Troll Vibes
When Mainers get choleric about late fall weather
and gripe about 40 degree temps - I’m not ready for this -
an odious part of me wants to say, What are you fucking read for?
It says other things too, the odious part, snarky shit, like,
Sorry you’re unhappy about this mild December day,
I’m personally upset I must touch pork to make a meatball.
This odious part, once it starts flapping its stank hole,
shouts at trashcans and bitch slaps the wind,
overshares stories of personal conflict as savage trauma -
How my 6th grade teacher accused me of cheating at simple math,
How my period arrived on the trip to the pool and I was given pads,
How some parents prefer their pets to their kids -
But I never let that troll loose, and instead cluck along,
Oh yes, so hard, winters in Maine, and it’s just beginning!
then duly lighten the mood with one of God’s great gifts,
Gorgeous, how the dew bejewels the tips of the white oak
Incredible, how the sun illuminates the goldenrod seeding
but what I want is to write a feral poem about meteorological chitchat -
Shut up, you sniveling assface, North Atlantic Oscillation
doesn’t give two shits about your need for constant sun,
so how bout you blow your nose in any direction but at my fucking face,
and while we’re at it, your fleece is covered in so much cat hair
I’m expecting you to find a warm spot by the window where you can
watch for birds and lick your ass with your papillated tongue!
Once the odious poem has been written and troll is avenged,
I brew a cup of ginger tea and wrap myself in goose down
since it’s almost winter here in Maine and it is fucking cold.
All I Am is a Mom
I noticed the majority of your poems are about being a wife
and a mother said a man who reads my poetry
oh yes, I write what I know, I said, silently annoyed
with his feedback since that is where his feedback ended
and it occurred to me last Saturday when sitting
on the unswept patio of my favorite dive
with 5 other buzzed middle-aged women
who were talking over each other and almost squabbing
but not really since we were all saying the same thing
but in that big and rowdy way of trying
to be heard in a loud conversation full of feels
in fact one guy came and left
saying turkeys clucking
but the thing we were clucking about
the thing over which we were sharing drink and smoke about
was the never-ending topic of our children
how to best love them and how to best navigate
a world that accepts some and not others
a world whose evil shifts like sand beneath your feet
a world that will critique you
for talking too much about your children
a world that will critique you
for not talking enough about your children
for being too uptight for being untethered
and what are your priorities, anyway, woman
are they in that pack of smokes
do they rest at the bottom of that bottle
and why are you here should you not be
at home prettily tending to all the tending to
and as dusk settles in our hair
and the sound of women gabbing is carried on the wind
those that hear it and think turkeys clucking
do not understand this is how we have a hand
in controlling the circulation of love
this is how we keep our necks off of the chopping block
and when the night is over we sink into the passenger seat
and smile at our bright knives newly sharpened
before tucking them away
near the gum the tampons the diapers the meds
the many keys attached to a single ring
Hyssop
At some point in my early 40s, I woke up one Saturday morning, pulled on my robe, and realized that I had to make my bed before heading to the kitchen for coffee. You’re officially anal, I noted wryly, yanking wrinkles from the fitted sheet of my king-sized bed. It was a distinct mark in an otherwise gradual transition; the older I got - and as responsibility proliferated - so increased my need for a fastidious home, until one day I couldn’t leave my bedroom if the sheets were mussed.
It was also around this time I realized sharing a bed with my husband was a form of domestic stupidity. We’d wake each other through the night and start the morning irrationally annoyed with one other. My husband agreed that though we’d receive some pearl-clutching around splitting the marital bed, there was no good reason to continue sharing one. He took nicely to his own double, unworried the yellow orb of his reading lamp would keep anyone awake, his snoring now contained within the walls of his own room.
Alone in my bed, gloriously unbothered, I began dreaming again. The most memorable, a house on a hill made entirely of purple flowers, its surface bristling with bees. I woke from the dream elated, positive it symbolized the imminent gifts of unbroken rest. As I made my bed, the first lines of a poem sprouted, pushing through the sleep-tilled plot of my forehead, and I furiously scribbled them down. At this rate, I’d have a collection within weeks, ready for editing. Your Muse is proper sleep, I realized, inexplicably ashamed.
A few weeks later, my daughter crawled into bed with me, terrorized by a nightmare involving a gymnasium of children thirsty for blood, her grubby toes probing for pockets of warmth behind my knees. I pulled her close and she wrapped her arms around my neck, falling asleep after a burble of unintelligible words and a single, great sob. The next morning, I stared at her placid face, the air in my bedroom marbled with early morning chill. If I wanted my dreams back, I’d have to kick her out. As if she could hear my thoughts, she grimaced in her sleep and reached a hand out, her face smoothing into stillness once it landed atop my ribcage.
We’d co-slept for much of her life, and getting her back into her bedroom after a stint in my bed was always a challenge. Though I never got quality rest in her company, having her close gave me a primitive sense of comfort, especially in the violet hours of the night when the anxious specters of the daylight hours began their haunts and mysterious noises proliferated in the dark. My daughter, on the other hand, slept deeply and vividly in my bed, a princess protected by a dragon who would immolate any threat, no matter how small. She raced through her dreams, full of strange vocalizations and spastic limbs, reminding me of a sleeping dog at a warm hearth, yipping and moaning, chasing a rabbit down the length of a stone wall.
