Heart like the last Red Wolf
in the decimated population of eastern North Carolina
looking for a mate
Heart like a target
Hole like an exit wound
Play on
III
CONFESSIONAL POETRY
Writing it is like firing a nail gun into the center of a vanity mirror
or slowly shaking a souvenir snow-globe of asbestos & shame
to quiet an imaginary baby
It’s like sewing rhinestones on your traumas so you can wear them to a pain festival
or beating a piñata selfie with a pink rubber bat
so you can pet the demons that fall out
No, the confessional is a mode among other modes
Right now I’m getting fingered in a museum bathroom during a Cindy Sherman exhibit
while discussing Susan Sontag’s “The Pornographic Imagination”
& live streaming it on Instagram
Why don’t you follow me
A beef-witted male critic is indexing my sins
in a highly regarded literary publication
Supergluing my clitoris forever to the pillar of historical irrelevance
It’s shitting your fancy gown in a home movie & everyone who loves you recoiling
while you shrug because it’s only a movie
Doing a clever impersonation of roadkill in glitter eyeshadow
then lifting up your dress to show everyone your invisible dirty panties
Not wearing waterproof mascara while you’re being tasered
Staging your copycat suicide, leaving lipstick on your noose
You open a vein of hematite & convince everyone it’s blood
then bleed out on a white shag carpet
All over the world, depressed, narcissistic little bitches
are filling notebooks with their feelings
Sloppy, boring, grotesque, unfuckable feelings
I really like feeling something when I stagger into a poem
& having a place to lie down & cry
I woke up this morning from uneasy dreams & put on three pairs of tiny high heels
Embed me in plastic, pass me around
Put me onstage so I can stand over a grave trap
& a man can explain what’s wrong with me
Rape me by the light of the moon shining over a nuclear reactor pool
Is there a single idea in my pretty little head?
Let’s have another cocktail & find out
while I remove these sticky bandages
IV
ARCHIVE OF RECENT UNCOMFORTABLE EMOTIONS
PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW
You have no idea what’s inside them.
Slipped gears and downed wires, rotted-out floor planks.
Maybe anemones.
Maybe a billion spiral galaxies.
There’s the famously beautiful famous poet you once saw through an open bathroom door
projectile vomiting into a sink before the door swung closed again.
You’re afraid to open that boxed case of wine, certain a mouse got trapped inside
but it’s only Styrofoam rubbing against more Styrofoam
like the sex you used to have with people you didn’t know.
Some people smile when they hate you.
Wracking sobs are usually a good indication
they’ve been gutted by fire.
Liars are supposed to be betrayed by the direction their eyes dart
but good liars know this, so the truth is anyone’s guess.
Eye contact may be indicative of rudeness
or the early delusional phase of love.
The early delusional phase of love.
The early delusional phase of love.
When a woman at a party says, I like your necklace
a multiverse of possible interpretations yawns open like a meat-eating plant.
Sometimes it’s better to stay in the lobby, where the bar is,
so as not to discover the creeping mold in a room with a parking lot view.
Then again, if that stranger absorbing vodka a few stools down
would only glance your way, and give you a sign,
you just might go there.
EX
When I think about him now I think about the money he stole from me
I remember the mice in his couch & the dying fish in his aquarium
& also feeling like a gilded royal barge was ceremoniously moving through my blood
while LED snow fell theatrically in the folds of my brain
I remember thinking nothing could ruin our love which is what everyone thinks at first
but it turns out everyone is wrong
Some things are destined to be ruined
Cheap dresses student housing self-esteem romantic projections
Ice sculptures of dead jazz musicians turning to mush in the rain
Some of the fish did themselves in, leaping out past the filter & over the edge
Others just flipped over & floated up & started looking kind of shredded
Mostly I think about how little I think about him now
like he was just some decorative saltwater display in an overpriced lobby
or a hangover I sweated out in a single low-impact cardio-weight routine
when once he was the creature who swallowed me whole
in a huge religiously significant way
THE TRUTH
You could spend all day bored and unhinged,
counting to a thousand, closing the windows,
terrified by leaves. Look at your hand, it won’t
open to reveal what’s coming. Nothing
changes but everything has already and that’s what
you hate, prodded forward with a stick, stumbling
after some elusive, half-imagined creature.
Studying its entrails. Bending over its scat.
When all the time it’s stalking you. When
all the time it’s got you by the throat.
Below your window, some little kids are walking in
single file, roped together, through the intersection.
Their teacher—or minder—yanks them along.
You watch them without any feeling. Or with one that’s wrong.
ARCHIVE OF RECENT UNCOMFORTABLE EMOTIONS
The this haircut makes me feel ugly feeling
The however much I drink I can’t pretend it’s love feeling
The strangled by the foul and ugly mists of vapours in iambic pentameter feeling
The everything I write is shit feeling
The I’m sorry I gave you those blow jobs and did you not understand the meaning of “reciprocal” feeling
The it’s not my birthday anymore I’m just older feeling
The looking at X-rays of my teeth feeling
The something died in your eyes and I can smell it feeling
The literary recognition might be just another shiny object feeling
The darkling I listen and right now I think it would be kind of cool to die feeling
The Keats is dead feeling
The Leonard Cohen is dead feeling
The ______ and __________ and my __________ are also quite dead feeling
The I am Jean Rhys getting blotto in a dismal room in Paris with black specks on the wall feeling
The maybe
