when the fence didn't snag my dress

just jumped,
and i'm leanin'
against the fence, breathless
on the other side.

o, how my heart
is a thud thud thud
with the rush
of flight & the deathfear of the leap

but the firm,
dark, ground catches me,
my sidewalking boots
impressing two grateful kisses.

the dusky morning breeze flickers,
cool fire through my chopped hair,
& i throw one last glance

over the young gleaming grass.
the sun's coming up, like sweetness,
like apples, over my summer hills and haunts,
and i turn,
and i run.
the day will never catch me.

Shipwreck

A radiant woodbox of lies:

God knocked twice last night,

wove a gentle net

of gilt thread, to cradle the young

Fool. I am stripping the taste

of stale spirits from my numbing tongue:

Nights of singing

of the blood clock burned from the bone cage.

Charring vapors & smoke dreams,

Downed soot on a decayed stage.

I am aging like a dirtied cloud,

Rain, rain,

Heavy.

Rain on my streaked window pane,

but I am out

-side and empty.

Bright baubles and sylphs,

don't need a'body;

drift in foam and breeze, 

nothing but a splinted thing in light.

It hurts so good;

I could carve it out,

slide a clean serrated blade across its skin

as it grinds against the mottled, wooden board,

steady cut by cut,

its juices, soaking

into the hard perspiring bed.

It grows back

as I cut.

Uglier, and fresher.

I want to flay it,

strip the polyps,

cancer thing. It's all wrong.

how beautiful you are when you're all sorts of fucked up inside,
like the way that damned croissant won't sit right,
but it looked so damn good, all soft and buttery
until it went down, greasy, like a dirty marble stuck in your windpipe,
or
a chunk of old garbaged stormdrain ice, rammed in just right of the heart,
and i go god, it's like a storm, a filthy ocean on my tits and in my lungs
and i never learned how to swim, so i'm puking the bittersweet sea and sol
and sand and i'm going oh

-

but i was a good girl, and god, i tried so hard, i'm always trying so hard,
so damn willful, maybe that's why you slap us, because what
is a woman but a girl with another wet face, and what are tears but salt
when you are only dirt and when men cry all the time when some boot
trods over their dust bodies or when even on days i don't believe in you,
you're still leaving me to die
same girl, face in the splintering floor with the elbows dug into my back
that you forged steel so i could crawl,
and carry my cuts and skin scrapes like a cabochon of your crafting

-

and god, i am lonely, so you made a boy with as many ribs as mine,
and gave him frost's apple trees and a tongue for pears,
and gave me a song of frost & hollow wind in the nights,
and change for a few cups of dark, milkless coffee,
and i threw up