Hyssop overtook every single one of your garden beds, my husband observed a few weeks later, after she’d crawled into my bed. He was staring into the backyard while his coffee brewed, his blue eyes lit like lamps, cheeks fresh as peonies.
I rubbed my eyelids and squinted at the flower beds.
I can’t bring myself to pull it, I said, yawning. The bees love it.
The Dishes
Everyone wants to do ayahuasca, but no one wants to do the dishes.
When that jackass from high school says he’s living the dream, shouldn’t he be more honest and admit he can’t get hard without medication?
If you never assume importance, you never lose it. That’s what Lao Tzu said, anyway. I’m pretty sure my mom said it too, but she screamed it.
Last night, a friend mentioned there was a person at Pride whose double D tits were covered in thick chest hair. Whoa! I said, then, No biggie.
You know there’s someone out there, he said, lighting a cig with his baby blue lighter, who can’t wait to bury their face in those big hairy titties.
The problem is, I told a different friend, is that everyone wants to bury their face in big titties, but no one wants to do the dishes.
Off the subject, she said, turning away from me and staring out the window, but sometimes I imagine my friends as babies, and then I imagine what it’s like to hold them.
Noah
Among the many gods that clamor for attention, I’m most amused by the god of my youth, the violent one from The Old Testicle who tolerates human scourge for only so long before scouring surfaces.
I remember the moment I learned that the ark was separated by stakes to prevent breeding. Ever seen a pig’s penis - corkscrewed and pink, it’s a nice reminder that there is more than one reason to gouge your eyes.
*
Yesterday, over breakfast, when my daughter accused my husband of being strict, he recounted the story of Noah.
“Consider having a dad like that guy,” he said, “Who opened the floodgates of heaven when he’d had enough, and erased everything in one giant, genocidal wave.”
I kicked him under the table and he laughs, wolfishly.
“You know who was spared,” he says, leaning in. “Noah. Favored for his piety.”
I interrupt him to share a fact I’ve been holding in for days.
“Emotional tears have a different chemical makeup than reflex tears,” I tell my daughter, “so onion tears aren’t the same as sad ones.”
My daughter gives us the side eye, leaves the table to retrieve her bag, and is out the door in a huff.
*
Later that night, under a fat August moon, in the raft of my California king, I recall an old Jewish myth: Moments before you are born, an angel whispers the entirety of your life into the soft apricot of your ear, then swiftly slaps you across the face. Instantly, your memory is erased, and you are born naked and screaming.
A midnight - the devil’s hour - I’m woken by my daughter, sobbing at the edge of my bed. She’s been spooked by a nightmare.
I pull her on board, my belly against her back, dovetail slats of gopher wood, cover us in pine pitch.
“You are safe and you are loved,” I whisper into her drowsy ear.
She won’t remember this, I think, moments before I’m submerged by an enormous wave of sleep.
*
In the morning, sunlight illuminates the lids of her eyes, where lacrimal glands produce waters that spill over when a god is forlorn or irate.
The morning light wakes her.
She pops up, duly buoyant.
Nesting Doll
she can see the growth rings
of the felled linden
behind the septic
concentric on the face
of the darkening lake
fish snatching bait
rings of glass
like overlapping ohms
in evening’s class
unraveling Russian doll
nested in her chest
breath paring layers
grandmother mother
mother into daughter
the center
a seed doll
lathed from linden
baby due July
embryonic
asana
back home
onion peeled
grub removed
fish fried
pregnant for the third time
growth rings
of her face
show earlywood
latewood
drought and fire scar
a toddler
clung to thigh
jabbering
ribbed dog
slobbering
husband strumming
tonewood
by water’s edge
moving melancholic
across the face of the lake
grandfather fishing
in tobacco clouds
hook without bait
cooler bare
memory pared
linden sapling
in memoriam
61 years gathering girth
his deep shades
of grief
stumped
now a map
to read
from center outward
and outward back
like too-soon contractions
in spring
every stone gathered
dropped heavy
in her pocket
remembered later
and flung across
the lake
seed doll sinking
glass rings
hatchet swinging
growth rings
behind the septic
concentric on the face
of the darkening lake
Wild Monogamies
Unorthodox monogamies is happy monogamies according
to The Book of All Monogamies which advises several Beds
and Bathrooms separate Duvets separate Nights of Play
His and Hers the His being Husband who unlike Many Men
if not Most did not after Matrimonies expect Wife to sing
like Bird in Cage in fact he never once Considered cage
- Absurd, a Cage! - and if He the Husband had exhibited
captor Vibes she’d have yanked her trousers Down and Mooned
his pretty Face with her green anjou never Poached
by anyone in the loving Oven no thank you kind Sir
but moving forward not in Any Chapter is there Cage
only Birdsong short and sweet and long Song allowing
for Glorious breaking of Encrusted rules so brittle they snap
like a twig bent like a bloodless finger pointing and Hollering - Ho! -
god Forbid she dance Alone or Talk and Walk alongside Men
who are Not Husband anjou swinging To and fro Maximus firing
In Jubilance one Leg in Front of the other walking better yet Dancing
and pear is Hers and No One else’s like She is Hers and Husband is His
and after Walking alongside each other for One Hundred Sundays
