to your dry-ice tongue.
resting bitch face, they call you
but there is nothing restful about you, no,
lips like a flatlined heartbeat,
panic at the sight of you,
scream for their mothers, throat full
of bees, head spun three-sixty
exorcist bitch just trying to buy a soda
just trying to do the laundry
just trying to dance at the party
then someone asks you to smile
and the blood begins to riot
smile, and you chisel away at your own jaw
smile, and you unleash the swarm
into the mouth of a man
who wants to swallow you whole.
one theory is that you were born like this
but i don’t believe it. you came out screaming
and alive and look at you now, look at how
you’ve learned to hide your teeth.
what’s wrong with your face, bitch,
your face, bitch, what’s wrong with it?
bitch face, i don’t blame you for taking
the iron pipe from their hands and branding yourself
with it, for making a flag out of your body bag.
another theory is that you put it on every morning
screw it tight like a jar of jelly
but i don’t believe that either.
you woke up like this and have been for years,
how can you sleep pretty
when there are four locks on the door
and the fire escape feels like break-in bait?
they will tell you home is safe zone
no, bitch face is safe zone,
bitch face is home
bitch face is cutting off the ladder
willing to burn in the apartment
if it means he can’t get in.
AILEEN WUORNOS ISN’T MY HERO
Aileen, do you know how
hard it is to pull a raw blade
from the grip of a Venus razor?
Of course you do. I am always
telling you things you know.
Aileen, every time my father
buys antifreeze he parades it
through the house shouting,
This is poison. Not blue Kool-Aid!
Mostly it’s a family joke
but if he didn’t do it, I swear one of us
would be cold and foaming
at the mouth by now.
Aileen, stop cutting your bangs.
Aileen, let’s go swimming.
Aileen, don’t clean your pussy
with anything but water
and even then, don’t clean inside.
Aileen, I don’t love you. I like you.
Aileen, if you worked for me
I would have fired you already.
Aileen, if you were my neighbor
I would have built an eight-foot-high fence
between our houses.
Aileen, if you were my lover,
I would have to move
out of the country;
I would have to change my name.
Aileen, why didn’t you change your name?
Why didn’t you run farther?
Aileen, I have no friends left
from high school, tell me what I’m doing
wrong. Tell me why I love to quit.
Tell me why I’m so religious
about absolutely nothing?
Aileen, I’m going to tell you a secret.
Once, back home, I found a duffel bag
full of jewelry and syringes
and metal spoons and a tiny bit of cash.
Was it yours? Did I find you before I found you?
I want to take you home. I think you would like it.
So much land that if you shoot a bullet
it won’t hit anything until it skids through the dirt.
So much land that if you scream
it won’t hit anything, just break away like mist
a few feet from your mouth.
Aileen, I wish I could’ve taken you there.
It’s too late now. I wish you hadn’t hurt all those people.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know you hate it when I say that,
what I meant was that I wish all those people hadn’t hurt you.
Aileen, next time you catch me
biting my nails, slap my hand
until it’s pink and hot. Aileen, you drink too much.
It makes you violent. Aileen, are we friends?
When did you know? What happens when you go away?
Aileen, I want to be the kind of girl
who writes letters but I find it too time-consuming.
I want to be the kind of girl who does yoga
but I think it’s boring. Sometimes I can’t listen
to music because it makes me moody.
I am afraid of being impulsive;
whenever I stand on the subway platform
I face the wall, I am not afraid of being pushed,
I am afraid of jumping by accident,
I am afraid it would be easy to believe
I did it on purpose. I didn’t want to become
the kind of woman who is always nervous
but I didn’t want to become my mother either.
Every hobby I have I picked up from a man
who I wanted to love me. I don’t know how
to not become the people I bring home.
I’ve never been in a fist fight
but I think I’m a great candidate.
You’re right, you’re right, let me tell you
about the things I love. I love the smell
of October in New Mexico. I love watching ballerinas
beat their pointe shoes against the floor.
I love Melissa’s eyelashes. I love
when there’s an outlet next to my chair.
I love my father’s pillow.
I love the cities that everyone loves.
Thank you, Aileen, I needed that.
