The Poetry Marathon

8/5/17 12:11pm
Marrow

You sucked out all my marrow
from my narrow
frame
and replaced it with the same
liquid guilt that fuels you.

If only forgiveness
could be intravenous
then
maybe you’d be able to
move on too.

8/5/17 11:21am
Bunny

Thursday afternoon hangs sticky in my head
sticky in the way that I’m stuck on something that you said.
In your way you asked me, why I over-edit, why I correct.
You asked me, “where’s the grit? Where’s the real shit?”

Where’s the words I used to peel off of my lips in strips,
shouting my truths at the top of my lungs?
Where’s the rawness and the vulgar?
Did it fade as I got older?
Walking on eggshells to assure I don’t push anyone away.
Please like me, god I need you to like me.
But it’s not honest,
it’s not the sonnets that are spinning in my throat.
I can’t coat the words in sugar, can’t recite a pretty quote.

Trying to crack open like flowers through the pavement,
and remember what it was that I had to say in the first place.
“You use too many words. Don’t overthink it so much.”
Let it spill out slip out drip out
of your bitten fingertips until you find yourself,
the one you’ve forgotten.

8/5/17 10:22am
Summer Girls

We slip off into the night to slip out of our clothes,
remove our skins for the neighborhood eyes
flying through the park, her pale moon thighs,
a blur of elbows and ankles,
lip gloss and bangles, rolling in the grass.
And he was her first but would be my eighth,
filling me in the dark with his broken collarbone
his lilting lyrics and poised promises.
Her mom would sleep til the sun rose.
Then he slows and I realize
I lost my earring, my favorite earring,
huge-like-a-chandelier-Edie-Sedgwick-earring.
I comfort myself in that all possessions are temporary and then
he finds it wedged in the green and places it in my hand,
my sweaty shaking hand.

I laugh at the thought of keeping something that I’ve already let go of
Just like you.
And just like you,
I fling it from me, silver streaking through the trees
my knees are blade-stained and bare.
I left it there
just like I left you
tearing through the night like sisters, like a Tori Amos song.
All along you were the light that lead me back home
and now we’ve grown into proper women.
Still a blur of elbows and ankles, still filled with lyrics and promises.

8/5/17 9:23
Kismet/Still Can’t Find Her

I’ve been looking for God
In between cities and the webbed space connecting fingers.
I’ve been pacing the bare-bulbed blinding
Never finding faith or redemption,
So that I can drop down to my knees and
Give myself over to something other than my impulses.
Something other than you.

I’ve been looking for God
Behind the soft spaces of your ears.
I’ve searched for years to find a way
To absolve my own indiscretions.
Looking underneath my rib cage hoping
That the bigger the space is
The more likely God’s to be found.

I’ve been looking for God
Inside the notebooks my friends give me;
Desperate attempts to channel my
Frenzied cycling thoughts,
Because there must be a better way to repent
For the time that wasn’t spent
In your good graces.

I’ve been looking for God
For over 24 years
To make sense of the recurring kismet
That draws me to you.
I still can’t find her but I think she lives
In the way you pronounce my name
Like a hymn.

8/5/2017 8:20am
You

You told me that we were made of the same matter as stars
and wove me a blanket made of constellations that I wore
when my nights were vacant and unending.
You tilted the sky upside down so that we could gaze into ourselves;
My mirror; my supernova
Exploding into and out of this life.

Your ashes in the ink of my spine were made of the same matter as stars
but too gritty,
Abrasive and smoke scented.
A black hole of “what-if’s” and staying at your sister’s house in paradise.
Her smile is just like yours;
A gravitational pull of comfort and logic,
Except that hers is always asking,
“Why you?”

8/5/17 7:43 am
Longing

Your orange juice mouth spit pulp into my vanilla guts
I sigh and shudder into the seasons
with too many reasons
to drop my fragile feral heart onto railroad tracks and take back
placing my head into your lap.
The rain dripping down the nape of my neck
I dissect
every action and it’s purpose
and I’m nervous to admit that
this is everything I ever wanted.
I stay platonic
to even myself and encase in silver plating
Never sating a desire to aim higher
or take a fucking chance.
It’s in a glance.
It’s scribbled into the follicles of my eyelashes
spilling over the water line
of my almond-shaped green longing.

Glitter laced across the space of your bedroom floor
wishing that there was more
sunshine.
I define myself in the sharpness of your incisors
and how they shear me just like satin.
Running through the streets of Manhattan
chasing ghosts of my childhood idols.
The expanse of mattress between my back and your hips
the quiver of your lips when you’re sleeping.
Make way for the stone grey of sunrise
where my heavy eyes
will pull you from the depths of Hades’ river.
I will keep running and never glance back.
You’re the meat of the roads I never took.
It’s in a look.

8/05/17 6:58am
Ele(mental)

My father is a leo; I was born from his flame.
In the middle of the desert; in the scorching heat I came.
We burn ourselves alive from the inside out;
Call it what you will, addiction sates the drought.

It’s said the Virgin comes from earth; she’s a giving tree,
But my legs are not like roots; they buckle under me.
I have sunflowers in my eyes; skin that’s summer kissed.
Dirt trails and grand canyons form road maps across my wrists.

Breath inside my chest; it’s been caught there since I was young.
Gasping for open space; some smoke inside the lung.
I would fly if I could fill it; float somewhere far away from here.
I would quit if I could kill it; say I’ll try sometime this year.

I live inside the oceans; I’m the waves as they form.
The calmness of low tide; the chaos of the storm.
Capsized in my pride; I’ll be washed of my ache.
The swells know my soul; they build and they break.

I am slender wrists; bright eyed.

Scarred knuckles; tan thigh-ed.

Salty hair; air dried.

Alliteration drowned in high tide.

Spilling words or wine,

So long as they are both mine.

I’m here to give myself a break from the constant

shaking

from containing the avalanches of

stanzas

building up behind my lips

curled inside the places where

I bite them when I feel pressure.

This is something challenging and new;

a more satisfying way to

process all that’s happened with you.