I Will Never Be Your Bride

I know what is in store for me
I know what is the reason
these bruises on my skin
from white
to purples and the blues,
swirls of red.

I walk slowly up the stairs

Step by step I feel it,
my heart,
the sound of horses hooves
against hard dirt.

Step by step I feel it,
This excitement like hand
pressed to my back,
pushing me forward

Tomorrow I will feel it
when someone hugs me,
skin pressing my skin,
I'll be reminded of you.

Tomorrow I will feel it
when I have to sit slowly
consciously remember
to watch where I am walking
But who has time for that?
I will bump into things
I want to be reminded of you.

All these dull evocations.

Still
I will never bring you home to my mother,
I will never be your bride.

Alive

The wind whips at me
Like I deserve it
It is bitter
This medicine, going down.

Monsters
Everywhere I go
Arms stretched over their heads
Their leaves ready to grab
at me

Lights flashing, on and off
But I keep walking
Too many SOS signals
Not everyone can be helped

I see a white man
Start to walk towards him
His hand starts flashing
Red
Breaking into a run
I stop on an island

I have a pulse
On the boulevard of death

Inspiration

I went to the Book Expo America last year and received a ton of books, some I am still getting around to reading. One of those books is a poem, titled To the Barricades, by Stephen Collins. I am only a few pages in but I am loving every second of it. My favorite stanza is the opening stanza, which is written as a letter:

Dear Common
                after Gerald Raunig's Art and Revolution

I had thought this was
Outside the barricades
No street in time
But a space left
Uneven and cluttered
With broken ballot boxes
Like a poem with
Everything in it so
Nothing you write
Isn't it and
Nothing you write is
But everywhere your
Hand over the page
Is shadowed by
Another hand taking
Up what you've written
Down and finding the
Spatiotemporal scale
At which it
Makes the most sense

I've been reading this over for days and loving every line of it.

No Man's Land

I heard screams and crying all night
Their tears left on car windows
It chills me,
This windless cold
I don't think my bones
Will ever remember warmth

Empty streets
Only last night's ghosts
Departing
As that ball of fire
Stretches high,
Melts them away
Leaving these frosty puddles
littering the sidewalk

Where are all the old people
playing chess,
All the old people
usually on the benches?
I am
Before their time.

July 4

Steel wool
Dragged across my skin
Ripping off a layer

Thinking about our last words
I bite my tongue

Every chain link
Digging in
Bleeding me out

I pound away
at the metal
Sparks fly
Fragments everywhere

I stop
Sweating, spent.

I will let
The shower
The change of seasons
The kindness of strangers
Return me to me

Kitchen surface tops
Will collect dust
Without your condescending eye
I am no longer
Bound to a broom
The apron
Permanently untied

I can wear my highest shoes
Without fear
Of making you little,
You do that fine
By yourself.

Why Did You Let Me?

We were lying

in bed, I touched your hair

softly.

And you let me.

Build up hope

with that intimate touch.
 

Right before you turned

to face me.

With stones in your eyes

that said “GET THE FUCK OUT."

So I left 

without one more touch

just to remember you by.

And you let me.

Maybe you didn’t mean

to let me slip

through the cracks and the creaks

of the apartment.

But you did.

So when I miss you

I remember those stones,

what they say

about your heart.

Deda's Reading Glass

Light as a feather
of the frailest sparrow,
held in the strongest of hands.

Hollows along the bottom
so small 
you can feel them only
with your eyes.

Looks rough
but smooth
to the touch,
the tip of my fingers.

Dark black
overlapped
with silvery swirls,
rusted and dented and bent.

Small slice of glass
used to amplify
tales in a tongue
I still don't understand.