Aileen, please forgive me. I won’t be there
to watch you go. I won’t be there to hold your hand.
Give them a good quote. Aileen, what does it feel like
to be born on leap day? Does it feel like you’re always
lying? Does it feel like you’re always behind?
Aileen, did I ever tell you
that I was supposed to be born on leap day
but my mother got impatient?
If we had the same birthday,
we could have had a joint party.
We could have had a piñata,
we could have done keg stands
and ditched, smoked cigarettes
behind the bouncy castle.
We could have eaten cake with our hands.
Do you know how to have fun at parties
if there’s no one to flirt with?
Never mind I’ll stop asking questions
to justify my bad habits,
but there is a right answer,
think about it and tell me later
when no one is watching.
A STORY ENDING IN BREAKFAST
after Ross Gay
This morning, before eating the avocado toast
I made you for breakfast, you stood beneath
a shriek of light on the porch & said, You know
you love someone when you lo
ok the way I do
right now and feel comfortable, pointing
to your dry elbows and unlaced shoes. & because I imagine
you were talking about allowing your body to exist
in its truest form & because you have let me touch
your most honest skin, I want to tell you a story
about the tricks I have done to make my body
disappear. & because I want you to understand,
I will start from before the beginning, when a girl
is told that in order to be loved properly,
she must make a habit out of service. & because
she is a girl who moves her body to the high
school bell ring, ritual is not foreign to her
& so she justifies it, she says, Some people need coffee,
he needs this, & I should clarify that he is a boy
but at some point in this story he will become a man
& many things will change, but the girl’s vindication
is not one of them. She says, I do plenty of things
once a day, shower, set my alarm, call my father
to tell him I am safe. She says, What is love
if not being needed and unzipping your throat,
if not letting the rats underneath the sink live
because it is the middle of winter?
& though the girl does believe she knows most things,
she is willing to accept a new vocabulary from the boy.
For instance, when he says now, he means here,
& sometimes here is his bedroom floor,
sometimes it is a gas station parking lot,
the dumpsters behind her school. & soon the rush
of being desired begins to harden & the girl must sculpt
a new, doughy mantra to pass the time.
She thinks, It takes three weeks to form a habit,
which means twenty-one days until it is as simple
as brushing teeth. & she does, of course she does,
but soon his body becomes immune to the gift
& she begins to realize she cannot bind her mouth
into something tighter, though she dreams of it,
her lips cinched like a velvet pouch.
But because this is merely a dream,
his needs mutate into a tumor with a face
& teeth & hands & soon, she is swallowing
his pillow, tending to the rug burn on her palms
& knees with oil & cloth. She begins to imagine
her body being that of the girl in the magician’s box,
whose upper torso rolls away from her hips with ease.
& this is effective until the bell rings & the need becomes
immunity becomes tumor & now he wants it twice,
four times, in the middle of the night but she is asleep
but he wants it so she wakes up
until she learns to not wake up,
learns to lock herself inside of her dreams
& stay there until the sore morning. & by now
the boy has grown a beard & signed a lease
& the girl is preparing to graduate
but all she can think about is running
into an open field of wheat. & it is not long
after this moment that the boy
goes to work & the girl leaves,
not by her own will necessarily,
but by the will of the open door,
& does not return. She says she is triumphant
but covers herself in wool even in summer
& turns to cold steel when a hand is placed
upon her shoulder. & she does not give
the boy’s touch a name until he comes to her
in a dream years later & yanks her from sleep
as he always did. & now, the girl is a woman
who can be touched the wrong way but that fact
is merely a footnote in the legend of her life.
Her middle name is not rip or swell it is Rose,
actually, just like mine, & she still moves to ritual
but now, that ritual shows itself in the grocery store,
where she ponders too long over the ripeness of fruit,
until she finds the perfect avocado, the same one
you found on the counter, ready to be cut open
& pitted & smashed onto bread.
BLOWJOB ELEGY
I didn’t know when it happened
that it would be the final time
I pulled my neck back
from beneath his belly.
I don’t know whose belly it was
or where he sat or if he trembled
and ached a good ache
towards the sky. What matters
is that there was
a final time—a last swig,
heavy curtains swept across
my lips, intestines working
the closing shift to knead and push
the spore through the center of myself.
