The Poetry Marathon

It’s been eight years since the first time I journeyed through a marathon in 2014.  I’m ready and excited for the challenge.

I’m Angel. I’m 28 and living in Pennsylvania. I’ve been writing for all of my life, especially the last ten years. My second book, Blake, came out in April and it was Amazon’s best-selling poetry book by a woman & a LGBTQIA+ poetry book for a few days.

I’m autistic and I live with depression and OCD.  Both of my dogs passed away in the last six weeks.  They were my greatest loves and I am working on figuring out the meaning of life without dogs.

My best friend is moving away in a few weeks.  I expect I will be focusing on grief poems.

Thank you for making space for me.

Coming at ya from Pennsylvania 🐈‍⬛

the living room door
in my aunt Margaret’s house
had the face of Jesus in the grain
when I would fall asleep
with its eyes watching me
I thought I would wake up healed
Salvation on the other side
of sugarwood
when I was three, I remember
my mother carrying me
because our street had flooded and I said
I thought you told me
God would never flood the earth again?
Turns out, my town wasn’t the whole world,
but I took up my grievance
with the door
With my little hands, I unscrewed
the hinges and offered
it to Noah for an arc

————————————-

🥳🥳🥳 I am so disappointed in my work this time but I’m excited to read other people’s work when I wake up later! That will make up for my own negative feelings!

My stretch marks aren’t art
You romanticize my body
just because it isn’t yours
to weigh, measure, and iron

I hear tiger stripes
I see zippers
My body’s housed my many attempts
To escape

Your honor
I am not responsible for
The centipedes in the sink
or your lost dry cleaning
Third divorce
Or sixth affair
Your honor
I am not responsible for
The lost marbles
The clogged drain
or the guts on the rug

Let’s consult the
Purge conditions
The second juror from the right
Is looking rather handsome
in this florescent light

Your honor
I am not responsible for
my unshaven legs
My tipped kayak or your
Morning fender bender

It all ends in house arrest

the furious bone
stays imbedded in me
my souvenir
for loving you, bold of me
to try my hand at a science
like that
my phone frozen in my fingers’ grasp
all of us petrify
I am to become a study
of a woman sat, waiting
in an airport terminal,
facing extinction
while facing you
excuses fall from your lips
and I will never kiss you
again, oh
how you begged for that
first kiss, you said,
how could I ask you to wait
even ten minutes?
well, that same interval
allowed you to crumple me
like used aluminum foil
and pat me down
like a trash compactor.
I left you flatter.

Ham sandwich for lunch
Potato chip crunch, crumbs bounce
Happiness, each bite

she says she is sorry
while she digs her grave
medusa-thick with
clever snakes

she has six mirrors in every room
so she never looks at you
every day, she wakes up,
cold-blooded and picks
at her scales

she knows the doom
and has forfeited love
time and again
so that she only turns herself
to stone. if no other
woman wakes up beside her
enamored and available,
she only has to
worry about the
hardening of
herself

i may have shared my sylvia
but i will keep her in the divorce
you can have jumanji
and all my lightbulbs
as long as you keep them
in your mouth
45 watts behind your teeth
anything is better than me!

i played body double
for another woman, i
must’ve reminded you
that i am me
when i undressed for you
when i was just
a voice on the phone
i was her, your damned girl,
and when i failed
to arrive at your apartment
dressed as her,
you couldn’t have loved me less

Content warning: sex

Having sex with a Psychopath
was not like the movies
I had always imagined
licking the tip of fear, dancing
in handcuffs until one of us
slits a throat. I had always imagined
blood
and an edge,
a severed head and
a phone ringing in panic
I had all that! But the blood was mine,
the head was yours
and the edge was
that which you pushed me from.
Everything rings in your empty.
Having sex with a Psychopath
Was not like the movies,
there was no dangerous romance,
no twin flame inevitable ignition,
There was just your horrible ghost
draining me of my innocence
I should’ve stayed a bystander