They’ll Say it Was Postpartum Depression

She isn’t 2 yet.
She’s in her stroller
And we are on the sidewalk
In the humid air
In a country where I am all alone,
Except for her.

Her fat little fingers are in my hair
And it’s only because she’s a baby,
But I am so good at pretending
And so I imagine she’s feeling my pain,
My turmoil,
My heartache.

I am so fucking selfish
That I project my adult conflict
On my child.
But I’ve never felt so weak
And I need someone to comfort me,
And for someone to understand
So, so desperately.

I’m not 20 yet.
I’m kneeling in front of her stroller
On the sidewalk
In the humid air
Of a country I shouldn’t have followed him to.
My head is in her lap
And it’s all I can do not to sob
While I choke out the same words to her
Again and again and again,
Busy city sounds in the background.

“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Cheers

you wanted to be me
so you drunk
because you said
that’s what you think
I do to feel better

so you pulled down your white,
soft throat
hard sips of rum
down like punches
down like razor blades
down while you were alone
seated at a sad cafe
with people passing near to you

I get drunk to meet gods
I do it when I see your perfect body
swinging on me
I drink rum when I need
to toast to victory
or to a friend
and your successes

so you drunk to be like me
but that sips where hard to swallow
and you cried them all out
as a poisonous rain

Of My Wounds, There Are Many

Snapshot to blood and bone,
there’s a knife in my head,
but my migraine was two years in the making,
stitched to the side of my skull
like the arrow tip lodged behind my eye,
buried in my brain like the bruises
of last night’s thunder storm,
my teeth ripped from my mouth,
shoved down my throat
like how the sky pushes out rain.

Of my wounds, there are many:
see the delicate stigmata cut into my hands and feet,
the gashes dug into my thighs, the tally-mark slashes on my wrists;
I am the punctured female, the pincushion of hysteria,
a traumatized sack of feminine injury,
the flesh of my flesh, the scar of my scar,
I’m a collection of lesions and lacerations,
a patchwork of black and blue contusions
worn out from where you scrubbed me raw,
beat me till I seeped red like rare, woman steak.

Look to me on this table as I bleed and break,
a toy of operation, a surgical muse to the amputation
of bodily consciousness: hear me when I say I feel nothing,
that with each incision and penetration, I am dead,
gone from this world of torment and torture,
a disappearance, an acceptance to oblivion,
to the land where I can forget the flower,
the blossom of what I saw lies underneath.

Yes, use my soon-to-be-corpse as a nametag,
as a placard to the other girls who are destined to bleed;
I am closing my eyes to your knives now,
deafening myself to the fractures you inflict;
I will cease to be your canvas of mutilation,
Only a head, a torso, a heart,
best to photograph me while in transition;
it’s the last chance you’ll have
to locate my soul.

Aces & Eights

For Neil

I learned a lesson
from Wild Bill:

Never tolerate a door
to your rear.

Distrust all windows.
If there are mirrors

use them as extra eyes.
I practice these things.

I worry that my desk
exposes my back

to the Kennedy Towers.
I know my death

will not be that
personal,

but when the flash
burns me

I hope I’ll be holding
Bill’s last hand.

Bukowski University For Sissies

All these small press poets complaining
that Bukowski doesn’t get taught

at the universities—are they serious?
I’ve never attended a school

where Bukowski wasn’t taught
and all my professors liked him

and when I teach him now
one of my colleagues will say

“Hey, you’re teaching Bukowski,”
then congratulate me on my excellent taste

but my students, especially the guys,
complain that Bukowski is boring and tame

then they go back to writing their own stories
where someone always gets shot in the head,

usually on the first page.

The Truck Stop Café

crank

cabin fever

me and the old lady
in our cabin, chillin
livin off the grid
livin off solar panels
and psychedelic drugs
roastin meat and
makin sweet love.

knock knock knock.
i freeze

and turn to her in disbelief;
we live in the woods
south of nowhere
in a damn cabin
who could that be?

she huffs, shrugs
the knocking
intensifies
so i go
naked
to open it
(we’re nudists)

it’s a grizzly
ahhhh!
i freeze

but he’s wearing
a suit, cradling
a briefcase
in his paws
what
the fuck

he asks me
if i’m interested
in being mauled
i ask him
how can you talk
you’re a bear right
and then he mauls us

and then i wake up
and it’s just me,
my bed,
and my beloved
boner.

Slugs

My heart was your bell jar

You left it smeared with
Shit and blood
Crawling with slugs

Crying for you is like
Being pissed in the face
By a drunken cop

You’re the filth on my skin
The rot in my veins

I want someone else
to hate and despise you for me
I feel dirty enough
For loving you

The Track