day twenty-nine of 30x30

Annabel Lee,


there are tiny fishes in your hair
as it bellows out behind your un-doll features, the quite
ordinary angle of your nose turned up at the bland sky.
As they drag you from the water, your death
fetishist lover is still a very young boy;
forgive him for being forever haunted by some version
that was never you, salt in your sinus,
waterlogged pinafore ratty.
They will change you for your funeral,
push the water up out of your bloated gut
and pretend away your putrefaction.
They will grease up your cheeks
like a not-quite-live girl, and forget you
were supposed to make a fuckload of mistakes.

27 and 28 of 30x30

You Cannot


I write everything down in a big pink book
and close it conspicuously and hug it to my chest.
I let my eyes dart around the room like bait
to catch your eye, or anyone’s.

What could I be writing in my big pink book?

I want to seize you with the kind of terror I feel,
the kind that forces tears out
that seem to have a shape & a weight.
I have known all along what I am not.

I will flash and flash and five more of me

lie in wait behind the tapestry.
Then I pretend I am a reverse vacuum, blowing
bougainvillaea and paper money blooms.
You come to me because you like my colors,

then feel repulsed with yourself and your greed.

Heartpounding nausea. A sweet eaten, then immediately
puked, glutinous and intact. Still beautiful-looking.
You make my stomach churn. You are it,
and right at my gut there’s a jut in the shape

of a large music box. It plays at inopportune times.

I might need an otomy.
If horror and mock horror
are both placed in your body,
can you tell which is which?




















Amoeba (or, Things You Deserve)


A corroded hollowbody
crowding with green un-flowering plants. A skeleton
posed to look like you in the bunk above yours,
as you lie awake, terrorized with the kind
of terror that you thankfully are the only one
in the world to feel. Suffer. Suffer.

Your petty finch-sins
peck out of you as if by machine
they were being sewn onto the fabric of night
in a gibberish of pattern. Yes from your pores
a microbe new to science. Yes in the pondwater, go.

day twenty-six of 30x30

1. THIS IMAGE IS LARGE

2. and these are zombies.

3. I'm still one poem behind,

4. have been for days now,

5. but I will make these last few count if you stay tuned.

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You Know the Phony


We’re forging ghost meat,
clay, or wax. Let’s fingerbang.
Let’s be together forever now,

a duplex echoing with yell:
I’m you. I’m you. We’re big cuckoos,
we swell with noise until the chest

under us bursts into gross-smelling flames
-- you know the phony
never liked you. The pictures which all

were hating you, staring you down
from the tack paper, your lentil
of good hope a big hate in their eyes.

But now the tiny venge is grown
and knit up like a vine. Something
with no father, forever climbing.

day twenty-five of 30x30

Amphibian

When I was something else
than a girl, in the mauled darkness
a named vessel. Known
stink. Little moon.

When you imagine drawing a bath
for a shadow or a ghost, remember
the tub’s volume and the way
the water fingers

over the sides
and to the floor. If it had a color
everything it would touch
would be that color.
But just the light

like a cheloid right there.
This room has never had a window.

Day twenty-four of 30x30

Island


We descended
to the island where the bodies were:
stinkless, scentless actually,

dreamlike in that they had no presence
save the feather waft,
soft in the late day breeze.

Ashram, why
are your geese plunked beside
the waterfront,

angled unnatural,
heads turned sweetly away?
Demure angle,

wing fold. This death
is recent, and it’s probably not nature,
but it’s nature,

because we’re nature
and I am trying to remember that.

day 23 of 30x30

I'm having a very difficult time with this and so this is more a fragment than anything. But yesterday, the Huntington Beach police department released a series of photos in the possession of serial killer Rodney Alcala. The photos, mostly of unidentified women, were made public in hopes of gathering information about additional victims. Several women have come forward claiming they are depicted in the photos; several families have also come forward claiming that their long-missing loved ones are among those in the images. This story is troubling me, in a really uncomfortable way. I think that's why I used no punctuation but the period. This will be revisited.

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Through the Gallery of the Potential


Hairdo after hairdo. A shift.
Into minor key. And they are so.
A ramble with vining flora.
A retrofeel rec room. Visual noise.
The garden pushing hard.
Forever. In the foreground.
In the background. The photos.
Sixteen of the same blurry girl.
Her confident smirk.
Her no-environment. The lens is a man.
With an idea. Something is in.
That identifies. The expression left casual.
That laugh. The hand-grasp. Parts are cropped.
Or left inside. Outside the frame.
The ceiling is visible. The torso is not.

days 21 and 22 of 30x30

Most of the time, applications aren't appropriate out of context. This drop menu from a recent website I viewed, however, is amazing. I laughed. The friend who linked me to this described it as "creepy," and I think I might agree -- would you apply for anything if the application form was like this? As you can see, I have selected "Empty" (obviously the most bizarrely appropriate answer for anything ever).

