Bones, Drugs, and Harmony
Table of Contents Bones Chase Don’t Believe the Hype I National Anthem Mangeled Don’t Believe the Hype II Drugs The Art of Eating I work the Cadence of the Electric Lady Bug Breasts and Solitude Lady Jupiter The Smoking Rectangular Kinswoman If Mona Lisa Were a Black Womanw The Feminine, Divine The Hungry Woman
12 14 16 17 18 22 34 35 36 38 40 42 44
Harmony Don’t Believe the Hype III Unlike The New York Minute Don’t Believe the Hype IV Placement The Man With a Forest for Eyes
48 49 50 54 56 59
For Mom —
You are my moon, the stars, and the sun.
Bones
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Chase This woman. This want. This wreck. This fray. This/crease/arching/grin. Bitter teeth inside a mouth on a face—this trial, mother, base. This is how I knew: beets for eyes, palms like ice, fissures nurturing that rock one puff one blow. Overwrought body. Foul body. Soul embodied by mama and her tainted womb in flight, chasing her dragon back to day one when she bent over the knee and took that sorry touch and shoving pipe— like one / two / many hits of that coca ice. That desiccation. That want. That fray. That temptation. That woman dwelled in temptation. That aftermath dwelled in the woman. That child dwelled in the aftermath.
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Don’t Believe the Hype I The bitch swallowed you whole. Spit you out. Ate you again. Regurgitated you back to society, bare and unreal, just like day one. Day one: you were born with a growl, predisposed to stealth and blow because of the city on your birth certificate—Los Angeles, California. You joke that your parents substituted your baby formula with vodka, fed you sugar-coated double stacks instead of candy, handed you dicks and said they were lollipops, and took away your baby booties and replaced them with six-inch heels worn by the porn stars and tramps. You praise the ill livers and nose bleeds leaking out of your wrists and pores. You’re labeled the right kind of whore—dressed in leather, dressed in black. Dressed like LA: knee-highs, no bra, and mesh. Your heart is the city. LA veins. LA trains. LA trains being run through your veins. At the age of fifteen, you had your first taste of an overdose—like foaming at the mouth, like lying on the bedroom floor, shaking uncontrollably and vomiting up stomach bile and saliva until you passed out into oblivion. Los Angeles did it to you. Made you swallow those pills, made you spend the next day at school hovering over the bathroom toilet, sick but terrified of ending up in the hospital. Your good friend Layla held you that day.
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“How many did you take?” Layla said. “Fifteen.” “Shit. What the fuck were you thinking?”
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National Anthem between the knuckle, around the bone a forever loop the fist connects to wrist a purple blue eyeshadowed face wears the swollen lip fashionably they picnic after the breakdown below the aborted sky teary-eyes cradling the syllables of optimism like their dead baby
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Mangled He was the intricate black shape of misbehavior. Born with nerves that no longer touch but instead simmer. He ticks he clicks he booms and scoops cognition with a swoop so swift no one could pinpoint the location of the cranial hemorrhage. Glued to the scrap metal vehicle, he made them dye— the seats the color of nigger flesh oozing the secrete of an Iota Phi Theta Brown God. That night— feelings weren’t cordial. His eyes wide shut to the wreck.
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Don’t Believe the Hype II You didn’t know what you were thinking—didn’t give a single fuck about thinking. You didn’t give a fuck about dying, liver damage, or the fact that Layla was praying over your body. A fuck was never given. So you threw up for seven years straight, constantly choosing ulcers over food, diet pills over vitamins, and bulimia over health. Anorexia became you. The streets made you. You walked South Central’s unlit corridors halfclothed, fully loaded, and ready to die. You kissed her. Snorted this. Cut deeper. Starved for weeks. Threw up blood. Blacked out. Went to school hammered and still passed all of your classes. Remained an A student, while abusing every narcotic in the book. You ended up hospitalized. Woke up hospitalized. Lived hospitalized. Remember that day he held the gun up to your head and smiled? Or that night you went to a Compton house party and ended up partaking in a drive-by? Think back to that day in high school—the one where you and Maya stood in the bathroom mirrors, searching for imperfections. “I am so fuckinnng fat,” Maya said. “You can totally see the apple I just ate.”
That’s when you realized you were the product of LA—it’s filthy streets, its sex sells so you might as
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well sell yourself mentality, its nightlife and perverted men that touched and probed and bought you. You let them buy you.
Drugs
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The Art of Eating “Welcome back, Princess. How was your two-day trip to salvation?” Monotony resides in the crevices of her face, so she holds her head down, letting the raindrops from the clouds of her eyes drench the streets of her jeans. “Good and bad, Queen. Salvation was good and bad.” I understand what she means. Good because it felt good to take a break from the taste of stomach bile and acid but bad because now she sits stagnant in a state of self-pity and emptiness. I inquire: “What do you get out of it? I mean, are all the health complications really worth that temporary moment of happiness? There’s got to be something more, my little Princess.” Her head rises like dust around gyrating feet. A pair of hazels shoot me a you know what I get out of it glare, so I hold my tongue and refrain from further speech.
I am intrigued by Princess’ idea of control. A bite of food and sip of water never seemed so precious to a person. Try to take it from her and you’re bound to get hurt. I stopped trying to help years ago. I used to
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comfort her when she felt the urges. I tried to offer her help when she couldn’t control the urges. Eventually I got tired of trying to help and decided to really help. “It’s our secret, right?” she says, head bowed down as she sits gracefully in prayer position. Her jeans hang perfectly off her jagged hip bones.
