Origin Story

Winding the sheets into a hurricane 

Will never be good enough

I was sent to Earth to lie mute

Made alien 

Through a lineage of pale moons and rosy cheeks

My mother‘s half swan half peacock

Miraculously born by Western winds

I am not like Daphne

I am not as natural as a laurel tree

I was made from code and hormone trials 

This is what planted the seed in me 

A peach pit of uncertainty and lost rationale 

It will be this pit

That will guide me to

repeat the cycle of the needle 

The Turtle Dove 

You are my architecture 

My sedimentary rock

You are of

Tough linen and cherry wood

But our castle is bleeding

Still, I’d trek the 

Desert to be here 

With my hands tied

And face veiled by a scarf

When there is me

There is napalm

When there is us 

There is a ring

Crystallized: not cut into time

You may not cross the desert with no shoes on

For me

The hole in my heart 

That is only the shape of your past and future

Is what I wish you had exchanged

There is still time 

To shoot me with ink

And to contend with my ugliness

I hope that you will still choose me

It is in my karmic tail

Vehicle A

How was I to know

Just how lucky I am

Me and my boyfriend

Driver and passenger

To not become one with the metal

Or to be split by shards

“You were northbound 

Over boiled roots and old marshes 

Long long long ago

There was something here on this road

Before the concrete was laid or the trees were cut

It was probably quiet and –”

Well that's neither here nor there

Because it was my universe that was unraveled

And it is my bone and muscle that aches

“It's terribly good to be thankful

To the winds that carry you

But it is also terribly good to remember that you are dust

And it is through dust that you are anything”

What’s anything if I just became an echo of the road? 

“It is everything. You would become the settlements before 

The concrete pours, on the bottom of the soul of each foot 

Of each passerby. You would become each droplet of every rainstorm 

That passes over. You would be each piece of mica that’s settled in

layers concrete. You are in the reverb”

Restless Periphery

I am of no religion 

my family scattered 

along the emerald isle 

moons away of course 

such distances have left me bearing nothing

not a mustard seed of belief 

I feel I’ve been misplaced 

out of step 

out of place 

no amount of meditation or prayer 

could hold me in my haze 

I am a blank

it’s good to know though 

there are beliefs 

not my beliefs 

but theirs 

daughters of daughters 

on either side of my eyes 

just out of view

tellings of knowledge are buried deep

in each nucleus 

to the cold clay under my feet

what will it take for me to do this digging 

or to dissect each atom 

if that’s even the answer

S. Irwin and All Lovers

Stung and hunted

Barbed wire

Pierces his breast

Christ’s side wound 

Vaginal opening

The entryway

Floater in the ocean

Caught by calloused hands 

What was it supposed to do

It was only unconscious of the love that gripped its back

What's the opposite of hunting to kill?

Sought out or lovingly stalked

One thing 

Before the venom reaches your blond head

Your ambition blinded you

No creature of any depths 

Would ever be aware of your caring intentions

Dead Sea

You promised the light of late afternoon 

But I took it with a grain of salt 

After infinite trusting moments 

This grain of salt turned into nothing 

But an angstrom of space

Unnoticed: overlooked 

But fates changed 

And winds mixed 

That warm light that I once wanted

You pulled out of reach 

Held it above your head 

Tying it to the highest branch of a pine tree

Whether you meant it or not

Each night I try to climb that tree 

To reach that orb 

I’ll let you figure out if I’ve 

Reached the top 

You should be able to tell by my coldness

And long unanswered text messages

We are in the age of a wickedness 

That does not give light to sanctity 

Of any partnership 

In which you are complicit

The grain of salt that dissolved is back 

In a dramatic ten-fold

Of crystallized and geometric bonds

So tangible it could fit

In the salt formations of the Dead Sea