Grief manifested
July:
the month of tar
sweeping rivers
in the streets
glue sludge
filling her mind
causing a stutter.
She’ll grip it
by the balls
the emotion
cooling and festering
between her fingers
painted black, staining
her fists with anger.
She eats gnats
on sunny afternoons
let them feast on the rotten
pomegranates and pineapple
in her belly
uneaten concaved candies
rip for hollowed out leftovers.
The Writer’s Crucified Muse
The writer feasts her eyes on black keys and blush pink nail polish
ravenous for words that come around 5am with the alarm.
Pull the sheets up tight, her eyes clenching the dreams
away from their burrow in her mind wishing for nestled wolves
rather than humans with sharp teeth.
The writer aims to model poems. Looking sideways at
unbearable coffee house art, pink curtains pushed far
letting the sun soak those same tired keys.
When the writer doesn’t get remotely close to a break:
along with the mundane she’ll think of you.
do you consume art in moments of unrequited love?
how ‘bout when heartbreak feels like a slow descent into thick tar?
Nightmares grip her by the biceps and breast.
Folding in on herself like a somersault the writer grabs a dagger
from her bedside table, trotting out into a snowy night
where she’ll lay bare in a city park not freezing
carving out wood and stones for a selfie stake
hanging dry elderflower, wildflowers, lavender, eucalyptus, and rose.
The writer builds it up with a thousand horrid memories
you him they
run through her mind like the
speed of love and anguish
latching onto each one,
she steps onto the stake with the gilded dagger singing
and brings it hard into her chest dropping a match on her grave.
You’ll smell those flowers burn bright.
The writer sings loudly, one hand full of honest pages
letting the ink dry by the fireside flames.
drinking alone.
warm beer slides down
her tongue
into a sanguine
rest at her
carved out center.
Knowing this feeling
well she talks to herself
gleaning false knowledge
of lightweights begging for more,
waking home with shame.
would the Lord’s wine taste as sweet if she
wasn’t genetically designed to fall in love with every sip?
Lie to us
Math was never my strong suit.
You’d do the directions and the tips, yet I’m good at
counting the proximity of 3 months when she posted about you.
She loved you since she’s known you.
Watching a girl’s eyes fill with yearning the way mine
did each goodbye is like watching carnations die - realizations crumpling together.
Fathoming waking up without you is hard enough.
Let disbelief flow in, chipping away each empty promise
knowing you love someone else can break a beaten heart flat.
Against 60 mile winds on a desolate lake.
I gripped on with every untruth, knuckles white with yearning,
like your tear soaked arm on an inevitable car ride chock full of regret.
You fall in love with our ambition.
Sweetly and simply lacking your own passion. I’ll hold
this cripple winged bird, mending her ability to soar unabated.
I climb now into my worn gray sheets,
wolves pass like sheep as I count one two three
are you lying to her or were you lying to me.
indecisiveness.
I’m blind to the cracks in our foundation. The way they teetered me into you and I’d feel your shoulders under my fingertips. I have the problem of never making up my mind and losing something either way — like when I can’t decide if I should buy bananas or berries at the store. If I buy both, one will rot. My sister is either a creature of habit or a creature of consequence. My mother never makes choices, but when she does, the decisions smile knowing she wanted them all along. I get it honest. When God touched my head signaling breath he hiccuped. I’ve known choices, but have never been able to make them. Other people make sandcastles, but I let the ocean strands fall through my fingers; all grainy syrup, nothing solidified. I used to press clovers into spines of books and take them out only to see, not their beauty, but decay. The first boy I thought I loved, we used to drive around drinking coffee from green straws. When he told me he loved me, deciding to love him back was too much. Choices are confirmations. Prayers over night to be the person you’ve always wanted. It’s the consummation of a path in life, and the will to step. I make more decisions I wish I hadn’t than ones I wish I had.
But I don’t regret my decision with you.
My heart stretches at my ribs when I think of your shoulders and the way they connect to your arms, connecting to your hands. The choice they make to touch me. It’s not your fault for the cracks under my feet and the instability that comes with genetic neutrality.
I talk to people now, hearing stories
adoring them, taking them home in my pocket.
I learned from you.
