them
only as products of arrogant perception
and continue to perceive them that way,
we fail to identify with them,
fail to love them.

the failure of identification
is the manifestation
of the “relation”
loving leads to
double perception
playful foolishness
that lends itself to travel.

 
do not be self-important
do not take norms as sacred
come here and sit with us
on a dirty bench
littered with a chorus.

i. tear the cosmos
in the dark
at your desk.
let the seminal twilight in,
breathe it through pores.
let it devour
sticky skin
from the inside out.

ii. tear the cosmos
in the dark
on your feet.
let the seminal twilight out,
find the canopy line
in the absence of stars
and let your shadow
devour time
from the outside
in.

iii. i invoke thunder
and cast out lightning.
i see
taste
hear
smell
feel
better
without the long leashes of fire:
a false consciousness,
a muted transparency,
an object permanence.
they would burn down the whole
forest
just to get a good look.

iv. i tear the cosmos,
put my hand
through the cut of the threshold
where tiny fish
nibble my fingertips
and remove dead skin.
i am the fish
and the tear
and the universe
because i can see
where neither ends
but we are all consumed.
i am in the ritual,
i am of the ritual,
and i am the ritual:
an endless dark night
who constitutes a self
as much as an us.

Left Bank Books (Seattle, WA) is publishing my first book of poems! You can pre-order copies here.

On June 23rd there will be a release event in Seattle,

and on July 2nd there will be a release event in Olympia.

I hope to see you there!

xo

Rip the wound open.
Put some saw dust and meal worms in its gaping chasm.
Half-bury candles in the loose soil and light them.
Grate dead skin over the flame.
Keep your hair safe and covered.
Lay fresh cut flowers to dry out.
You are not making an explosive,
you are the explosive
and this altar is a fuse.

A pretend ritual for a pretend adult.

Bury it.
Maybe you’ll forget.

Bury it.
Leave it on the river bank.

Let the birds turn the mud
like compost.
The wick is a torch,
the wick will feed a fire so hot
that the ghosts of anger will exhume the flame
to melt the mud to liquid glass.
It hardens.
You harden.
A wound as a glass eye on the verge of splintering.

My anger is a less potent gasoline
I am still extracting out of water.
I need it to get me out of bed.
I need it to weaponized my words,
to make my hands knives with the
multiplicities of blade dance;
to ask for anything,
to not get lost.

My anger is a love
buried in a boneyard
full of worms and wounds.
It reminds me to touch those
that still visit.
That I have a stake in
the ways the world moves.

Rip the wound open
let a scale of sacredness slide out.
I am grateful
I am awful
I am angry
I am trying to get warm enough next to the flame
without getting burned.

When I was 6
you taught me to check under cars
in back seats
to not wear my shorts too short
to not get caught alone
with my grandfather
and his relentless hands.

You taught me that men leave scars,
maps for other men to trace with their fingers
and carve back open
until the swollen tissue
becomes a wall
rising up and out.

You taught me to swallow stress that screams sandstorms,
leaves everything covered in dirt,
to sit in civility until the world changes
and is ready for me,
but maybe you.
I have decided
that the world changes too slowly
and I’m tired of hiding.

Sometimes I think you thought
that I didn’t have enough to complain about,
as my anguish looked different
from your traumatic progeny.
Legitimacy was extended through
a flattening of my world
to fit into yours
because mine might implicate you.

You asked me over and over
to hide my wounds,
to help heal yours.
I wonder if you thought it was
a shameful flag of failure,
a reflection of a woman as an injured child
trying to grow a garden with dry hands.

I wish I could’ve told you
that he didn’t ruin you.
You weren’t damaged.
You were a soft moss
moved to the desert
patiently waiting for rain.

I see you,
I hold you,
I’m yours,
but I have no more patience
nor infinite forgiveness
though my compassion
flows like a monsoon flooded falls
for the ways in which this world
and our families, too
shape us.

Mourning is an action
evoking ghosts
to bury them tidily.
But I am a mess,
and I am not
will never be
have never been
clean.

I am not
will never be
have never been
healed.

I love you
but my fist is a muscle
the size of my heart
and both beat strong
while neither can yield harm.

My stories are mine,
understated constellations
laced and woven into
your cosmology,

and I have enough tears now
to water your garden
indefinitely.

The heat in your chest,
is there heat in your chest?
What about your feet now?
And now your fingers?
Is there sensation?
Can you locate the feeling?
The future is wet feet
and the past is wet feet
and my knees sink
into my toes.

My body is recreating the past,
sewing its shedding skin
back onto itself;
shadowing a felt symmetry,
an inevitable eventuality,
a song I was born singing.

I gently pick at the stiff seams of yellowed leather,
the hardened sheets curling over skin more supple,
because determinism is dirt
and I want to wipe myself clean
but I can still feel and see it
caked in lines along
fingerprints
under layers of husk.

I utilize nervous habits:
biting nails,
splitting skin
to let the filth in.

What if the location is outside of the body?

I can locate the feeling.
I’m calm
and spacing out,
demonstrating death like a killdeer
to save the youngest part of myself.

Distracting you from the body.

I’m a sea cucumber
coughing up its guts,
a sleight of hand survival mechanism.

I’m considering the inky cap
who fruits and immediately starts to rot.

Can you locate the feeling in your body?

What I mean to say is that
Some bodies take advantage of disaster.

When the thunder strikes
and your heart calls out to the storm
where is the origin?
How old were you?
Who hurt you?

Then come back to yourself
to be unheld,
to be unholding
to make room
to fit your tiny body
in the palm
of your own hand.

Do you have enough food and water?
Have you had adequate sleep?

The universe does not care
and it is not sorry.

An indifferent planet
sounds like
the slow whisper of barnacles,
winter waves pounding the shore,
the hiss of seed pods splitting and spreading in the heat,
your anger as the underside of dignity
a dignified understory
in the wake of a fire.

My bones vibrate in anticipation,
sense a ghost,
and I get good grief.
We play in this space
ages apart
and constantly meet.

I pluck rocks
from the street
the valley and the beach
dense mineral clouds
comprised of guilt
that heighten attention
to danger

They sit
like a tiny mountain carcass
in the shape of my mother
in a basket on my back

There’s quartz fused to limestone
sandstone and basalt
and the weight
refuses moderation

I wonder if they will crush my spine
fuse ribbon veins
binding joints to muscle
compressed in cartilage

I wonder if the ground will open up
if the earth will inhale me and my burden
if the rocks will become pulled teeth
to put a palette to grief
and compost my weary body

I wonder if beach bones are mountain bones
are human bones meant to be crushed

I know a child can’t
parent their parents
or build a house with bones
that it’s hard enough
to hold yourself
or keep a reliable home

I know that safety is not a place
fear is not an exit
that I will never sidestep tragedy
by building walls with worry

So tell my mother
I loved her
but I have to
put this burden down
before misery devours me

And tell the child
that sits at the bottom
of my throat
these rocks are bricks
but this isn’t my load