Curse the gag and spit.
Curse the barter and fill.
Curse the coming where I plead.
Once I learned how, I held it
in my palm like a slick and heavy coin,
haggled over my sex, hummed to my knees,
raw and wet on the bathroom floor.
It is not for the feeble gut to hold a shaft
against your gums and swallow it.
So praise my iron cheeks,
my fake bitch grin and moan,
praise the day I ditched the parade
of wrap and suck, then cut out my old tongue
and left it to rot in the sun.
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT HEALING
the story goes that my brother,
in the first weeks of his life,
was so full of mucus that my parents
were afraid he might suffocate
in his sleep. even his mouth was
bubbling over, green leaking thick
as molasses down his chin.
too far from a hospital
and no healthcare to pay for it,
my father pressed his open mouth
to my brother’s nose,
my mother ran to get a bucket,
and he began sucking the phlegm from
his face, hawking it into
the basin until his fat, gurgling baby
let out a clean scream.
i was always jealous of him, my brother,
for the ways my father stopped
him from dying. in every memory
i have he is a hero.
even memories not my own.
when he was selected
for jury duty, the judge asked
if anyone had experience
being assaulted in their home.
so i was removed, my father said
after explaining that he raised
his hand, told the court
about the time my brother pinned him
to the wall and held a shard of glass
against his throat. i think i remember
it happening, i think i must have been there,
i think i was watching from beneath the table,
i think i screamed or did nothing.
my first memory: i stepped on glass
and when i started to cry, my father
laughed and told me to take it out myself.
but maybe that’s not true. maybe he took my heel
and put it in his mouth.
a memory is a story
told so well, it becomes
part of the body.
SONNET FOR THE CLOVE OF GARLIC INSIDE ME
Yesterday I groveled in the bathroom,
broke a nail against my denim crotch,
squirmed in line, twisted knees at the grocery store,
dug up a buck to buy a bulb of you,
come evening you were in my bathroom, then
skinned knuckle caught in the quarter machine
plucked, peeled, and wedged into my copper mine
you small burn, you small baker, kneading bread
in a dark, damp room, working overtime.
Sam says, The taste will make its way to your mouth
by morning, and that’s how you know it worked,
and when I fish you out with my whole hand
you take the thick poison with you, martyr
lily, saint of soil, sear me clean again.
ODE TO PINK
My favorite color is Pepto-Bismol. My favorite color is amoxicillin. My favorite color is the calamine bottle. I want to be sick just to swallow you. Offer up my most blood-filled parts and rub pink on the itchy, pink bites. Everyone keeps talking about their muses and I want one too but I don’t believe in people, so I nominate you—always using your best baby voice to get the discount but slurring your words the whole time. Something I learned in middle school, after Elise smashed Vivian’s head into the sidewalk twice so she got two bumps like horns and everyone called her Devil, is that you never know someone is a fake bitch, you can just feel it, and that’s reason enough to hate them. But I like you for it. I liked Vivian too, to be honest. I like the way you bait and switch. Ponzi scheme doing a pirouette. Boiler room boutique. Tulle, if rubbed hard enough against the skin, starts to feel like sandpaper, the way all of our wounds begin with you. I’m not looking for empowerment. I don’t care about femininity, or whatever. I just like the things they call you when you change—coral, bubblegum, millennial, hot. I like the way everyone has an opinion and all you have is a comeback—how you show up to the party with a new haircut and everyone convinces themselves they’ve never met you, offers to pour you a drink, wants to try on your fabulous coat. I fall for the marketing. I bought the mace for girls. The toolbox. If I could make it so, I would make it so: my whole house coated in a layer of you. If my roommate wasn’t a goth, we’d have a couch the color of flamingo, fridge like a dipped and dyed Easter egg. Inside, only rosé and sliced grapefruit. Himalayan salt in the cabinet. Beet juice smeared across the counter. My dainty assassin, high-stakes rare steak, wisest rookie on the team, if the thing I hate is the color of you, I love it. There’s a pink switchblade on my counter. If a man holds it to my throat one day, I’ll make an exception. For you. I’ll smile and say, Do it.
Life of the Party Page 8