they fight Less and Protect more the Other’s solitude like the famous poem
they take Seriously enough to recite Aloud such sacred Truths
like if You want to be a Cow be a Cow be a Cow be a Cow
or Bonny Llama go have fun Bonny Llama and when you Return
I will be Here asleep He said or mooing or Spitting or On All Fours
up to you Heretic wife who Kicks and screams when Aspersions
are Cast who Refuses to extract the long Bones of her Legs
to fit Jelly Molds of Tradition who daily dekes Death by Tedium - Ho! -
instead here’s a Great idea how about you Have that cigarette
if you damn well please and I will Not watch the clock until Midnight
when you get Home and wake me and Tell me exactly how you Want it
Oh is that right you Freaky bitch moo moo spit spit llama llama
or perhaps Tonight you rest your weary Head upon this Hairy chest
and we Song About because there is only Forest floor verdant Canopy
to explore and the music of Bird who never knew Cage so why in Hell
would some Stranger why in Hell would some Hotdog Sweating insinuation
assume Bird seeks Cage - Ho! - It is Not because the cage is Righteous No
it is Never That it is Because they do not Imagine a future a Life a song Beyond it
Young or Dead
It helps when you are irate
with a beloved
to imagine them as a 9 year old
or in a coffin
it lends perspective
and other adult things
one must cultivate
to be direct and not a prick
for instance my husband
who oft drives me crazy
with his only-child-ways
prepared a perfect French press
one summer morning
after 6 weeks of rain
and saw sunlight crossed the floor
I almost stroked out with gratitude
shed a single tear of god’s good grace
when he started talking about fucking Bitcoin
but listen up people
when my husband was young
he was short never got the girl
teased for his dislike of sports
and when he was 9
he dressed as a woman and sang
mined his mellifluous voice flair for drama
picked up a guitar and grew into a man
a present and joyful father
a real tiger between the sheets
and though he pisses me off
if I picture him dead
everything is crystal clear
I am magically a better human
I hug him and say
I love you in all your manifestations, baby,
but could you please consider me
in addition to you
and he says okay honey
that language is honey to my tender ears
and the twinkle in his eye
is the welling of concession
since I’m a bit of an asshole too
and he is picturing me as a 9 year old
sitting up in bed frozen
watching my father
have a piss in my toybox
he is picturing me at 8
setting aside a butterfly net
to tie laces caked with mud
or maybe today it’s easier to see me dead
fingers stiff noggin juiced like a lemon
and you know what
that is one of the many
righteous ways to love
a clever trick to move the stone
from the tomb, baby,
so get up from the cold hard ground,
you’re undead, you’re alive,
so walk on out into the day and forgive.
Deadpool
Deadpool1776, a middle-aged Evangelical from Indiana who loves Jesus even more than Marvel and the 2nd Amendment, tweets his support of Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law, then follows by tweeting his approval of banning Junie B. Jones from public libraries, since young minds are easily poisoned by characters like this 6 year old entitled brat (who complains for an entire book about having to ride a smelly bus to school, uses poor grammar, and constantly challenges authority) and satisfied, takes a long pull from his blue raspberry vape, draws a pair of skeleton blinds, and switches to private mode on his phone where he searches pornhub for hairy daddy cuckolded by uncut twink, but frustrated with the material served - he’s seen it all - settles on white women holding in farts.
Cave Lady UTI
I’ve not managed to find the time to research
how a cave lady might have treated a UTI.
I’m sure it’s herbs and plasters
or maybe the shamanic extraction
of a red demon
with a barbellate cock,
this ancient auntie and
her boggy bladder
squatting by a rock,
grimacing,
her pain
caused by a stick
wrapped with moss
to stopper monthly blood,
juiceless sex with
an impatient caveman,
or an entire season of rain,
animal skins perpetually damp.
After 5 minutes,
a painful dribble,
warmth creeping
up her back.
*
Tonight, on my drive home
I learned that 7 million birds
perish every year,
bright lights
attached to
communication towers
to warn human aviators
of their presence
disrupting bird flight,
sending them flying
into wires, buildings,
and each other.
Cargo ships passing
through the night
add 30 decibels of noise
to ocean water.
Human exposure
to this level of noise
would require protection -
ear plugs, says OSHA.
Humpbacks stop singing
when tankers pass,
orcas stop foraging,
cuttlefish change color.
On a Melbourne beach
piles of dead hatchlings
were found beneath
a mercury-vapor lamp,
baby sea turtles
understanding its light
as the bright,
watery horizon.
Even worse, I learn,
is the tragedy
of abandoned
beach fires.
*
The oven is suddenly
beeping and blinking,
indicating my eggs
are soft-boiled -
submerged any longer,
the yolk stiffens into chalk,
threatens to choke
the black river of my throat,
dam the fish body
of my tongue,
orange eggs
washed up,
desiccating
upon the stony shore.
*
Usually caused by e. coli,
-which she’d never know
since germ theory would
take 6000 more years-
the cave lady
turns septic and dies.
The impatient caveman
- the most important variable
in her death -
stays with her the longest,
in his grief leaves
the pyre unattended,
does not notice
the hatchlings
making their way
to what they biologically
believe to be
a bright future.
