it was a small fight

it was a small fight

bronze dragonfly
o, how you broke my heart.
half drowned
broken wings
you washed ashore
a tangled wreckage
beside my sandy legs
I tried to save you
uncrinkled your wings
and gently dried
the clear taupe
lake water off.
you flittered,
tried your best
to make due
with the one
broken wing
and missing leg,
fumbled along my palm
clung tightly, staring into
my eyes with your
orbs like polished

tigers eye.
you knew I was there
to help.
I pleaded with your small
delicate frame to fight on
take flight! you listened
looked at me when I spoke,
you're a fighter jet, I said,
you cocked your head like a
loaded gun,
the fight was on.
hours went by, you tried and tried,
but when I packed to leave that
crystal lake shore
still you refused to soar
and I tried to peel you from my palm
tighter, tighter, you gripped on.
I kept you cupped in my hands
carefully made my way home
and as I drove you died
fixed, you gripped, you kissed my palm.

*important update*

impress, my second full length collection, will be published by PHP (Punk Hostage Press) this year! Look out for new updates when the time comes regarding official release information if you'd like to get your hands on a copy, thanks. Cv.

this sway

this sway

there is a mysterious something

lurking in

even the deepest darkest abyss

of every nothing,

and every something craves to endeavor

the mystique of that illusive nothingness.

we loan and we lend

hands and hearts and wombs

we rent rooms, but we are alone.

divided by ventricular wall spaces.

when the truth seems to say

there is no nothingness just a mad loop

of something, one after another

lightness bursting/darkness vacuuming.

maybe there is nothing to create meaning

but it is full

beyond all of our loneliness

is this universe

this sway.

pressed

pressed




1.

far, far away/

rooflines.

the language of/

love and fear/

hands folding/

linen inside…



egyptian earth…

indigo pigment/the trade off/was/

moving over gold bar oasis/hourglass spent…



teal paint curls/

another world/another war/

painted over…



sunny side up/

or over easy?



raspberry gelato/her tongue/tying/
weeping willow/rope swinging/
copper country fields/

chestnut/the hair of the first love/

fingertips grazing fingertips/pear sugar dissolving…

iced green grapes/crystallized…



sea grass hope chest/
shades of storm grey...



the grind/vertical climb/espresso beans/

london fog/latte foam/

scarlet kissed rim/

arrival/departure/

by train/plane…



short days and long shadows/

tears and laughter/

old souls and cobbled stones...



striped feathers/

oak brown over birch white....


boiling tomato hill/

violet plums/



2.



goldenrod bramble/

sunday spice market/picketed fence...

pumpkin fields over frosted mud/

bowls of hard candy/honour system/

leaded stained glass…

old doors applauding/

the pitter patter of future monsters/

the yolk moon over seed black/fertile/infertile/

the constellations made of your best utensils/

the dream/the wake/the insomnia/

the repetition…



the pressed wildflowers/slain/contain/

the books we fear/we love/we are/will be

what’s behind us here…

how the going get gone

how the going get gone

you're hell bent
on striking the last blow.
each severance, each partition, is
a line break begged for.

just words and words and words. 
a swarm of mint moths eating the amber wool.

I see you clearly
there you are, under the warm warp
of summered lake skin.

you're seducing me to swim with you, when you cannot swim.
'come in' you say, 'it's not as cold once you get used to it.'

you push me under.
I bob up, I am pulled out like a paper boat to the middle.

the writing's on my back.
you cannot see where I went to or what's being said there.

woman without a landscape

woman without a landscape


1.
she walks barefoot in the garden
never minding the sharp edged leaves
occasionally they cut her toes, jamming her
like the razor sharp tongues and boulder fists of cruel men
who scarred her.

it startles her, the way old pain does
she remembers it well, every hurt that tamed her irises
hits her like a thousand paper cuts
to her fragile vellum skin.

those blades of grass on the backs of her calves
whooping her like her drunken father with his leather belt.



2.
she takes great care here in playing pretend
she's become something
not quite a human being now; exactly else.

she lives with the glow of tiki lamp light
and kerosene oil perfumes her feather white hair
so does the jasmine

and the dirty piles of carrots
reeking of her own sure death,
she bends over, wildly pulling them

like a doctor tugging a breach baby
from a birth canal,
the pressure of the shoulders
and waiting on that scream she notes-
'it all was so rushed', she pushed too soon
and the silence was so startling

that her heart nearly sank when they smiled
in that consoling sort of way that she recognized right away
as being far too calm to sustain new life.

she looked down,
confronted with blue eyes, two sky blue skies

alive, yes, not a sound, just tracing the world staring it down
like he knew even then how criminal it had been to his mother all along.


3.
and the fish bowl gasp was heard even down the hallway from all the nurses
and the doctor too, calmly tucking his grief pamphlet back into his pants pocket.
they wrapped him; never one sound came from that child
it must have been months before he let out a sound, she recalled.

it is in that silence reclaimed, that she remembers the other children she lost,
as she pricks her thumb,

a heavy clot of red gel reminds her of her hand between her thighs cradling small deaths
fainting in that long emergency hall, too far to walk the yards that surely come and come
without wait.



4.
her quietness craved silence.


5.
years came and went,
she wetted the lettuce so carefully, each leaf by hand with a damp towel.
amnesia set in like a misty spider web creating an impression
of her former faces as she walked through it, it became a nylon mask she tore away.


6.
she forgot her age again.
no matter, it’ll come to her later on, with the epiphany of
what day of the week it is.

she sprinkled the heartier plants from a watering can
drops fell like small clear grains, amounting, and slipping.
not a bruise

not a bent stem nothing to disturb
the proud rosettes of frilly green,
she drops the can, panic sets, it’s the last day of kindergarten she finally remembers him where she left him,

time to get the boy ready, big day, he’ll be performing in the gym
'each of us is a flower growing in life’s garden',
she whistles the song as she fades,
and the landscape becomes more and more obscure.

once upon a time ago

once upon a time ago

maybe they were heirlooms
once upon a time ago
half buried now
china fragments
broken chains
a rusted skeleton key
old lace from a doll's dress
custard white,
it strikes out under
the mustard coloured
dry straw bramble.
his tiny peach hands
 distorted blur under
lemon white
the glow of animate
life.
his, the digits of newness
still, over worthless relics
broken ever storyless.
he carefully cleans and collects
them from around the yard,
gives them some meaning
as the metal of his eye sparks
in reflection of all those jagged
misshapes he carefully stows
away tucking them into his wooden box.
he wants you to know, the meaning
he’s found


treasure.

he whispers:
'I have treasure'.

feast of figs

feast of figs

ravens are rare here
I find when I fumble stumble across one
should I be so lucky
I fall onto my knees searching for
the stars, corvus!

I think of the greeks and babylonians
the hydras tail, the raven and adad
the story of apollo's raven
and the feast of figs,
the punishment
of being stuck in the sky, thirsty for all time.
the cost was high, I recoil.

I immediately search for headstones
marble carved eyes
cemeteries
that’s where the stars
live these days
onyx forms
perched and crooning over
named and muted pale stones
under storms of rusty steel wool.