These special slices of infinity
are truly unremarkable.
It’s the stuff of break up songs.
Although I miss you every day,
embedded in this music, in that poetry,
in grenades, are the serenades of
people who’ve lost love,
and only after discover they’ve
been struck by the universal
heartbreak.
Beards brushed other cheeks,
arms held other bodies on air mattresses in beach houses,
tears shed miles apart in dank apartments,
blankets covering bodies on a velvet couch,
opening Christmas presents with glow from juliet balconies,
all is not special to us.
It’s not even special to love itself, having seen it before.
Love is thrilled by the mundane,
although we sought to make it exceptional.
realizing what we had wasn’t unique - MM
The moment you first kissed me a piece of your soul chipped off against my lips.
Nothing to do but hold it precious until you asked for it back. Every brush
your lips made over my body secretly loved it.
The pain you caused crawled over the
couch, wrapping fingers in my curls,
sliding its knee between my thighs.
I yearned for that dig and stab
like dry ice embedded
becoming my mosaic stained glass
withering windows of a burned church.
Crush me with your erratic edge
I flow over you like water,
calming the heat before
it eats you dead.
Play with snowy keys
watching the flames
dance behind your eyes.
Who we wanted
the other
to be never
matched up.
I needed to
become.
You wanted
to
cease.
five months sleeping underwater
There’s cider in apple cans
barbecue tacos in cardboard tins
but this Kia driving through Manhattan
flows past FDR into the east river
gasping I watch it back
black and white silent films
blurred in blue and warped
under intense pressure
I can still hear the words
as though you’re breathing
to me from the depths
a clear picture may emerge,
but it’s like I’m submerged
present never moving toward
it like the waves rocking back
and forth against me at night
when I beg for the saving grace
comfort you used to provide.
Dead arms heavy with seawater
lay flat against my sides when
I beg for you this way I look out
through groggy water to see your
grimacing face
I know I’m healing from you
letting these tides cleanse the wounds you made.
No white picket fence not even a garage fit perfectly with three cars,
but a small cottage in suburbia far enough away from the other houses
so we didn’t see their nakedness through the kitchen window above the sink
they couldn’t see ours through the bedroom window over looking rose bushes.
Pups, maybe huskies, running around the backyard under an ill worn swing set
across from a patio fit for a grill king the chickens cooing quietly in the side yard
even though I fought their meaning and ideas I couldn’t help smiling at the fresh
baby blue pink speckled things on the counter. You make pots of fresh coffee.
I’d push the glasses up the bridge of my nose just enough to see your smiling
lips before they caressed mine after setting steaming mugs down next to a blank
doc on a screen waiting patiently for the inspiration of a Sunday morning
to brace words, building a foundation of wood and cement with ink and paper.
Before bed you’d massage my neck, bent out of shape from bending too hard
I’d massage your mind with things filling mine until you lean over the comforter
to click the lamp bathing us in darkness, bringing the light of your eyes into focus
setting the night before us into a pristine vision of a life laid bare and open.
Daydreaming - MM
Thompkins Square Park / twilight timing
onyx squirrels chase their lovers / life echoing about
kids break into drained swimming pools / fences sway slightly
quiet, chilled breath seeping into the night in a laugh / oaks sigh creaking
tangerine burning lamps encircle benches on an omniscient tar path / snow flurries float
her mouth turns up at the corners, biting her lip slightly, nodding to a beat / simplicity dawns
realizing poetry doesn’t have to be painful while walking home - MM
I don’t love you anymore, but
in the sand dunes off a newly
laid boardwalk to the ocean,
in a childhood bedroom, equipped with
old beer glasses and a folding mattress,
in between parkway stops going left
instead of right stumbling upon meadows,
in a king sized bed overlooking Myrtle Beach,
whispers of blood dusting the sheets,
in a hot tub in the bowels of a Georgia
summer begging the night to be one longer,
in the Catskills near Hudson, wading into rivers
watching the afternoon sleep in your eyes,
I wish I’d said it one more time with lasting
conviction, made you feel it, trust it,
carving the words into your bones.
snow came in sideways,
skidding ice across my cheeks.
the sting felt nice like kissing.
