January 14th, 2015


Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks , The National, 2010

Alex mentions how he has read my entire incomplete
collection of 2014 poems. I do not believe him.

Glasses clink and laughter rushes around the restaurant
around us, and I smile and shake my head and insist he is lying.

I really did. He says. All of it. The whole thing. You're
lying I say again. Hearts on a string he says.

And now I know he has read at least as far back as he would
have had to to find traces of himself. And he is there, and he
knows it.

I am very quiet now. I have never had to confront this kind
of intimacy. Up until now I have written in code.

I didn't even understand the codes when I wrote them.
David did, and he said "I think you don't want to marry me"

but he was already so far from me that I couldn't hear him,
so I took that line too and made a poem of it.

Anyway, it's one thing to write in code, but to write for real
and know that real people are reading for real, real people
who are smart enough to read fully

shakes me. I fiddle with the straw in my empty
water glass. I knock ice around and when that grows old,
I consider my nails.

___________________________________________

January 13th, 2015


Porno, Arcade Fire, 2013

My razor is very dull
and it barely does the job

You are not allowed to hate your body
I say to myself while I stand in the shower
hating my body.

It is hard to purify something you hate.
It is hard to care for it.

The shower rushes in waterfalls
over the edge of my breasts.

There is misogyny even here,
in this intimacy, in my bar of soap
in the razor that can't possibly
reach the root of the problem.  

The pool of my belly button is
nearly serene as I lie on the floor
of the tub under the heat

making promises to myself
that I know I won't keep.

I lived for ten years alongside those
images in his head.

I heard it in a dream.
I felt it in his hands when he touched me.

An honest witness saves lives.

I should have spoken. My lips are
full and my tongue is sharp.

You are not allowed to hate your body
because there are many eyes on you, 
many girls seeking hope in the lines 
of your hip, in the sureness of your step.

I wring out the washcloth, wring out my
hair, wring out this heart of self-loathing
and climb over the edge of the tub, pure
of pretense and bare.