consumere

i am consumed.

sucked into. pulled under. plastic over

ducked lips, eyelashes beneath

leather heals, knelt beside the trough that is

getting emptier because I

drink and drink and drink.

you are squandered.

knit together with floss that was

pre-clipped for use before

dentist’s offices smelled like

insurance’s breath.

we are wasted,

not wasting away.

crumbling like the kneecaps

of dali’s elephants eroded

by the dynamic duo of

decades and disappointment.

no, we are wasted

in the city licking peanutbutter

from where it fell

on pavement because that is

the pattern we’ve created.

dents that clothes leave on skin

mean that maps are worth more than mountains,

plastic more than gold,

means that angles are better than spirals better than

angels better than dirt.

we have wasted circles

into squares stacked like

cartoon caterpillars, curious

to see how many bites you can

take out of the sky

before the moon notices.

What is it to be clean? (Collaboration Piece)

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I am it.    

I am a map of skin covered lace        

I am something you may call a remembrance

Organs covered with the stretch of plant membrane

Of a mind once untangled—

It would be a shame to admire the

Not knowing

Picking up dismembered wisdoms   

The sewing of uncertainty into the brim of   

Beginning when I have confidence     

On how to arrive                        

When to leave                       

Remembering to begin again.

The séance of smiling and knowing that anything

Of for from by or related to the earth makes me smile that way

Eyes open, shoes on, I collect words

Strewn like old sea glass along the coastline.

And say that my mother suffers from the consequence of

Eyes closed— recall upon an image of the ocean at night

Reactions, sections and captions like empty words falling from

A body of stone carved mud,

This is the 4X4 compartment for the memory of vastness.

I am something that crawled out of a hole

Clattering on the floor that sounds like the consequence of silence

Plunged into warm water

Unknown, incalculable, impossibly small, incredibly profound

A bathtub.

She held me and promised only joy

Ranging from birth to death, the caress of a

A lie that drips chocolate so you lick and lick and lick.

Cloudy morning tongue across my sleepy cheeks

Mother was the most beautiful

She hangglides in the nude and laughs a lot

Awaken with the ache in my center that extends because

I don’t know how to organize these recipes for disaster

Pointing and smiling at the way we all strain to see.

the plaster from the ceiling falls when you walk above me

You (I) are (am) responsible

filling the birds nest of my hair with

the way she scrubbed and scrubbed

pieces of a whole that form significance

Hands covered in soap

together, I am the map of

plantlace membrane pulled skintight over mouth nose ears face

and I love to disintegrate.

What is it to be clean?

-The Shutter Muse (special thanks to my friend Sophia for doing a cut-up piece with me. this work is as much hers as mine.)

The Edge

There is an edge within me.

I saw it once two Decembers ago

When my lips were blue and my fingernails

Were hardened by cold, purple like ink stains on warped wooden desktop.

The edge was cold, but maybe it was just winter.

The edge was

The edge was

The edge was like the broken record of a tinny memory.

Like ducks circling your temples, bobbling up

and down like thought balloons, caught balloons secured by

the string of a kite

Slip the knot between forefinger and thumb to pull tight with numb limbs and lips but not from

Novocain, not cocaine, feeling the membrane of the

Parchment layers, onionskin eyelids,

If you cut them off you could pin them like butterfly wings.

Hold them up to the sun and admire the glow

Admire the different perspective

A collective of things that can’t shed any more tears.

The edge wasn’t warm, but as long as you stayed on your side (the side you started on) the edge was comfortable.

The edge was not a ledge for you to dangle your feet over, shoes dripping off the toes of feet, secure in the fact that it would take more than a passing breeze for you to try your hand at flying.

The edge was for remembering embers burning

Smoldering coals of bonfire I was conned

Into pretending nothing was wrong when we sat holding hands

My arm, a leash, connected to my heart which

I imagined

Would stop beating with your leaving,

if I stuck my hand through the ribcage, extracted the organ, would it feel like

anything? What would nothing feel like?