i told you what a terrifying person you are,
and wondered why it offended you so much
while you collected snow into a line on a mirror.
you held that baby so sweetly
snuggled in the krook of your arm,
he suckled his lips, looking for milk from the
bloated woman sitting cross-legged in bed.
the mother smiled a sad grateful smile you didn’t see
for your arms held a burden so light you couldn’t feel her.
i felt bad, intruding on that moment,
each person unaware they were being
gazed upon with so much emotion.
you said you never wanted kids,
how abortions were real nice in a bind.
watching you with that baby i thought
i cannot picture you holding our child.
you handed me the squirming thing.
i looked up to smile in your face,
noticing why you didn’t want her anymore.
blood dripped from your nose, over your lips
smearing when you smiled back.
watching bugs twitch in a ceiling light while waiting for the sun to break
i want a ceiling fan.
mostly so the draft can sweep
all the chalky memories under my bed.
bugs in fluorescent lighting
crawl out of their day place
away into my bedroom shadows,
munching their pincers until i dream
on the cum stained down comforter.
the click/ of a closed door
seems to define me.
a single moment isn’t enough closure when
he is sitting on his bed in the back
room and i, wedged against the wall couldn’t
talk breathe about talked talked circles.
beds are peculiar that way, reminding
chilling defining of the person
who sleeps in their sheets.
i never got to see if that room
he shut us in had a ceiling fan.
if it did i know it was coated with dust flakes.
don’t speak up, that silent voice
lies on top of me crushing a
wrought iron frame into my back.
i hear his words echo off skull bone.
i feel like i forced you.
repeats/
repeats/
repeats/
repeats/
repeats///
i can’t sleep.
my bugs living in
laugh light above my bed
watch my sanity like guards chained to a loose
fence shaking yanking staring at the ceiling.
new moon nights are crowd pleasers.
my apartment parking lot steel pipe light
switches off on off on
screams orange cuss in my open window.
i like being alone with my bugs
in this room on my unwashed down comforter.
there is no need for outside things
pine trees. movie theaters. locker room talk. mushy drowning kisses.
box hands digging in hips. half moons in flesh.
buying the wrong christmas present.
i’ll leave champagne vinegar out in mason jars
so together with my bug friends
we can toast
letting go of these
outside things the world raves about.
Mary Ann hoarded succulents. Well, hoarded lots of different plants, but succulents were her favorite. Her mother taught her to respect all aspects of life as a child, but no one expected her to become obsessed. She was forty-seven years old, single, and owned a floral shop ten blocks from her apartment. Most people given the privilege to come inside her perception of holy ground - her apartment - said it was the calmest place in New York. She rented the top floor specifically so she could have access to the roof, and she found this specific complex for private access. It wasn’t like she didn’t like other people, she had friends over quite often, but most days she liked to be alone with her plants. She believed her obsession stemmed from small talk. Or, the hate she felt when people tried to make small talk. She could do it for about as long as it takes to order a coffee. Plants just listen without trying to ask where you’re from and if you want room for cream.
Easton Edwards originally knocked on her door to ask if he could leave a spare key in her apartment in case he ever got locked out. He was an undergraduate college student, apparently. She never thought to ask where, and he never offered the information. His mother asked him to hide the spare with a person because she didn’t trust him to stop loosing keys, the way he lost most things when he was a child. Mary Ann originally thought the idea moronic, seeing as she might not be home when he needed to get back inside, but eventually obliged. Her instant regret seeped in when he’d ask to come in after the arrangement was made. She tried to close the door on his big toe, but he was quite tall and came inside anyway.
He’d been shocked with the amount of plants. In a good way, Mary Ann secretly hoped. She could see the look in his eyes as they traveled over each leaf observing their structure, each thorn, the way the stems opened up to petals in different shades of purple and green.
“This is magnificent. You take care of all this?” he’d asked.
“Yep, I do.”
“Can I stay for a bit?”
“Uh, no I don’t think that’s–”
He didn’t wait for her response. He ignored her and began walking throughout the apartment. Her eyes widened when he reached for her set of Graptopetalum in the corner next to the window. Well, all her succulents were relatively close to a window, but that’s neither here nor there. Upon seeing her many plants, no one denied the Graptopetalum was the softest in her collection, but she watched speechless as his hand reached for the leaves in a slow motion horror short film.
