this is december 26, 2013

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my grandmother died right before Thanksgiving
this morning my grandfather died a few hours
after Christmas the stones of my house’s
foundations have been taken away in less
than two months I am standing but hurts so much

cinders and thigh bones

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Dec 26, 2013 (1)

Dec 26, 2013 (2)

Dec 26, 2013 (3)

staring at the sky
from a desert warm and still
abandoned child’s skull

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blank book pages filled with
caravan marching to hell
vultures circling

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let all my words burn
beacon fire for child’s soul lost
century ago

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simple things: laughter,
kissing, holding hands, all this
that she’ll never know

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written on the wind
her laughter, scent even name
has been lost to me

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silence before truth
before the question before
this desert’s secrets

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rocky hills sparsely
covered with ghosts of female
guerrilla warfare

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cinders and thigh bones
all girls who picked up a gun
stood up and fought back

notes:

We decided to play god, create life. When that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn’t our fault, not really. You cannot play god, then wash your hands of the things that you’ve created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can’t hide from the things that you’ve done anymore.
—Admiral Adama, Battlestar Galactica

cast it out to me

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Dec 26, 2013 (5)

when I was 14 I vowed
never to cut my hair

again I knew all about
driving a wooden picket

pin into the ground
knotting my “never retreat”

braid around it a last
stand final repose hauteur

because it was 1044 weeks,
7305 days, 175316 hours

before chemo and if the gods
hate anything it’s cockiness

and I have no idea where
my braid went how I could

forget about something so primal
to who I thought I was and

if you find my braid cast it
out to me like I said I’d do

for you and pull me out
of the land of the dead

do I do

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you ask me what do I think about when
I touch myself but you can’t be bothered

with the other three hundred and sixty
four days of the year you ask me what do
I play on the stereo to muffle

my screams but laugh when I tell you about
singing along with the car radio

in traffic jams you ask me what do I
do when my hands tire do I roll onto
my belly to keep going but roll your

eyes when you see me writing with my kid-
like cursive you ask me what do I do

right after orgasm because you want
to get laid and think poetry somehow
will do that, as if just saying “fuck! fuck!

fuck!” enough will make it happen you ask
me but none of your poems are about

me, anyone could respond, which is why
when I say that I collapse onto my
back, mouth agape, panting. damp disheveled

hair clinging across my forehead it has
nothing to do with orgasms but with

me dying horribly on a muddy
battlefield and like my orgasms my
most cherished fantasy won’t include you

midwives and the hemlock cure

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you who study Latin tend to make poor
doctors, restricted to just your little

world of what’s been tagged and named you ignore
all that’s unspoken and unconquerable

the realms that you must enter but cannot
name — you do not need to disrobe for me

to treat your affected areas — rot
hides in more places than just bones — dream tea

sedation, the hemlock cure, I will go
into the shadow realm for you, consult

that which protects you, that which is causing
you ill — cures might be nameless but I know

they’re still there, like germs even when the culte
des hommes
declared that there was no such thing.

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notes:

“Through the late Middle Ages [in Europe], the use of Latin, like the persecution of midwives as witches, became just one more safe-guard guaranteeing a strict hierarchy … with what would become, and still is, the modern male doctor at the top.”
— Chinarski, Harold. (1994). “Quand les femmes étaient sages: la chasse aux sorcières et de la hausse du médecin de sexe masculin moderne.” Journal calais d’Histoire de la Médecine 83 (1): 188–195.

“It’s commonly [known that] the midwife is meddlesome and has her [hand] in everything. That is why she busies herself so much with the art of witchcraft and superstitions and [moves] hither and thither, speaking of things no man can name.”
—Fragmented sermon by Martin Luther, translated and quoted in Diane Muliebris’ “Luther Und der weibliche Teufel,” first published in Marni Siskin and Brígida Rita Rocha (eds.), Gendercide: die Geschichte der europäischen Krieg auf Frauen. (Zenski Mudrost, ltd., Belgrade 1969), pp. 112-113.

the taste of deadweight on your tongue

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take it for it makes me appreciate
all that I’ve earned all that has been taken

from me, needled, punctured, lick the deadweight
dripping from my fingers a valve broken

cannot stop steadfast with the oyster knife
in one hand I want to be filleted raw

fed to you a piece at a time taste strife
and shit at each bite, sup me down and gnaw

the bones you’ve cut me deeper than the groove
from a Swiss-made blade, you must drain my skull’s

juice, you must flay me, because you must know
that I earned all of this, because once you’ve

consumed me you will find my initials
etched in your fear, in your deepest marrow

nerdy and curvy

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Was it the “jinkies”? Maybe the glasses?
The knee-high socks? The skirt that never once

flipped up despite all the haunted houses
that she explored? There was an innocence

each time she ended up on hands and knees,
searching for her glasses and the campy,

rubber monster would appear. She would squeeze
its hand: “Shaggy! you’re so cold and clammy!”

Velma Dinkley, out of all the sublime
cartoon girls, was the one I could relate

to. Short, plump, maybe bi with dreadful eyes,
she was nerdy and curvy at a time

when no one was; with her orange jailbait
turtleneck, Mary Janes and chubby thighs.

everybody knows that the

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bigger the pervert the more tyrannous
are their gods keeping tempting blasphemes

at bay there’s not a single monstrous
bible-thumper whose erotic day-dreams

if they were known could set the skies on fire
with shock and horror that’s just how boring

they are I’ve no problem with desire
our two tongues delicately slithering

gagging down your syrupy sex eager
barbaric yawps until at last you squirt

over me pity the so-called faithful
who have no faith in themselves or pleasure

who must take these divine gifts and pervert
them no wonder their god is so wrathful