The edge is walking, inching towards dark abyss, cliff, gully, chasm, valley, volcanic

rock bottom and sinking without stopping you

                                                                                                Leap.

The edge is loving            leaving             begging            pleading            following             

hollowing out the inside of your cheek with teeth biting,

blood filling mouth

with a good source of irony, not knowing

what you’ll find

when you leap.

When you finally leapt, wept last tear, call it fear,

            The cold empties you pulling down

And sometimes your wings unfold, fully grown, you realize despite the cold

Your feathers needed airing out, the wind feels

Right to lick your cheeks, you might remember

How to speak clearly like the song of birds, to hear the meaning, not the words

But

Sometimes

            The wind is strong as you leap and when your body quakes

Your wings are not unfurled to fly, they aren’t strong enough to hold your weight,

            So they break.

The edge is after broken too, the unspoken, the tokens of kindness and wisdom, given to you like change from strangers, warding off danger with nothing but the will to smile still

            Beyond the hope of dodging consequence or one last dance or tragedy brought by happenstance.

The only thing I’ll say to you when standing on the edge poised, arms outstretched, lines of uncertainty

Call it fear of failing

Fear of falling

Fear of flailing

Fear of lies

Fear of flying, I’m dying to tell you

            That the only thing worse than the fall,

                        Is doing nothing at all.

To Ghost and To Be Ghosted

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To ghost is to release your self like tar from lungs

out into the universe like a cloud unraveling from the night sky.

To put on the jacket of the invisible man, flipping up the collar to shield yourself from the whistling of the wind through

His two front teeth… Stepping out into the street

and feeling the grit

of gravel beneath your feet, keeping your eyes

at least two feet in front of you so that you don’t

miss the tiny landscapes and roadside attractions

between your toes: a shriveled worm, a half dollar coin, a ring

from a vending machine, broken glass that looks licked smoothed

by the desert and at least 5 dried flowers dropped from the diary

of a young girl who walked along this path not 15 minutes before you.

            To ghost is to guess how far away the ground is and then to leap,

            Keeping in mind that if you die, no one will remember your

            Smile or the sweetness of your shampoo that lingers like

            The smell of rain. Feel the disdain

            When you land with a resounding shock—the reverberations

            Rattle your molars into the back of your mouth,

            Swallowing them despite yourself, like when you learned

            To stomach the smell of flesh, the feel of it on your tongue

            The fleeing of life from another being

            Hoping their soul made it somewhere after its body was processed

            Compressed into shapes that we might find appetizing

Dodging our instincts to dominate our inner beast

Deepening the divide between our spirits and our minds.

            To be ghosted is to stand behind her, listening to the way

            Her fingernails sang over the grooves of vinyl,

            Tiny mountain ranges like the silhouette of her spine.

            It was divine to run my tongue along the topography of

Her body, I remember

Her cool salty taste like the sea in December and the gravel cutting

into my palms like

            The night we locked ourselves out of her brother’s apartment so I

            Stripped my shirt off, slipping it around my hand before

            Punching it through the glass window, feeling the crunch of

            My knuckles on impact. Red ribbons of pain cinching around

            My wrists like zipties cutting off the circulation, the sensation of

            My body thrust into the cop car and I could hear her sobs, wracking

            As I plead for someone to help her, hold her and simultaneously searching

For something to thrust into my eye socket,

            To hear the white noise, feel the static, dissipate this sensation

            Anticipating the return of musical memory, humming the melody into my

            Skeleton, vibrating my bones so I can remember

            Her breath in tune to the music, her hips

            Swaying somewhere between bass and vocals in a rhythm you can

            See but not hear, having the words form in my mouth

            And letting them fall flat, watching her move with the sway of

            An African belly dancer, cigarette smoke hanging around her limbs

            Like the fog caressing the peaks

            Of a mourning mountain.

           

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)