The Impenitent’s Prayer
Forgive us for not banning books,
forgive us for stocking libraries with characters long excluded from yellowed tomes,
forgive us for girls who kiss girls under diamond skies,
forgive us the limbless and patched, crones and queers, survivors of fat and conversion camps,
forgive us our pierced majoras, magenta carpet and drapes, voluptuously pregnant men,
forgive us our herculean tales of finding joy in a world that would rather erase us,
forgive us our trypophobia and Takis, our selfies and Jibbitz, our twerking and TikTok pickles,
forgive us our unquestioning support of teens who wear kitty ears and lick clean their paws during math class, filling bento boxes with kibble and using litter boxes in school bathrooms where they cover their dung with, wait - what the fuck,
forgive us for pointing out that your source is garbage, for our disgust when we click the link to find a vile antisemitic screed in purple text,
forgive us our horror when we learn the weight loss supplements are sold by a Bible-thumping platinum blonde with nine children and a closet full of golly dolls,
forgive us our emails with preferred pronouns, for cross-disciplinary consensus that the planet is flooding and burning,
forgive us for turning jollies to jelly, for choosing rainbows over steeples, for insisting on the basics of consent,
forgive us our eye roll when we hear about how better it was and how men were men and women were women and people did not suck off the teat and holidays were Christian and no one had to worry about guns that slaughter entire classrooms of children,
forgive us our unionized strippers, neuroatypicals, vegan hotdogs, chosen families, Zoom therapists, paper straws, butt plugs and fidget spinners,
forgive us for Cardi B.,
forgive us for pointing out during the Thanksgiving triple-header that when compared to the NFL, sadomasochistic sex involves less force and fewer injuries, but in the 1960s the court ruled football players were sane whereas masochists were not,
but most of all, forgive us that wild pulse of freedom when we witness your shame of us and no longer share it.
Sashimi
I was drunk on sake when that gorgeously marbled hunk of otoro
slipped from my chopsticks into tamari leaving Rorschach on my tee.
“Diablo Rojo!” I bellowed, pulling my shirt flat, my friend, Victoria,
third Sapporo, slapping the table, “You’re a sea witch, bitch!”
The stone-jawed itamae glanced at us from behind a cooler
of colorful flesh, gluten-free white ladies
interpreting tamari blot, then nodded to a waitress
who brought two forks, water, and an unctuous smile.
Back home, hot with sake, I called you.
You don’t eat sashimi, you reminded me,
you prefer flash-fried oysters, Kewpie mayo,
rolls with cream cheese and cuke.
Tuna belly makes you gag, you claim,
and daikon is gross - both bitter and sweet -
a metal spoon clanking against your favorite glass
- vintage Burger King, Skywalker and your first love, Leia -
a ritual of spinning chocolate syrup into whole milk,
your favorite nightcap, your boyishness beseeching
the pale pink suckers that line my groin.
Come see me, I beg.
Sweet dreams, baby.
Not tonight.
*
Fish flesh is unlike other flesh.
It’s tender, easily stressed.
The kill matters.
First, a spike through the brain,
followed by a thin wire
through the spine.
If you do it right,
there’s a shimmy,
rigor-mortis slows,
and later, otoro,
soft belly streaked with fat,
melts sweetly on the tongue.
Alone in bed, capsized by sleep,
I dreamt I was an underwater pop star,
a Humboldt squid
unfurling into song,
my purpled pains
and fleshy joys
undulating
through shafts of sun,
when lone bluefin
breaks from the shoal,
pupils edged silver
with devotion.
My tentacles are barbed,
baby, my suckers have teeth,
keratin beak a cold spike
through the brain,
Come home to me,
I’ll do you right,
squeeze you tight
until you shimmy
into ravening dark.
3rd Tier Concerns
If I’m in a coma for 2 years, shouldn’t I worry about why I’m in the coma rather than worry about someone trimming my nose hairs, but do you think someone would trim my nose hairs? What about those white hairs that sprout randomly near the jawline - the translucent, wiry ones? Could those translucent, wiry hairs be used to make a toothbrush? For a dog? Do you know our vet recommended we brush our dog’s teeth? What the fuck? As if.
If I let a single chin hair grow an inch long and then I coated it with bacon fat before planting it, what are the chances that it grows into a giant savory hair?
If I let my hands get dry enough, do you think I could use them to make cricket sounds?
If a man thought that these kinds of hypotheticals made a woman sound vulgar and therefore unattractive, is that man basically a green banana wearing a toupee of raccoon pubes? Should you date him because he’s super cute and he’ll get over it?
Has anyone ever surgically un-gummied their weenus? Would it look cool pierced? Would a chain look cool from the right earlobe to the right weenus?
If you’re not dealing with excruciating neuropathy but you’re resistant to clipping your toenails, does that mean you’re an ogre? What if you don’t have neuropathy, you don’t clip your toenails, and you live under a bridge?
Do you wonder, when your heart skips a beat, if it was hopping over something, like dog shit on a sidewalk? Or gingerly stepping over one of those squirrels that’s grimacing and bleeding from the mouth and everyone says aww must have gotten electrocuted when crossing from one telephone pole to another. Do you think that’s even what happened?
If you rub yourself down with oil and lay in a tanning booth, do you ever picture an oven set to broil? A 30 lb turkey? Does it make you hungry, if you think of that? What would be the stuffing?
When you hug someone, have you ever accidentally absorbed them? Did you smell different after?
When your eye twitches, do you think your eyelid is dreaming of chasing a rabbit?
When your stomach growls, do you talk back in its language? Have you ever said to your stomach grbbbbwrrbbgghh dunno ttbbbb, maybe later? What did it say back? Did it make you laugh?
Do you think people purposefully avoid naming their patellas?
If coffee makes your breath bad, what do you think your breath does to the coffee?
Just curious.
