Three Poems (July 20, 2009. Issue 7.)

Nutrition

It’s four pm and the fan is clicking. I should be throwing up or running or
studying the internal lay of crayfish and mollusca. I pick at dry skin around my toenails and wait for some invasion. Will or fatigue, virtue or hunger.

He invited me over on a Sunday for throwback movies and casual sex, I faked an ear infection.

7 more cigarettes and I quit. I’ll smoke them all today. Instead of enjoying each one slowly, memorizing the pull in and head-tilt out, I will gobble them like tiny men, missions and things to prove.

I think I’ll move. Uproot to someplace where it snows and they only know mesquite as a flavor of sauce. I won’t tell them mesquite are poisonous, and it will take a while before they know I am.

Opposite the way of the sun

I hope I can break the spell:
the long line of daughters
birthing changelings
that will grow into women,
tormented
by men without fear.
When I was young enough
not to fear the sun,
you would gather my
brown skin to your chest
and read fairy-stories of brave women.
You were the stone-eyed queen
with a cement tongue;
you abandoned entire countries at whim,
you birthed me, trickster child, as duty.
I still see you mouthing incantations.
I didn’t know the words, as a child,
just the execution- bowed heads-
and the absolute, unyielding decision
to escape this long queue
of which,
I do not wish to be a part.
I do not wish to be apart.

Sir, they've torn my heart out

You sound like the west wind.

In the darkest part of night
I can feel you bumping
the perimeter of the bed in an effort
to undress quietly
and slip in
tight in my curls.
Time has no direction in my room,
in the late.

Guttered and lessoned,
Mouth unclosed against anything you ever asked of me.
I am too happy to be told what to do.

The television is on in the other room,
my eyes are sealed to windows.
The flapping of trench coats,
painfully stylish against the hems of skirts
hats pressed firmly down,
but this is Texas, it’s all for show.

My toes are chilled,
I can’t find socks.
I hope someone warms some milk for me soon.

Well, do the best you can.