“Stop!” she yelled, shooting her hands out as if the force was with her.
Shocked by the force of her own command, she moved her hands over her mouth and shrank back from the space between them.
Easton pulled his hand back, slightly alarmed. It faded quickly.
“I’m sorry. Won’t happen again,” he said quietly and continued walking throughout the house.
He stayed for an hour that day, just watching the plants breathe sun. Mary Ann liked to think he felt a similar comfort she did, but in the same thought she wanted him to feel that comfort at a distance. His presence felt abrasive. Illusory. Especially while on the roof. It was a small space and she didn’t want to crowd it so she stayed downstairs making tea to keep busy. Her conflicting thoughts drove her a bit mad until he came back from the roof and promptly left the apartment. Before leaving, he asked if she needed someone to stop by a time or two to water the plants. He was available if she did. Although she didn’t any time soon, she thought better of saying no, nodding instead. As he walked out the tea kettle screamed.
From that day forward there was a silent agreement they’d unconsciously consented to. He came sporadically, and when he did he always made sure she was home and brought her a hot beverage. Mary Ann hated herbal tea, but this exchange began with it. She could pinpoint the first time he’d knocked needing his spare key after that first interaction. He asked for his key, then walked into her apartment yet again, completely missing her second attempt to close the door on his big toe.
After staying for ten minutes he’d asked if she liked herbal tea, because his grandmother sent homemade stuff in the mail every two weeks and he couldn’t stand it so it kept adding up.
“No,” she replied bluntly while positioning her succulents.
“I was just asking for, you know, for future reference.”
“Future reference?”
“In case I ever stop by with herbal tea,” he said like it made sense.
“Well. I don’t like it so don’t bring it.”
He’d never replied but the next time he came back he had the homemade herbal tea. He handed it to her, then continued into her apartment. When she set that down without drinking it he came back again the next week with the same tea. She didn’t want to waste his grandma’s tea, but also didn’t want to encourage his habit. She looked around to make sure he wasn’t watching, took a sip, and lifted her eyebrows. Floral notes seeped up with earthy hints and a minty aftertaste. It was the best tea she’d tasted in a long time. She took a bigger gulp, this time not looking for Easton. He was watching from the stairs to the roof. She didn’t see it, but it was the first time he’d smiled since meeting her.
Mary Ann wanted desperately to hate Easton Edwards. But, she felt as though he needed the solace as much as her. She’d never seen him outside her apartment, not even in the lobby checking the mail. His hands always shook when he grabbed the spare key from her or handed over a cup of tea. When she noticed the tremor, she stopped trying to slam the door on his toes all the time, even when it was playful. By their third interaction she’s succumbed to the intrusiveness that was Easton Edwards, and thought of him as a thick throw blanket. Very close and comforting. Sometimes he’d bring books and read them stoically underneath the windows. The sun liked when he came over, too. He’d sit next to the windows, framed by it’s rays. She thought he might have been a plant in a different life. He became a fixture. His eyes blended into the floral wallpaper.
After four months they’d become friends. He discovered she really only wanted him to bring his grandmother’s tea, even though she would drink whatever he brought. The only verbal exchanges they shared were necessary pleasantries.
***
On a Tuesday, Mary Ann had just gotten back from the floral shop when she heard a knock on the door, thinking it was Easton. As she undid the lock and opened the door, he sunk. Taken aback her body immediately tensed, and because of the height difference she was able to catch him before he slumped too far to the ground. He let out a racking sob against her shoulder. His entire body shook with tremors. She didn’t know how to stop it, how to move him or still him or make it better. Her minimal words stuck to her tongue. She wanted to take his mind from the skull and rest it in the window with the most sun to let the heat and vitamin D soak itself new. She felt her weight begin to give as the moments passed. He must have sensed her weakening arms. They gently sunk farther to the ground. They stayed that way until the kettle screamed. She’d forgotten she’d turned it on when she got home. She slowly got up, being precarious with Easton’s limp limbs, to take her kettle off the stove and took one more mug from the cabinet. Her hands shook like Easton’s.
