A Safe World is Always Emptier

Death burns his black dress in the track field

and walks home from the bus stop with me.

Naked and cold with a dull scythe on his shoulder

while he babbles to me about everything 

that will happen on this day and that day and the other,

but not the day I will pass.

Southern Girl Sicko

I’m living in Virginia, 

the beginning of the south,

the childstar of the confederacy.

I’m putting worms and swampwater into buckets

and dumping them on the heads of 

northern boys who know mud as well as they know space.

I’ve mowed the king down with my horse,

his legs are morbid and twisted like L-shaped pipes

as he moans in the dark while I hop off the saddle.

My feet are bare and covered in gravel,

my dress is falling off my shoulders,

exposing a breast as I kick the ruler,

nothing but a man when his crown falls down the ravine.

He weeps harder as I remove my 

spear from its sheath.

I step on his chest, 

hundreds of pebbles covered in my dead skin,

scratching him through his shirt.

I hold the spear above my head 

as if I am splitting a log. 

I yell at the man I toppled over,

“Thus always to tyrants.”

Drooping, Wilting

It all ran down my face—

the cuts were vertical and 

the drops of my embarrassed eyes

wetting themselves

hit the pavement heels first.

It stressed me out to not know

what I would become but knowing

I would transform and feel the searing pain

of new roots bursting out of my back,

having new blood that 

came to be by swirling around my brain.

I was a girl turning on my axis

with a disturbance

from my revolution

that rivaled the smooth engineering 

of Earth’s legs.

I was becoming a girl

who would feel ill forever—

the type of girl who 

could only wipe at the throb 

when it wept,

paint it in thick white cream when it 

began to turn red 

until I lost control and

clawed at my burning surface

until I broke the seal.

With the scrape of my bulldozing nails,

I began to feel something eternal.

I Remember Being a Girl

Tender is Heaven’s flickering

mouthwarm light,

glowing unto my back.

Spilling with the shine 

I am splattered everywhere;

an angel weft into wood floors, 

mattress coils, 

and leather.

Gore for Those Who Like to Visualize (The Martyr Version)

My eyes melt onto the frying pan.

Scrambled veins and toasted corneas.

My pupils boil over.

Cooking for my beautiful boyfriend

who reads the newspaper:

“Local Woman Dies in Bathtub.

Now isn’t that sad?”

I flip my eyeballs,

they are crisp on all sides,

“Yes, it is.”

—

Picking at my guts for dinner.

I wanted peas and mashed potatoes.

The red slime sounds like macaroni and cheese.

Pretending food is other food keeps me full.

A picky eater versus

an eater who picks at their food.

I eat to sustain,

if I must bite at your thighs, 

I must.

—

When the frostbite turns skin black

and the exit wound leaks sweet southern molasses,

I awake.

The Bloodshed is Only Digital

I’m spinning,

but only w/ my eyes.

My entire side hits the ground

while my seeing 

is all tossing itself up against the ceiling.

I’m going somewhere all from

right here.

I’ve gone to Guam before homeroom.

I can see the war 

all from my couch

if I just stare at what 

my mom is staring at.

Her fingers rub into my scalp 

like she

is kneading out 

the pure knowledge 

of the bomb.