Soul FlyUncle Levi and Auntie Gertrude and Katie didn’t miss Gramma. They didn’t even think about her until her Soul Fly Day came. Their flies were silver with big sparkly opal eyes, but Momma said the wood ones Grampa carved for us were just as good.
It was my first Soul Fly Day ever. Momma got me a new black dress and told me it was all right to cry. Katie’s dress had white ruffles and silver flies stitched into it. She pointed at my wood fly and called us poor.
There were so many people there was barely enough room for the shaman to get to Gramma. Everyone got real quiet so we could hear him say words I didn’t understand. Gramma’s Soul Fly came out of her mouth and started flying over us. It was like a paper doll, only just black. It landed on my head and Momma cheered and we sang Soul Fly Day songs. Katie whined about how she should have got the blessing because her fly was so pretty.
And that’s how my painting won first prize at the fair. The Dreams We KeepWhat deep-set dreams we keep, lest others pry -
As if to say that silence guards them best,
And keeps them most alive - there in my breast,
In silence born, and therein left to lie;
But not unknown, not they - for I had slept
As men and gods alike did haply dream,
And dreaming, knew of all my deepest dreams
Ere I. Thus, any hopes I hereby dress -
Desires bespoke, if not, in truth, confessed -
Shall mark me as a puppet born and bought
To shoulder wishes men themselves forgot,
Not knowing which are more and which are less
My own. A bastion, then, of debts and dues -
As others dreamt, I dream - and dreaming, lose. :thumb361455159: Coming Back on a Day of Returning
It's amazing how wind can clear your perspective on life.
Walking out on my wife had been hard, but only because I couldn't take my daughter with me.  I remember that I had to live in my truck until I got my next paycheck, and even then all I had was enough money to get a rented room. I still had to provide for my wife and child, and I had pay the mortgage on their house.  I couldn't afford a place big enough for myself and Kelsey.  And I'd lose a custody battle anyway.  
I had sworn to myself that I wouldn't let the separation between me and Diane create a separation between me and Kelsey.  But with two sets of living expenses to pay, I had to take every ounce of overtime I could get.  Three months ago the foreman's position opened up. I took it because it meant a steady salary that kept me in the black, but the hours were long.
This week marked one year that I'd been out of the house, and I have been working like crazy :thumb389894978: telephones and cortisonePuerto Rico is still asleep
while we starfish aimlessly in the sea -
We are like lost men seeking shelter
in a place where the sweating sun
is forever at high noon,
ceiling fans turning slowly
and dewy drops on upper lips.
I am the skinny girl in an indie movie
who lounges around in her underwear,
a cigarette dangling limper than dirty hair.
A phone rings somewhere.
I am grasping at a dream
like I am drowning and watching
the surface float away, falling
so deep into sleep that
the stars seem to sing.

Mature Content

Who Is Your MotherThere is no tired like new-mother, 
rock-breasted, bleeding, 
brand-new mother exhausted.  
Sleep a while; please sleep a while.
I tuck your arms into soft fleece, mark the 'O' 
of your tiny mouth as I do it, crook you 
in one elbow. We are surely alone, and slip
into dreams, you and this woman
who is your mother, drowning together
in pillows, bed-sheets, down. 
There is no fear like new-mother, 
groggy, incision-pain, narcotic-haze, 
frantic new-mother terror.  Sleep
a while; please sleep a while.
My heart lurches -- stops -- breaks.
I jolt across the bed, scanning 
your tiny face for breathing signs, 
a twitch, a sigh.  We are still alone
and when you move, I crook you back
into my elbow.  Sleep a while.