Rules for Hosting
for Esmé
1. The word host has a few meanings, one being an animal or plant on or in which a parasite lives.
2. A host is also the portion of bread used for Holy Communion in Christian churches. In this sense, the word host comes from the Latin word hostis meaning victim, but eventually came to signify sacrifice. The host is the consecrated bread of the Eucharist - the Body of the Risen One - now alive among us, surrendered to us as food and drink.
You take and eat the host.
3. The word host is also a person who receives or entertains other people as guests. Women often host in their homes, especially during holidays that are also religious observances. During these times, an appetite for stories of sacrifice and forgiveness is only matched by an appetite for meat pie.
4. If someone tells you that you are “the most gracious host” more than 4 times in your life, something is wrong. At any point, if someone calls you a saint, things are not going well for you. Stop smiling for a week. Scream into the void. Reassess.
5. Deep cleaning and carefully reorganizing a home in order to provide a place for tipsy revelers to crowd the kitchen where they’ll shout to be heard over shouting and stuff their face with food is as rewarding as it sounds.
6. Too salty, too sweet, too extravagant, too meager. It’s difficult to please one person, never mind forty. Forget the playlist. Unclench your jaw. But never ever let your teeth become stained with wine. Wine-stained teeth show you have no class. How dare you indulge yourself while everyone else indulges themselves.
7. Always clean the toilet. Don’t be the only one who cleans the toilet. You will be the only one who cleans the toilet.
8. Hosting is 55 percent broken conversations, 10 percent digging for utensils, 15 percent scraping uneaten food into the trash, 15 percent hoping no child concusses their still-soft skull on any of the hundreds of sharp edges that define a home, and 5 percent hiding in the bathroom with your phone.
9. If someone has never hosted a large gathering, they will always offer feedback on how it can be done better.
10. Consider changing your name one week before you host, so when someone calls for a refill to the bowl of mixed nuts you will not heed their call, as they will not have called you by name, Lozrufenspog.
11. When you find the partially chewed bolus of food tucked between the corner of the sill and the blinds, do not ask yourself Who would do this? because it’s always a child or the very elderly. It’s also always the children and the very elderly who urinate on seats, agitate the dog, and become dangerously dehydrated.
12. Good guests make a French exit because they understand that no one wants to say goodbye to forty fucking people.
13. The light yellow couch is light yellow. It was a mistake, but it’s the only thing that makes you happy. Protect it with your life.
14. Your husband will help. He’ll do anything you ask. Of course he will! But truthfully, you’re a demanding bitch. Your needs are incessant. Calm down. Though you forget nothing on your 6 foot scroll of preparatory tasks, be gentle when he forgets one thing on his list of two, yet manages to learn an Christian hymn from the 4th century on his ukulele that brings everyone to tears when he plays it, and stay calm when you hear a guest refer to him as “an eccentric.”
15. Hosting a holiday party illustrates the insidiousness of invisible labor. Sure, there will be enveloping hugs and loud laughter. Your guests will tumble into bed full-bellied, ruddy-cheeked, satisfied. But at the end of the night, after wiping down the tables, after snapping shut the dishwasher for the 3rd time in under six hours, you will drink the dregs of wine from three different bottles and stare beyond the dark window and conjure Bob Cratchit, then you will pack up your car and drive into the night never to be seen again.
16. Kidding, I’d never do that to you, Esmé. You’re the only parasite I’ve ever wanted to host.
17. Playing hostess is a rigged game that many women play even after they discover it’s engineered against them. It’s unfulfilling and demanding and expensive. I trust you’ll find more interesting ways to spend your time than assiduously tending the needs of festive ingrates who’d prefer you do your job without complaint so that they can carry on pretending the abundant provisions have appeared miraculously.
You take and eat the host.
a healthy marriage
hurtling through space
jet packs cinched tightly to our waists
I can barely see you
but when I catch a glimpse
I can see your scleras your panic
your bewilderment at the barreling speeds
the space junk that will crush us
the asteroids rushing toward us
watch out here comes one now
wait wait wait now thrust now
you’re in a Speedo that’s too small
me in a kneeskin suit we’re competing
in synchronized swimming
our thick heads of hair tucked into caps
we’re sculling water holding a water wheel
to stop swimming is to sink to drown to fail
your nose should not dip below the surface
I say with a look so you scull harder
nose rising defiantly like a snob
the water feels like jello or is it that my ass
quivering with exhaustion honey
put your back into it
our finances are a braided rope
to unravel would be to shake out filaments
like splinters waiting to stick our feet
we’re dragging a mortgage a car student loans
a weekly grocery bill that blooms
like a carnivorous flower
a child that says snack only more than nope
the rope is frayed pulled taut
to sever would be to send the ends flying
to opposite poles
my retirement relatively puny
my salary too I need your money boo
I’d take the house you keep your 401k
and where would your mother go
untwisting would be like trying
to separate a smoothie into component parts
the frozen fruit from the yogurt
from the fucking cookie you added
do you remember when our daughter
was a newborn you brought the Ninja
to the basement to blend your morning shake
it’s so fucking loud the Ninja
and the baby never slept so when she did
it was the last considerate thing I remember
perhaps we should buy a duplex and live
separately we’d be fake-together
your dirty laundry no longer at my feet
the dust on your dresser not on my dresser
we’d be unavailable to anyone
but ourselves part-time what a dream
I’m such a hoot to think such things
such a cutie
instead at night we collapse into bed
dream of losing each other
dream of someone sweeter easier more mysterious
someone who sits at the table in the morning