For Earth Day, the Empire State Building was lit up a smug green. Wouldn't it have made more sense to just leave it dark? Poems 21 and 22 as follows.

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Equinox


Who you said who uses these.
You meant something else but I thought
of the puffing horses we had passed at the park,
their coats dusty and traffic-smelling,
their public defecation. Remember the images
of the rimpling Iceland ponies, furred
flanks to the wind, a muscled look
not disregard, not aloof, each foot’s
little hoof so: up or down.
I want to think: park
horse, I validate your park, you’re the dark
pony here and you can come up fast. But there
are so many horse poems, and the night sparks
indefinitely, and in it we are torn
and cannot redeem even a smallish animal.

***

Manifest


There's a normal look
to the exterior, but inside is gnarled
and beastly, like something stitched together by melodramatic
taxidermists, from a gruesome and untidy end, no gunshot
but a road wound maybe. Yes, everything stinks out here; nobody
can tell the gross airs that come from my pores,
the glisten of my baroque oils
from the surrounding garbage station’s grunge
and sheen. My friend,
I am actuating and wormy, my dear,
all along I have been lying to you.
This is my one clean try,
hateful as though it may seem.

day twenty of 30x30

(Dear I know I owe you one more.)

Foolest, what have you done.

(For Jonatan and Karl)


Astrid, it’s hard to put a finger
on a volcano’s pulse, we tried,
believe us, we burned
bits we love best. A hangup
and no smile at all. Your dead
dove relatives linger, cannot leave
a torch unlit, in the night, the sunflower
from the berg, bright as borealis:
shuffle your unfed feet, hear
as your mama cries. Your gross
overestimate of your worth
at the shack: Adam
and Eve it, you’re not flying out.

day nineteen of 30x30: can't turn me away

I've been working a lot. There's been so much writing. I don't feel burned out yet which is kind of a sweet surprise, though today at work I did feel tired and when I came home I had a run and nap (it fixed it). Since then I've just been writing about music. And working on this, which is just a little bit.

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Bad Mouth


Today I will need mechanical help.
A cloud cover over the loud magpie hover
of the trees: we fix it up on our front yard,
how everything is on blocks,
guts out, much bigger
than when it’s in
the mysterious There.
Describe the problem. Yes,
the issue is with the frontis-bit
where you had fed
the oil. I heard there was in addition
a phenomenal sparkle plug. So, I was
interested in saying
some magic phrase, but the loud
gargled out. Said an ordinary one.

day eighteen of 30x30: in which i graduate to lofty themes

On Poetry (ha, ha, ha)


When I try to put it down it starts
up with that moaning sound. Chains
on a blinged-out diva, no regard. Or what I mean is:
we were alone and it was not dark,
and the winter is always coming,
in less than a year.

The scheming nonsequitur, like
a phonecall from a phone booth,
I changed in that phone booth, I left my boots
and a lipstick print. Now significant
is the less exciting.

What magic bruise is time, the blue
and black of my resting legs. A cat sigh
wafts fat from the rambles of my slipcover.
This is how I remember to go to sleep.

days sixteen and seventeen of 30x30

I was up the SLC Poetry Festival the last couple of days, and I was socializing so I didn't update. I saw some amazing poetry, though -- Matthea Harvey shared her new erasure-based Lamb poems, and Jericho Brown's just got this gorgeous reading voice, and G. C. Waldrep was an amazing, lyrical surprise. There is one more day and I wish I could go but I can't. Anyway, here are 16th and 17th. The former (up first) is more of a fragment but I was in a good mood.

This will help you with your good mood.


____________________________________________________


Statement for 4-16


All day you were happening,
flagrant as a cuckoo, you kept
sweetening the deal. Like
the pulley on the pop can, the flip tab,
you are more than garnish, you proved
useful and beautiful. But thank you especially
for being so beautiful.



***



How far? So far.


Although you are big
we want you to be small
and functionless, a tangent,

barely able to mouth Hello. So we bring
our best to the dinner,
we wear our finest till the darkness

grows thinner. The flowers were placed
there with great care, we had
a dream in which we selected the color.