  :thumb298155785: i will rest by the river and bloomi have eaten so many cherries i have lost count,
my fingers bundled up with their stems, my teeth aching.
with the fruit flesh still threaded around them, the seeds
look like little organs, little stone hearts:
i eat them all, every one. maybe they will hatch in my stomach
like bitter eggs, and a thousand hundred giant trees will
grow slowly though my bones and my bloodstream, maybe they will
burst up and out through my mouth. i will be a bleeding flowerpot,
a forest floor with shoes, an incubator. i will be the zombie
apocalypse of cherry trees. i will grow my wooden teeth through the roof.
my bad decisions will touch the sky. Real MenThere ain't no real men anymore. I remember when men looked like men. They had the hair on their chest and they weren't afraid of it. These days men wax like pansies and all the girlies go chasing after the hairless fairies. Ha! My girl, she likes me the way I am, she likes the way I never use any of that sissy deodorant and come home smelling manly.
***
I think Dwight might be leaving me for a man. He keeps going off on these rants about real men, and I've caught him looking at my vintage Playgirls a few times. And he keeps mentioning this bodybuilder guy Barry, who apparently is the epitome of a "real man." I don't think I'm masculine enough. I think I read somewhere that scrawny men like Dwane like masculine women.
***
I kept thinking this old geezer was gonna make a pass at me, the way he was staring. Then he tells me his wife started lifting weights. But chicks ain't supposed to do that! And then she stopped shaving her legs. I tell ya, the days of real women are long gone. Now th







Blood BrothersBrookie always holds my hand when we cross the street.  She's never given a reason for it, she just does it.  It's become this unspoken rule with us that whenever we cross the street together, she slips her hand in mine and I lace my fingers through hers and we walk hand-in-hand until we reach the other side and she drops her hand and we both wipe our palms on our jeans.  Brookie's a little scared of crossing the street.  Her poppa died in a car crash when we were six.  He was a pedestrian.  She's never gotten over it.
Brookie is my best friend going on sixteen years now, which is pretty impressive considering we're both sixteen.  We don't have some cute little story about how we were born in the same hospital on the same day or about how our mothers were best friends long before they were pregnant with us and somehow passed on that bond while we were still in utero.  No, Brookie and I met the same way ever the mechanisms of ocean waves When I was little, I loved sea foam.
Running forward to the shore, I would watch waves lap up at my feet and then recede, dragging the sand under my feet back with it. Sea foam would fringe the edges of these silky waves like lace, and I would grab at it, cup it in my hands. I would remember the origins of Aphrodite (born of sea foam, risen out of the ocean as the most beautiful goddess of all), and I would cradle it, hold it close to me, as if I could absorb it into my being.
By the time I brought the sea foam up to my face, it had leaked through my fingers, dissolved. Leaning down, I would cup it again and again and again, gathering fragile lace like a fine seamstress, hoping to maybe sew it onto the edges of myself, make myself some semblance of Aphrodite. Yet it crumbled, leaked through my fingers, leaving only the trace of salt behind.
Eventually I gave up on the sea foam. One cannot keep chasing after things that just barely exist.
 
***
My father told me never to plunge int a situation in which i do not survivei was a lake whipped
into a fever pitch, a localised
hurricane in the wake of something
greater. the world was ending
and i dreamt of you while it was
still turning, a mess of bodies and
kisses. i dreamt of you still
when it ended, a slow dance
of crooked smiles and offshore
eyes. you kept me close and if
i was ever a source of happiness
or preoccupation
or horror
for you, i could let go. coffee painti watch the coffee pot do cannonballs
through the air and bellyflop into the
kitchen wall-
glass licks the air in cartwheel spins
and coffee stains melt down the paint and boil
into the wood of the cutting board like
liquid sandpaper
and i think to myself-
this is better than a picasso. That Part of LondonLuke Sanderson was not a clever man; or at least, that's what he'd always been told. Of course, he had a different kind of wit about him – it takes a special sort of man to give directions through his city via off licenses, bars and police stations. He knew the funeral parlours in this part of town by name, and had seen twelve of his friends die; one for each year he'd spent in school. If he was rich, people would have likened his personality to Charles Bukowski, not that that was a compliment in any shape or form – he just like the smell of liquor on his own breath talked as much and as fast as he could to compensate for that.
