Othering Yourself

We are all a sum of our experiences
but if you experienced my life
slipped off your mocassins and into
my pink heels you would feel no healing.
No mending or bending of the scar tissue
no realligning of the stars
the lights within us shine different vibrations
this is no labyrinth-- all paths are one and they all
lead to different doors, more like portals
windows to our mortality, the brief tangibility of my reality
the ability to say I see the sky and its above me
but so are you when I have my fingers buried in the earth
your face a pale moon hanging like paper lanters
strung outside the alter that I've built around my poetry
the words I worship, they give life to this basic body
keep my sole on the floor, my head on my shoulders
but my words mean nothing to the sweet song of Spanish
that lead me when I refused to follow
my comfort became the cage of language
used in lieu of our senses
but when you run your tongue along the bars
can't you taste the metal melting?
    in the back of your throat like right before you puke--
regurgitating the familiar urge to say
when you see the moon and these stars
       don't you feel small?




-The Shutter Muse

Chewing Change: Poetry about Me as a Writer

My words are like cheap plastic jewelry
    showering down from circus vendors
with painted smiles and dripping eyes
    like city-women.
Candy worn by ravegirls with
shallow values and high expectations
wanting a quick fix,
their dreams served up like picnics
on a silver platter.
Tiny pills like tic tacs
        (splish, splash)   
    pink
        and blue
            and white

like dotted highway dividers at night—blank white prayers
paid for with plastic
    paper is only for
postcards and pamphlets sent from
somewhere South of the Milky Way
        signed
Sincerely,
    Alice

When I was little I wanted my words to be perfectly polished
offered up on gold-tipped-tongue like
Swarovsky crystals, or maybe diamonds
mined by angels,     nursing their addiction
the affliction to the silver spoon
that tastes like copper,
 the flavor of blood on the inside of your cheek
like chewing change.
the smell of something strange on the wind

    and I would be the world’s oyster.
Proffering in my palm the plastic pearl
for you to keep
    (or disregard)
discarded like used
condoms or cigarettes unsmoked
curled like snakeskin in the
reflection of the constellations. 







-The Shutter Muse

An Assignment for my Creative Writing

           He was standing with his back to the sun, and where Sarita was sitting he looked like a shadow that had come to life, his top hat stood out like a square of velvet that was cut clean out of the pink and purple horizon. It’s a strange sensation to know that someone is looking directly at you, you can feel the eggshell whites of his eyes and the inkstain of his pupil trained on your every expression, but you can’t see anything but the outline of their body, the impression they’ve left in the negative space like the pointed cookie cutters that Sarita and her grandmother had used to make Christmas cookies two years ago.

            She could remember the smell of simmering Sangria on the stovetop while she and her grandmother kneaded out the cookie dough, slipping tiny tastes into her mouth when her grandmother’s back was turned. She knew she never got away from it, her grandmother could see her in the darkened windows and her lips curved up on the reflection of the night sky like a crescent moon. They would wait for the cookies to rise, the heat breathing life and depth into the shadowed forms and then they would paint them with layers of clothing, sweet lacy butter cream, tart ruffly lemon curd, sparkly taffeta layers of sprinkles and tiny candied drops.

            The man looked like he was painted with layers of dark chocolate or charcoal. An imperceptible shift of his body brought his features into focus and with a movement that was too quick to be human, like mercury pooling together after she dropped the thermometer and it shattered, scattered across the floor. Suddenly he was kneeling in front of her, his breath hanging like a familiar flavor of cloud in the air between them, his palm outstretched.

            His hand was large, worn with the calluses of a traveling gypsy who ties knots like a sailor but has never seen the sea, and cupped in the palm were seven tiny stones. She could imagine how the texture would feel rolling over her tongue, and wondered whether it would taste like cool mountain air or like the salty breath of the ocean. She knew that she should choose one, but each of their tiny polished surfaces reflecting the changing light looked perfect, as if he’d plucked down seven stars, and offered her the sky.

            Reality seemed to begin to unravel, and she finally wished she could speak, could ask this man she knew but had never met the answer to all that she was wondering but the words caught in her throat like popcorn kernels. She felt a sense of urgency as she sunk into the ground like footprints in moist dirt, and his fingers closed over the tiny white angels, and he reached his arm out from behind his back and offered her his hand, empty and cool like the whimsy of the wind licking clouds out of the sky.

-The Shutter Muse (who is thoroughly enjoying her classes, although promises to be more diligent about updating in the future)