and doesn’t slurp their coffee
I can hear nothing else in the house
right now but the fucking slurping
WHAT you ask me big fight in your eyes
but you know WHAT and so do I
you’re disgusting and I’m an insufferable bitch
our distance much larger than where you sit
sullenly and where I sit fantasizing escapes
I’ll never again consider once the mug
is in the dishwasher and twenty other
emergencies need to be addressed right now
right now immediately right now
we anchor each other in our exhaustion
we pull each other down to ground
any flight any attempted escape
our love no longer aimed at each other
but with precision in the same direction
a moving target a child who sings and argues
and sings her arguments and twirls
in the spotlight of our attention
red cheeked green eyed exponentially energized
a storm cloud throwing lightning
and blinding rain we’re soaked
and electric ready for wonder
the rainbow she stretches overhead with ease
you're not supposed to do that
says retired people who forget what it’s like
you need to tend the embers of your relationship
you need to prioritize this and that
you spend too much energy on this child
who grows like a miracle
defies rules of time and tenderness
and then they casually mention
they’re with a friend on a stroll
or having a nice glass of wine
and they’re not sure what they’ll do tomorrow
they could do anything really why
what are you doing
what I want to know is if I’ll ever flush
with excitement at the sound of your car
in the driveway reading a book on the porch
catching your scent on the breeze
every cell in my body buzzing
with the need to crawl up your ankles
my mouth in your lap pulling you to my breasts
wrapping my legs around you extruding silk
from my spinnerets but you just got home
you woke me with the door come to bed
lay your soulless body next to my old carcass
rest your cement-filled head on the crumbling
bricks of my back if we stick it through
do you think there’s a chance we’ll bust
through this cage like animals instantly
remember our wildness smell the blood
and lop off hungrily to stalk our prey?
Revenge Capitalism
Perhaps you are a well-adjusted white man with endless interests and laser focus,
and perhaps you decide to learn investment strategies from a series of comprehensive podcasts
while handwashing vintage Pyrex bowls, and perhaps you have many resulting conversations
with your wife, and your wife’s friends, about solutions inherent to capitalism, really dig in
and explore how true capitalism is not the capitalism that fattens fortunes of the fortunate,
fucks and fractions bastards with less luck, no, not that one, the real one, the capitalism that saves.
Perhaps when your wife needs emotional capital after finding herself suddenly impoverished
by an unexpected event, say, a psychic house fire, and she believes, perhaps unfairly, that you
hold the capital she needs, that you will give her what she needs, invest in her, help recover
her losses, since you are her husband, after all, and capital that is yours is hers - is it not? -
but instead you offer a loan, set interest rates astronomical, do not blink at your growing hunger
for the profit bred from your supply and her demand, and not her tattered heart.
Who can blame you, really, for turning coin in the face of bald despair, and frankly,
she’s better for it, forced to solve her own problem, pay her debts, become a notable competitor
in an inescapable game, and check her out, she’s a better person now, cutthroat, invulnerable,
supplanting spiritual laziness with innovation, and with the help of her substantial reserve of friends
- the crones, not the cronies - she gained more ground than anyone expected,
and she is no longer impoverished but strong and good, and she grows like a tumor.
Then, unexpectedly, woefully, it was you who fell, an accident, say, a psychic wildfire,
your knees punched with gravel, eyes lifted in supplication, and in that wild need for grace
you are fortunate, for in her hands she holds what you need, for what is hers is yours, is yours,
is yours, and she is good and strong, and she regards you with growing interest,
a spider wrapping a fly, the machinery of her mind clicking and popping, her chest growing warm
with opportunity, and sweet man, newly fallen with your tattered heart and bald despair,
she will make you pay.
madonna
who dat, i asked, after a friend sent me a recent picture of madonna, shame on you she said it's madonna who took away our shame, stop shaming
i didn't recognize her, i texted back with an exclamation point, and still don't even though now i know it's her, and thanks a lot now I feel a little sad about it and also shame about my feeling of shock and by the way why did you text her picture are you trolling me
of course not and never feel shame about how you feel we can't control that and don't shame women for doing what makes them happy you know better especially in this culture and in this time
but she looks anaphylactic i text back and now i have a friend who is insisting that i should feel shame about the way i feel but the funny thing is we both still love madonna who took away the shame that we went and recreated from nothing worth talking about
Local, Organic, Artisanal White People
~ This is the way of all things ~
Penis Feather: With a decade of experience under his big leather belt, and using only two primitive tools - organic hands and jojoba oil - you can relax into Penis Feather’s unchecked and entitled exploration of the issues you’ve stored in your tissues. Euphoria, like bewilderment. 5D. Trauma-uninformed care.
Soul Jelly: Soul Jelly’s ability to predict the future and read the past is unmatched. Past life regression proves she was related to Nostradamus. Suspicious of mainstream media; encourages her clients to do their own research. On YouTube. Works exclusively from her home office. Does not work with those with allergies to cats, as her house is overrun with them. Consent form must be signed in blood or faeces.
Guru Shiitake: An exclusive, 2-hour individualized energetic treatment at a price tag that proves its worth. Includes alarming nutritional advice and endless bootstrap stories of his personal recovery from a self-limiting childhood illness. 62 years old, has four children under the age of six, and has been to India multiple times to guide spiritual retreats with groups of all-female acolytes. Works arms but not legs at the gym. Uses a flip phone. Anti-woke wokeness. Masters are made, not born.
