Stone Circle
why does a pale formerly blond
shovel-toothed woman search
for her native blood
because it calls
from the ground
why does a pale formerly blond
shovel-toothed woman search
for her native blood
because it calls
from the ground
Your arm anchors my body in this moment –
cool cotton sheets twist around our ankles,
caramel beer kisses loiter on my lips,
mingled sweat trickles down my chest
while the ceiling fan sings its lullaby.
You slumber,
and I pray I won’t need you.
I like how messy these pictures cut crooked, brown tape holding in place on gray paper— the inside of frame turned around, edges of photos slanted carelessly cut hung imbalanced to each other in defiance of your neverending misuse of grammar. they are not hung perfect.
She Turned from the Mirror and
internalized the squiggles
she’d seen on her face—
around and around
her eyes they looped
and etched thin roads
going to and from
her mouth.
Thinking she’d have better luck
with her body
she turned back to mirror
saw her bony waist
and tugged at her pants
that were falling down
hilariously
like a Charlie Chaplin skit—
her naval his little round
mustache her breasts his eyes
her thick shoulders the brim
of his old dusty hat.
She saw once again her head—
lips too big anguish-blue eyes
irregular blob of nose
hard angles of age—
squeezed her lids shut
until all that remained of her head
was a cue ball with the number
thirteen firmly centered.
Thumbs tucked
into her empty belt loops
head wobbling precariously
and spinning on the axis
of her brittle neck
she turned and stuck out her chest
pretending dignity.
~inspired by paper collage by Lorette C. Luzajic
My mother taught me
two wrongs don’t make a right
though often enough
two rights
make another
and my mother said
turning the other cheek meant
you were stronger than
stooping low
and I’ve never been the one to follow
“Don’t go to bed angry”
I’d never sleep
but if I wake up angry
I let the sun burn it away
and I wish I could teach the world
that since we’re always spinning
we always have another right
but I guess not everyone had a mother like mine.
Lord, don’t let me think I can play
with fire
and not be burned
to ash
no concession, like
the story’s good
but, you know, I close my eyes
when it gets steamy
men,
you take those images straight to bed with you
don’t play
gauge out the eye
to keep heart-pure
that’s what it may feel like
to cancel your Netflix
not pretending like
the porn ingested
doesn’t cut out the heart
of holiness
call it what it is
and
My Bride, I’m sorry
you’re my standard
my baseline beauty
the apex of creation
God wasn’t playing when he made you
there is the image of one woman
I want playing in my head the next 80 years
it’s you
Another Series of Found Poems: Part 1
Homocide: every nation
made god’s of their own.
Suckers stare.
Some punk claimin’;
I am the way and the truth and the life,
King of my jungle,
he who believes in me will live,
I am the resurrection, the psychopath,
the gangster, the way into the most
Holy Place.
What world do you live in when my shotgun scatters?
Death,
by this arrangement the Holy Spirit was showing,
it just don’t matter,
you ain’t in my set.
You don’t know me, O Lord,
for my people
I just put my fist
in the words of his mouth,
Guess my religion.
I love watching Indiana Jones casually brush
the cobwebs off beliefs of mystical powers.
It seems odd looking back to 17th century England,
when belief in mystical powers was standard medicine.
Doctors prescribed powdered
Egyptian embalmed mummies
to treat dozens of aliments.
The famous barber surgeon Ambrose Paré
spoke strongly against claims of efficacy
as did other luminaries of the time.
Some religious groups
argued that such consumption was cannibalism
no better than the savages in the Americas.
These same groups vilified Catholics
for performing transubstantiation,
thereby dinking the actual blood
and eating the flesh of Jesus Crist.
Against the Holy Roman Catholic Church,
opposition to this practice was futile.
Use of powdered mummy crawled to an end,
abandoned in the early 1800’s.
Other myths embraced by that era have been drubbed out.
Drinking the blood of a fresh dead, disease free,
young man, killed by accident or execution,
was thought to give strength to the aging.
Many hangmen became wealthy.
Formulas for the harvesting the flesh
of the recently hung
were included in standard medical texts.
So, can we look on these times
with bemused intellectual superiority?
Are we safe in the knowledge that this barbarism
does not occur in the civilized world?
As you read this it is very likely that somewhere
in the world, a kidney, or liver, or heart, or all organs
are being harvested without the donor’s permission.
Sold on the black market and transplanted, most likely,
into someone wealthy, possibly old, and maybe too sick
to get on the list. Someone, most likely,
subjected to the worst medical care money can buy.
Someone who will, most likely,
be dead in a month or two,
still harboring the violently consumed organ.