The dresses are blue and the girls,
chameleon, wait,
because though this poem is about you,

the questions in it are ours
and their blunt ends strike
and repeatedly strike

until we let them fall on the old
lace spread and our hands,
a hot blood color, drop

to our sides and seem useless again
as if they had never been reaching
towards anything, ever, at all.

day fifteen of 30x30: halfway house of dreamgirlz

What do you comprise of? Is it true? If it is true, then what are your poetic chops? What good is your goddamn blog if you can't post something kind of screwed up on it from time to time? If I understand blogs correctly, you can say any old bullshit on them, and it'll be OK. Is that accurate? This is a poem for all the naysayers.

xoxo

Niina


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DreamGirlz Ask You Questions!


We have for us a glorious pony
with an unbelievable tail, so long it could catch
a million unluckies and crush them for the right response.
Did you know how much we loved you?
All while we gallop, minty,

we are learning your name,
we are learning how to say it.

Are you the scared one
with the green side-eye,

putting on your hiding clothes? We have
champagne. Let’s stop here, and pick something.
The right kind of mint thing,

and you won’t hear from us again,
of course nobody wants that.

day fourteen of 30x30

Time -- it's on my side (yes it is). My side is the one with the enormous gravity, ok?

_____________________________________________________

Wastrel



The pathetic wave gray. Bleachy sidewalk.
As I am waiting, which I am,
the trouble
with waiting.

My mouth is a line. The rest
of my person is not a sound:
un.

I had not heard from you. Granulating.
I became a garble and undistinguished
from the back

like a prom of kids
or a goose meadow – individual
nothing.

A fiddle,
meaningful.
Any other instrument.

day thirteen of 30x30

Oblique Directions



Utterance. From green to blue,
and fast,

and inorganically if possible (blue is
the less appetizing color). There are gimmicks,

yes, but we
prefer the more authentic ways.

day twelve of 30x30

Thesis with Cosmetic


The left lipstick, a fetish tube
floored, faraway disdain.
You, the final
fashion event,

forgetting the caraway
& burn colored set
ultimately.

day eleven of 30x30

Finally, I am up to speed.


__________________________________________


(Notes)

The first time I let anyone touch me
for more than an hour, that isn’t a lover,
he is wielding a pen. When he lifts it from my back,
he buzzes it with the beat of the song, exact.
It is a song I don’t know, not terrible,
not great, but its beat slice matches the black garnish
I dreamt, and decided, and paid for in advance.
The quiet of the room is a not-at-all-quiet:
machine’s embossing whirr, hard
core. Each nerve leads a strict tether
to its original point, centre: where the body
is soft, its exterior is its own weird mirror
softer still. It bleeds, it burns, it takes
color so easy there’s almost no decision.

Day 10 of 30x30

Why the heck is it so hard to catch up? Today will be the day I catch up. This can't keep happening. But you can't blame me -- I had a busy weekend -- yesterday I hit up the Greenpoint Food Market, had "band practice," and saw one of my favorite bands, the Shondes, play one of my favorite venues. Their timing is so spot-on impeccable that I always leave in fabulous fucking mood when I see them play. But my timing wasn't as great because the G train was all busted up and I didn't get home until 2AM. I worked on this poem but I didn't post it because then I fell asleep. [/excuses] Today, Sunday, is much more quiet. I'm making this happen.


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Sonnet about the Rules


Between the deals there is always no deal.
You old-at-heart, around that tableau
with your bunch of comic dogs posed
listeningly to the sides, continuation.
There is a disinteresting trickle from outside
but it isn’t what felt green. Happy
or happening, or filled
with blowsy smoke, the crazy beacon light
giving a tendriled fabulous life
to each misprinciple and straight-face.

& god you know it but you keep
on bluffing, even though your fucked up
deck is missing some of its hearts.

day nine of 30x30

Brooklynixxxx again. Tardy again.


_________________________________________


Bushwick


The invitation is warm, a homing reek.
To get to your windowless bedroom,
all minor situations, all sweeping

gesture and intent
pad through the oily sawdust. You aren’t the only
stray cat per this square mile.

day eight of 30x30: my apologies for tardiness

It's my birthday. I failed to post yesterday because I fell asleep at 11 like a big sloth, so I'm not even going to pretend I "wrote" a "new" poem, but I did tinker with this draft before my unfortunate fall from grace, so here it is (and nevertheless it is not more than like 2 weeks old). Something truly new is coming up later.

Tonight there will be friends, Scrabble, and a slight Southwest theme. (What?)

Sock on a plate from Chez Aristote, in summary, gratefully.

___________________________________

In Which I Ask For Help


Have I made it to the other side? The side that falls off
like a goodbye. Blue, the sense that things revert,
the romantic most revolting sense. Somewhere

it's all green, the jangly place
where you are so loved. But for now, the bedding
sunset, for now I am the holy cow.

Bring me the milkpail,
brilliant with ooze,
and help me take these gnashers home.