Candy Bum: A shimmering team of lashed, glowy, 20-somethings that pamper clients with citrus peels, eyebrow lamination, and yoni steams after malign energy has been exorcized using sonic echolocation emitted from a crystal double-helixed EQ2 handheld wand that can also improve cellulite. Client leave their the Candy Bum sanctuary with dripping root chakras and a chemical burns, profoundly broke. Please note: If you’re vaxx’d, please refrain from scheduling here - staff are female, fertile, and they’d like to stay that way. Legumes not allowed on the premise.
Sxx8: Synergy, fasting, and travel come together in this healing space of connection and manifestation. Beachfront retreats offered to those who complete the Five Levels of Consciousness & Relentless Recruitment, and whom the cult leader considers most pleasing to look at. Please know it’s okay to crave authority - we all do! Ascend with us. Break free from the scourge of feminist thought. We know your worth. Do you?
Shiva Laura Smith: Welcome, Goddesses! Offers private sessions in which she arhythmically hits a ceremonial drum and identifies animal guides. Entryway has a framed picture of her at a traditional Fijian kava ceremony; unclear whether she was invited. Has been fined twice for breaking the eagle feather law, which she thinks is silly. Occasionally wears a bindi that makes her blue eyes pop. Entirely ignorant of the appropriative underpinnings of every aspect of her practice, but loud and rich and free of boundaries, so loads of fun. Clientele mostly exhausted moms looking to escape their kids. Roommate from freshman year in college had brown skin - doesn’t see color. Idolizes Gwyneth Paltrow, the moon, and scented candles.
KimQi: Pays staff poorly and provides a needed service to a working class community. An absolute nidus of misinformation as well as a savvy entrepreneur who is just asking questions. When challenged, claims she feels unsafe. Sniffs out and targets vulnerable clientele who are lonely and desperate for connection, convincing them to join her in peddling garbage supplements. Profits from sales flow to the top of a pyramid, where KimQi sits in lotus, manifesting wealth. Addicted to colonics.
Mamasaurus: Blogger. Believes that boys will be boys, and those boys can be grain-free and vulnerable to polio. Paleo muffin gatekeeper, advocate of a firm gender binary, and assiduous monetizer of social media presence, all while managing a 3,000 square foot farmhouse and 4 acres of land on her own because her ex is a goddamn bonobo who couldn’t keep his blessed rod of life behind his hemp boxers. Riddled with unspoken resentments because positivity is power. Successful Amazon affiliate; biggest seller a proprietary blend of flower essences for unblocking the throat chakra. Hypertensive, but only when exposed to public radio.
Reinhardt Weinerschlapp, PhD: Boomer. Obsessed with iridology, as well as the collapse of the nuclear family, which he attributes to women wearing shoes. Has written three published essays on the madness of inoculation. Sessions with Weinerschlapp are limited to Monday mornings, as he is busy working on his first book, How Science Destroyed Medicine. Thirty minutes healing sessions are $500. Payments must be made a month in advance - his time is valuable - and will not be reimbursed no matter the circumstances, including sudden death. Recommended nutraceuticals are filled with sawdust, white-labeled, and marked up 400 percent. Staunchly opposed to prescription medicine, though if homeopathy fails to clear modern miasms such as the insistence that variables such as race, sex, and class can negatively affect health outcomes, will consider a two-week course of molly, which he procures from his very hot niece. Budding day trader with loads of capital to play around with. Blood boy in Finland.
The Great Giving Up
I’ve repainted the room with the red stripes.
They’ve always bothered me, the stripes.
I used to paint dorms for summer cash.
Steady cut and roll, no drips.
No drop cloth?
I’m eyed suspiciously.
No.
*
I have a Master’s in Chinese Medicine.
Took me 4 years.
In graduate school,
I worked part-time,
practiced qi gong,
rolled organic tobacco.
After graduation,
a girlfriend ten years older
with a son in college
took me out to celebrate.
There are no salaried jobs,
I bitch, yet so much debt.
A bank would have refused you
a 100k loan, she says,
but student loans
are different.
Fuck, I say.
Yeah, she says.
Consider it your mortgage, hon.
I shrug. She buys me a beer.
In my last year of school,
I explain,
I learned the debt to salary ratio
was wildly skewed.
When asked about it,
the President of the college
gave a rambling story
about an old man in Tibet.
Fucking Predatory Ed, she sniggers,
private interest poisoning public good.
She holds up a dripping
shot of whiskey.
It ain’t gonna be easy,
but you can do it.
She clanks the rim of my beer,
throws the shot back, whew!
Buckle up, no whining,
be relentless.
Just kill it.
*
I call around for work, voice
laced with nerve I lack.
After 2 months, an interview.
I wear a red jacket, black heels.
$120 initial, $90 return.
My cut is $30.
Independent contractor,
no benefits.
Show up early,
look good.
Payment upfront.
Cash is king.
I wonder about the $30 cut,
say nothing, I want the job.
Rich ladies change
into white gowns.
They recline on tables covered
with organic cotton sheets.
I learn about the breathability
of linen,
the consistency
of their bowel movements,
exes and anxieties,
renovations, restaurants,
cancers, dogs,
and dreams.
*
I move home.
Open a clinic in a poor city.