Sixteen is too young for a man to have been drinking for five years now, but Camden was like that, especially in 1997. It was the part of London that didn't get glossed over as cosmopolitan; the part where 'rude' wasn't a fashion statement but a survival tactic, and if you carried a purse you were either walking hurriedly or running away from its pre :thumb479879671: fabled lifei.
she talks through her wrinkles,
'i have no desire for food', she says.
i take her plate to the kitchen
noticing how the beetroot shavings bled into the skin of the chicken and brown rice.
it was blood, skin, and bone,
and the rice was a million starlike cells floating between.
this reminds me of my anatomy textbook:
we've been learning what's beneath our skin,
we learned that all cells divide. some cells often don't stop dividing.
other cells divide and stop when they should...
but not my grandmother's.
starlike, they explode, they shatter, they consume
they divide.
ii.
i want to be mad at my grandmother's cells,
but what would that do?
i want to talk to my grandmother's cells,
i want to tell them they can be alive
and not kill her.
but first,
i have to catch the moon,
i have to visit hades and bargain with beautiful music,
i have to sell my voice for legs,
i have to sail the ocean blue in search of a good reason why cancer can't just be what it is.
iii.
this is not a fabled life
an VI    I.                 Today I am Vanilla tea
                               on balmy days when the air is still
                               fresh with the scent of cicadas
                               and mown grass baked in the sun
                               clippings stuck to your feet as you
to the boy who doesn't plan on leavinghow much of me can you swallow, love
before you finally purge?
I am a cartographer of bad
experiences; I can locate
precisely where I see our divergence
extraordinaire and I can tell you
before I have even met you
that the skin on my hands is too
dry for the softness you plan
on caressing me with.
let me tell you how this ends;
I will show you all the people
I have destroyed - flooded
to the best of my ignorance,
driven wild with jealousy,
had whipped with lust and left
smoking pot after four
promises stating otherwise.
let me tell you how this ends;
after showing you the blessed
catastrophe it is to be human,
you will destroy me. you may not mean much
but god, my heart
will make sure
you do.
I never miss people who leave.
I miss the ones I walk away from
with guilt tainting my forlorn
swagger so
how much of me will you swallow
before you finally purge, love?
a girl once called me her home
until she saw just how much
bigger I am on the inside
and it took her
a day and some minutes
to r IntensityCoffee: two creams, one sugar, one Sweet 'n' low. Pancakes: short stack. Side of bacon. Every Tuesday and Thursday. 9am.
The order never changed, though sometimes he would ask for extra syrup, but it was only on the mornings when he came in with unkempt hair and stubble on his high-boned, ruddy cheeks. Those were the rough mornings, the mornings when caloric intake was not on his mind. They weren't often: he was usually very meticulous. Only the occasional day would arise when you could tell the morning had not gone as it should have. My heart ached for him on these days.
He only ever came on Tuesday and Thursday: he didn't have to be in the office (he worked for a mortgage company) until 10am on those days, instead of the usual 9 o'clock. He took the extra hour to have a proper breakfast, even if there were days when he clearly could have spent more time on his morning hygiene practices rather than rushing to a diner. The vainer part of myself thought that he always showed up for me, :thumb480163770: White Pinewe speak in long blinks
and sleep apnea. i count fifteen whole seconds
before you breathe in. we find respirators in your apartment
and almost need them for catching our breath,
your weight still settling onto our chests
and off of your feet —
i don’t believe in heaven
but somewhere you’re standing
crooked, white pine. A Gravedigger's Apprentice: Ch 1Old Man Sutters
    Dragging the corpse of a full grown man was awkward.  Even in life, the beer-bloated Mr. Sutters hadn't been fond of moving, and apparently not even death could change his ways.  The cocooned body made a horrible slithering sound as the unwrapped feet scraped the frozen ground, and Horatio was reminded why he hated his job.  In warmer months, Sir would help him carry the corpse and the shovel, but alas; Sir’s arthritis thrived in cold weather, leaving him useless and Horatio dragging the fat body alone using his own, disproportionately slim weight.  The clouds that occasionally drifted over the half-moon didn’t help either.