Walking back to the foyer with the two steaming mugs, she set them down and pulled on his dead arm. He looked up with puffy eyes. Mary Ann nodded to the couch, and he pulled himself up to shuffle over behind her. Her throat felt prickly with anticipation and anxiety.
She handed him his mug, but thought better of it after seeing how bad his hands shook. She placed it before him on the coffee table. He didn’t speak so she tried for words.
“Easton?” She asked gently. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t say anything, just reached into his back pocket to pull out a piece of paper. No, not paper, a photograph. She couldn’t tell what it was until he laid it on the coffee table in front of her.
It was sleeping, she thought. The head round, with a perfectly upturned nose in a shape that reminded her of a Sedum Stonecrop. One hand outstretched, in a gentle wave, the other curled into a small fist. The rest was indistinguishable black and white.
Mary Ann gulped her tea for strength. “When’s she due?” she asked.
“She isn’t anymore.”
Mary Ann never had a child, or sex for that matter. The opportunity never arose, and she didn’t have enough courage for speed dating at coffee shops. She put her hand on his back while he continued to shake uncontrollably. The tea had gone cold when he finally stopped. He looked up at her for the first time since she’d opened the door, and raw emotion was potent in his clear eyes. He reached to give her a hug, squeezing too tight. When he released her, she saw the despair fade to dimness on his face, turning in on itself. He got up and walked out leaving the picture of the baby on the table. Mary Ann never thought to ask if it was a boy or a girl.
Saturday in September I’d snuck out on purity to take a drive with Tom. We’d officially been together a month. Hated other people. Enjoyed cabins to have sex in between trees. 11:30 p.m. The bend warped around Highway 194. Trees swallow a field. Distracted picking music through cracks in my glass phone. Edward R., Wolves and the Water. Stillness.
Did you see that?
See what?
Tom stopped. Hazards on. Walked briskly to the lump lying over double yellow lines. The dog could have been sleeping. Trickle of blood down his snout and engorged tongue left a spot on the pavement. Doris lived in the house next to the choked field. Kitchen light shone, not quite reaching the street. Dimmed. I knocked on the backdoor because the front felt too intimate. Doris ran to the limp pit-bull, placing her hand over it’s left ear.
My sweet Beau. I bet my rotten neighbor did it. Oh, Beau. I’d only let him out 15 minutes ago.
Tom laid chewed hands on Beau’s belly while Doris grabbed an old sheet and I watched the stars with my arms wrapped around my torso. He gently pulled his sweatshirt off. I grabbed the old fabric, afraid it smelled of death. Comforted being right.
I gotta get him out of the street. Move my car will you? I don’t expect you to help.
I moved his car faster than he moved Beau. Tom lifted with his knees, arms wrapped around the still chest. Both bodies rigid with exertion. Tom’s biceps heaved like breath, afraid to drag the young body across tar. Beau’s taut muscles like rolling sand. My eyes followed those hanging legs. The heap let breath shift grass.
Tom wrapped Beau like a burrito in a sheet resembling parchment, hiding his face from Doris. I could see a smear of blood. It reminded me of when I got my period for the first time and I thought I was dying. We waddled up the long driveway to Doris’ house with Beau swinging dead between us. He twitched, I swear it.
I can’t bear to leave him outside in the cold. Just, put him here.
We laid Beau behind the floral couch next to the china cabinet. Tea cups and large dinner plates with dust. Her house reminded me of Nana’s. Faded moss brown carpet. Grandfather clock nine inches from the fireplace. Shrined. I wanted to cry because she used to feed me potato chips and ice cream, but never had a dead dog in her living room.
I can come back tomorrow if you need some help burying him.
Doris nodded with muscadine eyes. Leaking wine. She tried to stop us leaving with stories of her dead husband. Tom grabbed my hand, swung the dead thing between us down the driveway walking back to his car.
I straddled Tom in a cabin in Todd. Our bodies mingled with the smell of decaying fur and weed. He kissed me. Metallic tinge. Slammed into the couch. I played with coarse curls on his chest. We reeked of death and ravishment the next morning when he drove me home, then back to Doris’ to dig a hole large enough for a pit-bull pup.