poetry
I don’t need a gun
I need the dark thick pit
curling around my stomach
to bloom into sweet lilies
I don’t need a gun
I need the stitches you’ve sewn
across your eyes to melt
under the heat of children’s blood
I don’t need a gun
I need the weeping
the wet hollowed wailing
to stop
medusa, the patron saint of not giving a fuck.
st. medusa, digital collage with poem, 2023
where do you go when there’s nowhere to go?
when the wind comes
& we’re laughing–
like the creatures
we can’t name in the woods
sharp gasps & cackles
breaking against bark.
we summoned the wind &
it carries us
it calls to our souls
to slither into the dark
we made the wind
so that it could unmake us.
let’s encase ourselves
like bugskin
flesh against flesh
until we forget
what blood is
12:18 - 53rd street - MoMA
what does it mean to be seen but not SEEN? maybe its the difference between observation & objectification? photographs are about seeing yes, but they’re also a way of erasing the viewer or the maker of the photographer. they’re like windows with one way glass. we can see in but they can’t see out. in fact, they don’t even know we’re looking at them. I guess that’s pure voyeurism.
sometimes they do know I suppose. it’s a different kind of feeling. more about being on display for a purpose. if you can even call it being on display at all.
everything becomes a performance OR it already was one.
to be seen
an eye immobilized
against grey. a
mystery–
that’s solving itself
& never revealing
its answers.
here & disappearing
a woman is an old house, 2023
a woman is an old house
ask her why
she searches
for dissolution
I was contacted by a fashion graduate student a few months ago to use a poem I wrote as part of my poem a day project in a fashion film she was making. very interesting to see (& hear) poetry being used in this way.
still from reincarnation (2023)
the project was featured in l’officiel italia magazine, you can watch it here.
added to the poetry hotline.
she wanted to disappear
but not in the sense of seeking
death – instead like the last
rays of hot yellow sun slipping
into the pacific knowing
the water can’t touch them
call: +1.310.571.8284
now live: poetry hotline
an audio poetry project. call in for a short poem updated monthly.
laying awake in the early morning grateful for the choices I’ve made.
breathing in the ash of 34000 dead
& the soot tastes like selfishness
hot & salt-tinged the way
the scent of death lingers
in the cloudline—
a faint grey smoke.
fires burning through the night
like train engines & still
not enough flame
for each of us—
pleading for warmth
we find instead refrigerator trucks
their jaws agape like flytraps
long steel throats opening—
waiting for prey.
earlier this week I learned that los angeles has temporarily suspended the air quality regulations that restrict the number of cremations that can happen in a day. there are so many dead from covid-19 mortuaries have not been able to keep up. the image of the air around us full of the ash of the dead has haunted me this week, so I wrote a poem about it.
my poem-a-month newsletter went out last week. since the beginning of the climate fires here on the west coast I’ve been trying to write a poem about the weird light, the gritty air, & the scent of doom. mostly I’ve failed. I sent my latest attempt out in the newsletter. read it here & subscribe to get a poem & a poetic exercise in your inbox each month.
untitled fire poem
I want to write a poem about the fires
about the ash floating in the air
like the scent of summer jasmine.
the smokers teeth sky pressing low—
so much lower than I remember.
I want to write a poem about the burn
pressed into my eyes the rough sleeps
the feeling of fine sand in my throat.
I want to write it but the flames—
are never quite far enough away.
this month’s poem-a-month newsletter was a bit late due to technical difficulties, but has gone out now. have been thinking about the stories we tell ourselves in order to protect us from having to face tough realities, especially the realities of having intersecting types of privilege in america.
morning in america
& another layer of ash
has settled over the streets
whispering to us as dawn
claws her way up.
we nod awake, arms tired
from putting ourselves out front
our houses silent but the memory
of fire lingers in our lungs.
still the ash keeps falling,
lace-like on our eyelashes
crystals for us to brush—
we never care to learn
where the burning is from.
yesterday’s activity for national poetry month? write a day long poem, starting at 9 am & adding one line an hour until 8 pm. this is what I came up with.
To refrain from neglecting my poet muscles I’ve just now today begun the “POEM-A-MONTH club”! This is a free monthly mini email containing a poem from me & some ideas to get you making your very own little poems! The first issue is going out 13 April, so subscribe ASAP.