            Sir was grinning at him, Horatio could see, Sir’s long yellow teeth glinting gold in the light cast from the lantern he held in his craggy hands. “Don’ hurry now, sonny, but the doc What You SeeThe land where I live is a peculiar place, though not as peculiar as some. The place where I live is full of children who play barefoot in fields, but know that it hurts to run through stalks of ripe corn. A place where the fields burn at least once a year, flaring allergies and settling a haze in the sky. Where dust drifts across the roads in place of the dry tumbleweeds seen in photos, and residents know to pull over and wait the clouds out.
I live in a place more beautiful than most, where the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, yet somehow is more breathtaking each day. When the sun sets on the horizon, the glow of the city fades and the stars litter the sky like the sprinkles on a child’s birthday cake. This is a place where we garden in the warm spring afternoon, only to watch petals of snow drift to the ground after tucking the children into bed that very same night.
This place where I live is much sweeter than most. Though we have no grand and majestic mountains t







Life is but a DreamWe are just unnourished frail bodies,
overfed with white lies and short-lived-euphorias.
Books filled with black letters,
etching lurid images into our utmost dreams.
Veering us from the big picture...
the one we fail to paint ourselves.
Our fists much too busy with fights,
that we are bound to lose.
Too occupied in line waiting,
for creativity to be let loose like a stray dog.
As if we will find home in this pursuit of happiness...
but we only enclose each other in small rooms
with nothing but old laptops.
Missing keys,
Oh!
How many times I've guessed which letter could it be...
Which letter could it be?
To free us from havoc-stricken-thoughts?
They come and go, unending like 24 hour subway stations.
There's no break for this lonely man,
heaving every breathe of stale air
into my overused lungs...
Living in confined walls of flesh
held up with brittle paper-mache bones.
Which day is it that I will burst out from this cage of a life?
And hover with the Gods found in carefully binded bo :thumb477229329: PhantomShe's always seen during
daylight -
yet her beauty is
nocturnal.
I, with shaking hands
[and nerves],
wrapped her round me
like a scarf,
though she still gives
me midnight chills
and spasms of pain
                        Her friends pick daisies and
                        pierce the stems with their
                        fingernails,
                        link them together like
                        married couples
                        who are pulled out of their
                        beds by love
[pushed back down
by alcohol and the
need to please].
She bent o Plan B - Three Little PigsKool-Aid,
Need help with wall.
Wolf :thumb433322397: A Letter to MozartI have a confession to make.
I think we should break up.
Don’t get me wrong, you are a collection of stars. Every time I hear that little night music I look up in the sky and I see your magnificent constellation shining ever-so-bright down upon me. I am so thankful for our little infinity, but I just can't see this working out.
Anyone with eyes could see what a distinguished composer you are. What with your sumptuous symphonies and celebratory sonatas, you are a heartthrob; oh, what I would give to have you tickle my ivories if even just once. But you see, I think I’ve had enough of your distasteful dissonance. All that’s left between us are aggravating augmentations and catastrophic cadenzas.
I wish that I could taste our mellifluous melodic memories one last time. Last I remember we shared such a charming concerto; now all I’m left with is a wasteful waltz. What happened to those fantastic fantasias we were always dreaming of?
We used to have such grace and su Blood and InkA trail of crimson drips onto a parchment so white,
intermingling with black ink on a cold autumns night.
So sweet a melancholy song, playing for all to see,
of the poor, broken, tormented soul that is me.
An artist of no consequence, my heart on my sleeve,
living with a love and a passion so few can conceive.
But with passion comes limitless sufferings and pain,
creating another line on the paper, another blood stain.
For as many scars as I have dreams I will forever live,
inspiration and courage to others is what I hope to give.
That every experience of this world has it's own worth,
to have love and sorrow before we become one with the earth.
A desire for life, a desire for death, such a bitter endless game,
but a desire for immortality burns brighter then the brightest flame.
