them eating by the spoons
when we ate with spoons,
i saw them, my lovers, them eating by the spoonswhen we ate with spoons,i saw them, my lovers,
PERSONAL HISTORY
How do you say ‘bitch’ in French? (I am referring to myself.)
How do you say 'bloated’? A: 'Gonflé.’
I do not come from Québec.
In New York, in January, when
it snows, the snow falls in trembles
as if from a startled mouth.
There are worry lines across my mouth.
I want you to see them! See them. Watch them.
Watch me go blind like a play.
You can call me 'genius’ and 'beautiful’ anytime you’d like.
Just know that it will never be true: 'gonflé.’
1
His fists awake like a town
I’d waited to believe in
2
In his bed, chocolate
wreathed my mouth –
I spoke to him I
was all around whispers
3
Next night
I slept on the carpet he
stood in the doorway
he stood in the doorway I slept
on the carpet
When I awoke, bruises
on the carpet, he
was in the doorway
like a father’s worn coat
4
Next night (again)
I saw her.
It was still
jealousy wrapped around
me like her hair
around his shoulders he
refused to look at me
Giants
a prompt series
1. The withering North wind
2. Houses couldn’t hold us
3. Fall of the island
4. The dozen beauties
5. Again: high school football season
6. Spiritual contemplation
7. Lords
8. Gas station revivals
9. Approaching harvest
10. New moon’s daughter
Lying on my side you were half awake and your face was tired and crumpled.
If I had a camera I’d snap you now cos there’s beauty in every stumble.
We are out of practice, we’re out of sight.
On the edge of nobody’s empire.
If we live by books and we live by hope,
does that make us targets for gunfire?
I.
I screamed, loudly,
somebody solve my hunger.
Put me to bed like tinned fish,
I am
quaking like slivers
of green thumb: this person
could not be me.
II.
In a small room I ate
on a bloody mattress, sat,
the small bits of you.
Inside,
with the heater on,
we were o.k.
The heater broke inside of us.
III.
In the rain we sang
the broken songs
I’d written for you
sitting cross-legged in a stream
too small for me to sit in
comfortably.
IV.
I sat cross-legged.
I hated my legs.
HOW POSTMODERNISM NEGATIVELY IMPACTS [MY] EATING HABITS
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2008/03/modern-postmodern-food/ lol
HOW POSTMODERNISM NEGATIVELY IMPACTS [MY] EATING HABITS
Your white bone in my bed – this
the magical realism I’d searched for;
I loved you even with my dirty teeth.
You used to sing me songs in the nighttime,
peeled away the skin from the rock
of my knee. Even when we saw my blood
we did not speak, for fear of trembling up
the silence that seemed fragile as pinecone.
For two years I forgot about the bruises
you left on my chest. Even when across
the white wall of a church in a land far
too away I saw your name written
like a long strand of black hair. The letters
identical to those of your name was only
the funniest coincidence. I did not laugh.
We laughed at times in my bed, peals
of our laughter falling away from us
like the pale breasts I did not have.
I did not have pale skin and even for you
I could not change this. Yet still you held
my body close to yours as if, like the dreams
you never had, I would disappear. In the mornings
I asked you the same question, the same question
I asked every boy who lay in your place, what
is it you dreamt of, and in the mornings you
had the same response: you did not dream.
Then you told me it was no longer morning,
it was softened afternoon, and you fell away.