You’ll never make it,
some said.
Too violent. Too sad.
Too lazy.
I provide group acupuncture,
quiet space, comfy chairs,
25 bucks, no questions.
People come, roll up their jeans.
There are so many types of pain.
Pain that floats. Pain that sinks.
Pain that evades language.
Pain that makes you mean.
What does acupuncture do?
they ask.
It opens windows.
Sweeps the stairs.
They nod.
They nap.
The jaw unclamps
when the body is loved.
Things that were stuck
move downstream.
*
I closed the clinic during the pandemic.
Seemed the right thing to do.
I stayed home with my kid.
I longed for my work.
My kid missed her friends.
We got a trampoline.
I was the best teacher.
The worst teacher.
My daughter cried.
I worshiped a red oak.
Crows roosted above our heads.
A groundhog ate my garden.
I stopped mowing the lawn.
Found maypop, wild sarsaparilla.
Mud froze.
Snow gathered.
I collected tinder,
burned a cord of wood.
From my phone, I watched nurses
enter hospitals without protection.
A local MD posted a video:
How to Sterilize an N95 in the Oven.
Doctors cried on television.
They begged.
A hospital in Brooklyn
ran out of body bags.
In April, a New Yorker died
every 2 minutes.
Liars, some people said.
The virus is a Marxist invention.
Some said it to the people
who kept them alive.
Some said it to the people
who watched them die.
*
A yoga studio advertised NO MASKS.
A massage therapist with children died.
A chiropractor said you wouldn’t die
if your gut was good.
ENTER EMAIL FOR WEEKLY TIPS
ALWAYS SOAK YOUR BEANS
HEALTH IS AN INVESTMENT
NOT AN EXPENSE.
Probiotics, $78/bottle,
10% MEMBERSHIP DISCOUNT.
My wife’s coworker got the jab,
A day later, BOOM, dead.
My nose feels like it might bleed.
I unsubscribe.
The email software gives me a box
to explain the reason:
Frequent and unnecessary
capitalization.
*
A colleague sent a group email.
The dying are diabetic, obese, or old.
We should not be forced
to suffer their sins.
They want soda, fast food? Fine.
BUT I WANT TO LIVE!
On Facebook,
she shares a meme
that implies she’s being treated
like Anne Frank.
The unvaxx’d are being FORCED
into concentration camps!
Ignore it, I tell myself.
Ignore it, says my husband.
Ignore it, says my sister.
I comment.
Anne Frank died in 1945.
Bergen-Belsen.
Epidemic typhus.
Infected body lice.
17,000 prisoners dead.
Fever, delirium, shock.
The slaughter of millions,
Jews, Roma, Poles, disabled, gays,
is not the same as a mandate.
When you make this comparison
I type, furiously,
hands shaking,
your rectum is indistinguishable
from your face.
She keeps it classy.
Posts a link.
Compilation of research,
published as a book.
Evidence of the harms
of vaccines.
About the author.
This was his second book.
His first, a guide to communicating
with extraterrestrials.
*
Ideologies of alt-right intersect
the Gospel According to Goop.
$2,000 Ouija boards, jade eggs,
LED lights in cursive font
for the vanity:
You are everything.
Blood libel. 5G.
EMFs, ascension.
Sex rings, Fauci,
fatness, freedoms.
Global paranoia burns.
Shrapnel of disinformation.
Grifters offer salves.
People die.
*
A friend of mine doesn’t trust vaccines
or pharmaceutical companies.
His daughter died of an overdose.
Fentanyl. She was 30.
She broke her femur skiing
when she was 15.
Family doc prescribed Oxycontin.
Thankfully, it’s not addictive.
She was an addict by age 17.
An uncle helped with that.
He talks about Purdue Pharma,
his ears turning red.
The fucking Sackler family
is inconceivably rich, he spits,
legal fucking firewalls,
corporate fucking immunity.
My daughter was gone a decade,
he says, fists balled,
before she was
gone.
*
I’m back at work
and things are busy.
I’m stuck, people say.
I’m empty.
Many are women.
Caretakers.
People who gave and gave.
Moms.
Not always though.
Some bagged groceries.
Some dumped cocktails in mason jars
handed them through windows
to parents desperate to slake
unslakable thirst.
Some cleaned hospital bathrooms.
Some processed the food we ate.
YOU STAY SAFE, I’LL STAY FREE
read the shirt of the unmasked man
in his 30s, standing behind
the elderly woman
who placed on the freshly
disinfected countertop
a sympathy card
Tic Tacs
politely asked for 20 scratch tickets,
$5,000,000 Ca$h Riche$.
You play too? he says,
incredulously.
Because of the mask
covering her nose,
the mask that threatens
to wrest his freedom,
she smiles
with her eyes.
*
Everyone shouldered a burden.
All of us are sick.
In a fit of stress my husband
called me a tyrant.
Excuse me? I said
extra ‘scuse.
Nothing is mine, he said.
It’s all yours.
Pain can float. Pain can sink.
It can detonate, make you mean.
I count backwards from ten,
feel a nosebleed coming on.
ALL CAPS FUCK YOU
FUCK YOU FUCK YOU
the bones
of the house vibrate,
he looks at me
and cries
*
My rage is deep
and burns
like an ember,
like a thief, like a wolf,
like a snake, like a woman.
*
The red room
is now green and gold.
I bought a velvet chair
and a potted plant.
I’m taking everything back.