Wishing for a part of me to not be confined to this mortal coil,
a moment etched in time, long after I am entombed in soil.
Pouring out my deepest passions and angst pent up inside,
perhaps I will live on in b asylumI have lines to cross
and skeletons to shatter,
because halted mercy
resides in these hands.
But I will not
show mercy with you.
Today is painted
with pinstripes and broken
nails, it is when
you decide I am
good enough to be
yours.
But I made myself worse,
when I was with you. :thumb484671398:

Mature Content

:thumb483038984: Hearing Half of a Conversation                    Forgive me for helping you understand
                    you’re not made of words alone.
                         —Roque Dalton; Clandestine Poems
I first learned how to build a house of playing cards in an adolescent psychiatric unit in suburban Chicago. A roommate taught me a trick, a mindset really, to have while placing the cards themselves— that a house of cards is always stacked against itself to stand. My trial-and-error attempts led to a lengthy row of playing cards







FlyWith the covers pulled over my head, my room darker than the city night and the steady breath of my sister in the bed below me, I would put my hands together, close my eyes, and pray. I’m not sure who I was praying to. I knew God then, I suppose. Each night asking for the same thing. Never receiving, but I’d never stop. I couldn’t sleep unless I prayed. Dear Lord, I thank you for such a nice day. Please let us all have good dreams tonight and a good day tomorrow. And please, please, please let me have the power to fly. In Jesus name I pray, amen. I thought these words each night, and each morning I’d wake from my nightmares to find that I, in fact, could not fly. I was always disappointed.
“Jezebel, what are you thinking about?”
“Flying.”
There is laughter. “Flying is for the birds, dear.”
“Then I’d like to be a bird.”
“And what would you do as a bird? You couldn’t speak, or walk.”
“Bu obsession
your shadow and I have begun
to argue about sharing space Of Innocence and Greyscale DreamsI can hear the air con engine above everything else. Its voice living louder than my professor's who is three feet away from me in this tiny plot of 23 students. If I let myself drift I can hear the video documentary playing in the next room. It plays like an old radio and images flicker in my mind in black and white. Like in a 50s era flashback, I can see bored students in starched shirts and pressed dresses, staring without seeing at the antique light box. Cartoons weren't mindless enough yet to capture anyone above one. They dreamt of other things. They dreamt of running through grimy city streets with kites and strung-together old cans. They dreamt of the noise of their laughter with the click-clack of shoes against pavement. Candy was the currency and kids could be cruel without actually causing any harm. Damage was a thing that could be fixed and light shows were all it took to feel eternity.
They were innocent and innocence is in not knowing that the world can hurt you. No one h HateI really hate the way she lies. She says she’ll listen, but she won’t. She promises she’ll be there, but she isn’t. She tells me it wasn’t her, but it was. I don’t hate her you know. I just hate everything she is, everything she does. Her smug smile. Her mud brown hair. Her green eyes with a drop of evil. The way she knows how to hurt me. The way she can make me cry. The way she likes it. She knows me too well. She knows how to hurt me. Knowledge is power and power corrupts. She’s the most corrupt person I know.
But I can’t hate her; not entirely. After all, hating yourself isn’t healthy. On the Unsuitability of Fairytales for AdultsMy dear Lucy,
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be
your affectionate Godfather,
C.S. Lewis
– Dedication of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Some time ago I wrote an open letter on the supposed unsuitability of fairytales for children, criticizing the notion that children should be sheltered from fairytales. Another view, even more prevalent, is that fairytales are an exclusively children's literature, the rightful Every MirrorFandom: Doctor Who
A thin pane of glass separates them, the girl and the man. No words pass between them; they simply stare at each other, contempt on one side, wrath on the other. It seems like an eternity to her before he spins on his heel and walks away, leaving her alone on her side of the glass. She will soon discover that in reality, eternity is so much longer.
. _ . _ . _ . _ .
