The Poetry Marathon

She was afraid she wasn’t good enough
He was afraid she wasn’t good enough
He was afraid he wasn’t good enough
She was afraid he wasn’t good enough
He is afraid she isn’t good enough
He is afraid he isn’t good enough
She is afraid she isn’t good enough
She is afraid he isn’t good enough
She will be afraid she isn’t good enough
She will be afraid he isn’t good enough
He is afraid she won’t be good enough
He is afraid he won’t be good enough
She has been afraid she isn’t good enough
He is afraid he has not been good enough
She will have been afraid she isn’t good enough
He is afraid she will have always been good enough

A Murmuring

As if the wind had a body, as if the sky
shuttered dark with its own laughter, as if the clouds
discovered each other and couldn’t stop
touching, as if our skin could shatter
and show what a joy it is to be here
and alive next to you

“I ran out of time for this one, but I’m curious where it will go when I have a good amount of time to really sit with it and think about the bodies of woman saints. Who knows where it will go.” -Jessica

These men found the preserved body of Saint Cecillia in the basement
of a church. Another woman named saint because she managed
not to have sex and not to decompose for eight hundred years. Or maybe

someone else decided she didn’t had sex because if the body is incorruptible
in one way, it must also be uncorrupted in another. And besides,
a woman can only be one or the other, right? Anyway, some other men

found the preserved body of Saint Clare of the Poor Clares and paraded
it to the Pope. Later they found her bones were tied together
with silver wire, cloth, and pitch. Her body corrupted by stranger’s hands.

The skin of woman preserves so much easier than her stories do.

I held myself underwater
So I could rise above the surface
And prove myself alive
The lungs ballooning

So I could rise above the surface
And enjoy the shock of breathing
The lungs ballooning
Proof that I deserved to survive

And enjoy the shock of breathing
I held myself underwater
Proof that I deserved to survive
And prove myself alive

Austin was a shape-shifter. He turned over stones
and there was writing underneath. I turned one once
and found blind maggots writhing. When his

mother asked me to look for him, Jeff came too
in case Austin’s body had turned blue and wooden
because of overdose. Jeff was recovering from heroin

as if that were protection. But Austin answered
at the first place we went and said his phone
was dead. That was the last time I saw him.

An accidental betrayal. Unforgivable. I had proven
that he was findable, and after this he wasn’t found,
except a call sometimes from jail, ever again.

Years ago, when I was a boy and therefore safer,
I would visit Austin on his night-shift at the 7-11

and watch the zombies shuffle in for microwavable pie
or cigarettes. Mostly they just asked for stuff, any change

we might give them. Later, when Austin became one,
his eyes as hollow as the needle he carried everywhere,

he called himself Saint Sebastian. You know, that hot
naked guy in all the museums: barely dressed, arms tied

above his head, his body full of arrows. He writhes
in those paintings, every muscle alive and straining.

But Sebastian didn’t die from the punctures, he was healed
and then clubbed to death suddenly after. I think that

was Austin’s favorite part, being famous for something
you’ve healed from. The last time I saw him

he was black-out drunk at my birthday party, and ashed
in every one of the wine bottles, no matter how full.

He puked on the front and back porch. I had turned into
a girl by then and he never liked girls much.

I didn’t know how to handle him. I still miss him though.

For Churchill, the shadow
of vermouth on his martini
was enough. For my brother,
two drops of water
in his bourbon please, the memory
of what it once was. Once, my shadow
was the only thing I owned; it could
not leave. I looked for sun
everywhere, just to watch it
move beside me.

There are spiders everywhere

This showed how Goddesses punish

They weave and jump across

those who are immortal

the tomato plants and cucumber

How many ways can a God

Leave sticky strings across

use a woman as malleable pulp

the entry to the washing machine

for a swan or a bull or a man

The young jump from the tree

How many ways can a woman

one thread still attached

scream no, beg no, her mothers and daughters asking

floating like a Christmas light alone

Arachne fought for our protection

and land in my hair sometimes

through her own skill of creation against the goddess

if I’m sitting outside at night

And this is how we thank her?

The sun shines every day. The leaves don’t change. “The air is different
here,” A woman said yesterday as she got out her car, “Yes, the air
is different,” someone else said. Then a girl, maybe 7, got out
and hugged the woman. They stood that way for a long time. The woman
loved that girl, or at least, loved that moment. The happiness was there
all over her face. Did they escape something?
I suspect they escaped the valley,
and arrived here for Korean BBQ, triumphant.
In a place where I’m safe,
where it is beautiful and the sun shines every day, why am I jealous of a girl
and a woman? Is it the girl? Is it the woman? Or is it being held and held
well beyond the regular amount by someone who never wants to let you go?

If Aliens Come

and discover human beings
will they think we are so hard

to see, so full of water that our edges
move? Will they watch the tides

in us as we watch the ocean?
Perhaps we can frighten them

with our leaking, there are
so many ways water leaves the body

that, conceivably, a person could
do them all at once and not die.

Perhaps we’ll show them the babies, our
greatest magic trick, who are

80% water and still solid, who learn
to breath air suddenly and during

separation, who after that first breath
out of liquid can never go back.