February 2012
24 posts
6 tags
Io.
Galileo found me one day at the end of a telescope
like a lover emerging at a hallway’s mouth. Like a man
spotting for the first time woman in the window she
forgot to close, forgot to curtain. I am Jupiter’s
Lover. Zeus’ Lover. I am volcanic love. I am yellow
green purple oil paint love, I am a sulfurous
plume love, I am found by a man through
a telescope love, I am...
1 tag
3 tags
There is a part of me that only exists in poetry. It’s the part of me that I resurrected from a deep and bottomless ocean. One minute I think I’m done for. It’s gonna swallow me whole this time, I swear.
Then a stanza. A few words, another. Words spilling out of my gut and onto paper. Like a bad case of the flu. I word vomit until I am dehydrated. No more viruses or words in my...
4 tags
you are the prettiest color.
imagine turquoise swimming towards you at thirty thousand miles per hour. the light will flicker in out in out like candlelight licking the lips of a glass container. don’t be afraid. turquoise like water, turquoise like fingernail polish, turquoise like fucking fuck fuck on a saturday morning. turquoise is the color of “good morning” and “how are you?” and it’s...
3 tags
“In short, to exercise our poetic talents on location, we must leave our rooms...”
– Cesare Zavattini, Some Ideas on the Cinema
3 tags
i wear loneliness like my favorite sweater.
spiders spit spiderwebs
and i spit spit into the shower
drain on friday night, turned
my skin red hot red like the
ocean had been beating against
me for hours. i spelled your
name with the dirt under
my fingernails and became
clean again.
it’s funny.
when your skin heats up
your invisible scars show up again.
“You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to...”
– http://www.dressaday.com/2006/10/you-dont-have-to-be-pretty.html. (via transformfeminism)
3 tags
I-35E North
one day the government carved a
street between a neighborhood,
cut it right in half like surgery.
from both sides of the interstate,
the pale yellow grey black
blue red painted walls spill
over the concrete slab fence,
but never quite make it.
i wonder how long that neighbor-
hood weeped at the industrial
scar on its torso. on its arms.
now the two parts of that whole
speak, wave to...
4 tags
opinion of the day: language
A few days ago in my German class, we were discussing the different genders of different nouns (in the German language, there are three: neuter, feminine and masculine). With certain nouns denoting the type of person being described, the suffix depends upon the gender of the person you are speaking of. For example, the word for a male teacher is Lehrer, and the world for a female teacher is...
4 tags
cub foods on valentine's day
In the grocery store
men line up with
roses, held in the
crooks of arms
like red-eyed children.
They are blue
jeans and soft
smiles. Their
loves are flowers
and a bottle of
champagne, red wine.
I am in line with
a basket of milk,
yogurt, mac-
and-cheese, some
fruit, some granola.
I am a grocery list.
Valentine’s Day
in the grocery store
alone like any other day.
I buy my...
4 tags
4 tags
listen.
listen, there is a girl in this world who has fallen in love, i would tell you her name but i’m afraid you’d recognize it. when a girl falls in love, it’s a terrible thing, oh girl, guard your heart, i want to say but she’ll never hear it, her heart is a naked pale thing waiting in the rain to be held, when he said 5:00 she thought he meant 5:00, when it’s 6:00 she only thinks, well he’s on his...
2 tags
forest fire
shut the fuck up. this is what i want to say to the world too many times. sometimes the night is black but last night it was navy blue and the moon was spit out of the earth over minneapolis buildings, the moon was maroon. leave me alone. i want to be swallowed up by clouds on a winter night and i want to return to the earth as snow, you will find my brown eyes in a snowflake and my hands will be...
omarflores:
Today we were mesmerized and bound to each other by a force greater than god himself. There is a yearning in her eyes that pulls me closer and closer. I’ll forever answer to that call.
1 tag
January 2012
35 posts
2 tags
illusion.
there is a door that grows smaller every time i step closer to it. i first saw this door three years ago. it was as big as the atlantic ocean. i walked down the same hallway for three years. the door was an ocean, then a continent, then a country, then a state, then a city, then a house with three windows and another door, a smaller one with stained glass. now it is the size of my pinky toe. when...
2 tags
3 tags
“You were becoming more and more jaguar. Your side toes hung like dew-claws. When...”
– “More and More Jaguar”, Zachary Schomburg
2 tags
firetrucks and ambulances
the firetrucks and ambulances are humming and whistling outside, like kids do in their spare time. i can hear them from my window, those red and white animals singing and going their own ways. they came for us when i was five, when lightning struck the back porch, when smoke filled up all the rooms, when mama ran in and screamed. i spent the rest of the day sitting on ryan’s trampoline,...
“Slut” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “yes”....”
– (via thechocolatebrigade)
2 tags
snake skin
i have holes in my feet.
i guess we all have our
own nails, you said
as we slithered across
the street.
we have snake bodies.
we shed our human bodies
a long time ago, when we
became full of too many
holes, when we ran out of
nails.
now we slither, unhinge
jaws and one layer
of skin dies and becomes
a ghost, we left our limbs
and our nails and our crosses
back home.
we are...
2 tags
monday
i hid all the mirrors
in fear of punching
them all in.
i sunk into
a winter jacket
as girls, boys
stared at me,
i’m afraid of
what they see
in me.
and then i said
hello, and my
voice wasn’t mine,
and i fought
back tears as
i walked
down the
stairwell
and
god knows
when this
feeling
will
end
2 tags
astronomy class
he has long blonde eyelashes
and the beginning of a bald spot
on top of his head.
he blinks. he stares ahead
as the professor goes on
and on about relative
distance,
powers of ten,
kilometers upon more
kilometers
of voids
and matter.
he blinks. he stares
ahead as he hears
he is a mere speck
within a city within
a state within a
country within a
continent within
a planet...
“Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.”
– Sylvia Plath (via harleyelisabeth)
1 tag
“I mean, Jesus, who gives a fuck about sex?! People act like it’s the most...”
– Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan (via greyturning-goldturning)
2 tags
diagnosis
when i first heard
i was becoming
my mother
it felt like the
diagnosis
was cancer.
they say blood
is thicker than
water, but we
were a pin-
prick of blood
in the pacific
ocean
and i didn’t mind
the drowning and
i didn’t want us
to be saved.
now we live
miles
apart. i see her
smile in the mirror,
her hands as i fold
laundry or pour the
coffee, her influence
as...
3 tags
adesertsong asked: I'm jealous of your writing. Your ability to capture a moment and all that happens within it with the simplest of words is astounding.
2 tags
red, empty, blue
i hate the girl with
her green eyes,
so gorgeous i pray
to god they are fake.
i hate the grand-
mother who brags
about her grand-
daughter
in the supermarket,
my grandmother who
isn’t so grand sends
me cheap cards and
never calls,
i hate how
she calls her grand-
daughter wonderful.
i hate how good you
look in a dress as you
saunter down the street,
your perfect high...
3 tags
necessity
I always get these great ideas for stories, this whole novel that unfolds in my head, I can see the characters and I can hear their voices, I can see them cruising down the highway while singing obnoxiously to Death Cab for Cutie or Radiohead, but I put it off. I’m sitting in the airport, I’m walking to class, I’m drinking coffee while it’s raining, and these beautiful and...