She has all the time in the universe, and she sees so many things, but this is what she dreads: the step of a soft shoe, the swish of heavy cloth, then he appears. Anger had filled her the first time it happened. She had thought she’d be alone forever, forgotten in her caricature of a real world. Then he returned. Gloating, no doubt, about his sneaky little trick, and his handy disposal of my mother and father and brother. My family. She glared her hatred at him until he left.
But, he continues to return to her, once a year, every year. He doesn't always look the same. He's in b Why Peter is not a poet.Cole is eleven.  Age matters in October, when twelve is the only difference between the haunted hayride and the shelled corn sandbox.  Age matters when a boy says the word "shit" in school (and Cole does).  But age doesn't matter when the same boy has both sneakers dangling over the edge of a 250-foot grain silo, his hands sweaty on the rungs, the state of Nebraska breathing vacant and honeyed and infinite below him.  For the first time in his life, Cole can't be quantified by the candles on his last birthday cake.  Cole is young, but today, he is worth saving.  Three facts about Cole:
1. His eyebrows are the most expressive arches his body has to offer.
2. He's so terrified that his very expressive eyebrows are threatening to take up permanent residence in his hairline.
3. He does not have suicidal tendencies, and later understands--for the sake of his mother's heart and Officer Roy's bladder control--that his strategies for Don't Look Under the BedThe only rule we had when we were children was to never look under the bed.
Not just any bed, but the bed of our mother. She hid something down beneath the bed that we weren't meant to see. Some great secret protected by the boogeyman, she would tell us. "If you get on your hands and knees and try to look... he'll jump out! And grab you!" After the threat was made, she pounced on either myself or my brother, laughing and tickling until we were nothing but a pile of small giggles on the floor.
We took the words seriously, however. Running into the room to awaken our parents on holidays like birthdays or Christmas, or Thanksgiving, any of them and never once did we look under the bed. Sometimes we hesitated, sometimes we thought there would be a hand reaching out to grab us if we weren't fast enough. The ruffles of the bed covered the foot of the bed, so logically as the little kids we were, jumping at the foot of the bed was safest. It's what we always did, to get onto the bed and avoid Bully You're ugly.
You're stupid.
You'll never amount to anything.
No one will ever like you.
If you think he'll stay, you're mistaken.
You have no friends.
People hate you.
You are a freak.
You have no place here.
You are nothing more than a coward who
is too afraid to step outside half the time.
Your face is like something from a horror movie.
No one will ever truly fall in love with you.
Guys want girls that are beautiful and face it,
you are considered everything but that.
Hide behind your hair dye because you want to
feign like you don't care.
But inside the cruel eyes of others burn holes into
your soul.
You will never amount to anything.
The only thing you will ever be good for
is cleaning up dog shit.
You will never be good enough.
Why bother even dreaming?
How can you consider the possibility of love
when everything you do, the way you look, walk,
talk, move, think, can only ever be seen as
ugly.
Not only is the outside hideous;
the inside is no better.
Why do you think you've CandaceI have named the lump
in my throat Candace;
and she is what her name means-
penitent and contrite,
remorseful for every word that slips
past her because they all have
come out misshapen and wrong. Your Blind Date with a ZombiePreparing for Your Blind Dinner-Date with a Zombie
The singles dating scene is fraught with perils. None more so than the blind date. But what to do when that blind date turns out to be a little bit more of a surprise than you were expecting? No need to fret. With this simple guide you will be well-prepared for the most complicated of evenings: The Blind Date with a Zombie.
1. Zombies have feelings, too. Don't be put off by the initial appearance of your zombie date. Your zombie friend has led a difficult life, followed by a far more difficult death and a trying readjustment period. First impressions are all so important. Refrain from making disparaging statements about bloody orifices, waxen eyes, lost appendages, or gaping swaths of missing flesh. Instead, keep in mind that we are all unique individuals with our own distinctive styles of dress and personal appearance. Be complimentary and remember that one person's lack of limbs may be another person's dashing new look. Try these hel