“Is what our secret? The fact that you can’t keep a meal down?” “Yea,” she whimpers. “Of course it’s our secret. We both thrive off secrecy. We need each other.” I give her a slight grin, unsure if she bought my lie or not. Princess is unaware that people know. Stains on the porcelain, bruises on her knuckles—the signs are more than evident, but I dare not tell her that. “Please hold me,” she says. “Come,” I reply, because I truly, honestly care. She knows that.
Tonight her hair is tied back, pulled perfectly away from her oval face, like when she and I were chil-
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dren. Back then, our favorite game was jump rope. We would tie one end of the rope to the staircase and take turns turning. She’d always lose. Me, the winner. I was perfect at jumping rope. She was perfect at keeping secrets. Princess and I were two peas in a pod, sisters, almost one. Now, we’re distant, separated by the fine line of good and bad love. I feel horrible, because she spends day and night worried and cut up. She cuts herself. Deep saw-like fissures engrave the landscapes of her thighs, her feet, her private area, breasts, her stomach, and oh god, her arms—have you seen her arms? You have to see her arms. Keloids and blood and regurgitation—the story of her life. I feel sorry for Princess—but she has to understand that she has to be a big girl and take matters into her own hands. I am helping her steal that control back. One bite at a time. Assisted suicide, if you please. “I’m hungry,” she says. “You know hunger is a mental thing, right?” I reply. “Feed me.” “I don’t feed you. I relieve you.” “Relieve me then, Queen.” “Only if you promise to let me watch.”
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Instead of agreeing, she sits up hastily, pulling away from my death grip. The clouds in her eyes fill up with frustration. I stare at her, almost wanting her to cry, just so the world can see how much of a baby this little self-proclaimed big girl is. “I don’t like you, Queen,” she says, catching me totally off-guard. “You can be such a smartass sometimes. I don’t fucking understand why. It’s like you love to see me sick. I hate the way you condescend me, as if I am a child. You’re such a fucking burden, Queen. You truly, honestly are.” Tonight Princess goes there, but as always, Queen is here to take it further. I care. I truly, honestly give a fuck, and can understand her anger toward me. I deprive her from basic essentials. I know I’ve been nothing but poison to her—a rotten smile, bald spots, and bruises and scars, but fuck, you would think she would appreciate the good things I do for her. I make her skinny. We sit on the floor of our bedroom. I cross my legs Indian style and shift my body to a better, more appropriate position, just to witness the mental breakdown about to unfold. My lips curl up into a sinister-like smile. The chocolate girl is frozen before my eyes. Slouched down, arms gently placed on her hate-worthy thighs, she’s breaking down. I love this little prin-
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cess. I truly, honestly do. But there’s something about tearing this mentally fucked-up girl down that makes me feel higher than the birds in the sky. After minutes of taunting her with my smiles and selfish remarks, I actually feel sorry for the underfed, nutrient deficient, bulimic crying helplessly on the floor of our bedroom. “I’m tired, Queen. I am so tired. What is wrong with me?” This happens often. We’ll come home from school. She is hungry. She gets moody. She starts whining. I tell her to get a grip or get the fuck out of the room. She asks me to hold her. I agree. She is hungry. She feeds herself. I relieve her. And we fall asleep together and the whole shabang. Tonight seems different, and I actually feel sorry for her. “You’re not the only one that’s tired, Princess.” Her eyes float toward my direction and back down to the forest green of our bedroom carpet. Forest green—such a distasteful color. It reminds me of vomit. Vomit. Vomiting will ease her troubled mind. “Come with me, Princess. I can make you feel like a queen again.”
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We shuffle through the dim hallways from our bedroom to the kitchen, tripping over each other’s feet. I giggle a little. We reach the kitchen and I flick the lights on and push her past the threshold and into the sanctuary. The walls must have been repainted again. They’re a dingy, hospital white. The shit’s bright in here and smells of sweat and lies. Princess pivots and turns toward my direction. Despite the deprivation written across her dark circles and bitter smile, she still has grace. I want to tear her down. “You ready, Princess?” “Yea,” she says, flinging open the refrigerator door.
“Eat this left-over lasagna and birthday cake,” I whisper. She devours the cookies, chips, and doesn’t forget the ice cream—drinks a glass of water so it comes up more easily. After the cereal, pickles, whip cream, left over pizza, Saturday night’s enchiladas, and another soda and a half, she can’t eat anymore.
“Look at you, Princess. You’re fat,” I conclude. “I know.” “Do something about it.”
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“You’re right, Queen.” I walk her to the bathroom. She holds her head down, shamefully. She refused to let me join her in her bulimic escapade, so I stand by the door listening to the contents painting porcelain rainbow. She’s dying in there, but I dare not stop her. She’s dying in there, but I’m here if she needs me. She’s dying in there, and I am outside the bathroom door listening to her voluntary suicide. Does that put me at fault? Does that consider me a murderer? Guilt creeps up my spine and so I finally ask, “Princess, are you okay?” No answer. I creep slowly through the bathroom door, in fear of it being slammed in my face. But it doesn’t. Instead I find her on the floor in fetal position, sobbing and weeping. Regurgitation laces the air—sour vomit covers the toilet seat and floor. I let my guard down, because I truly, honestly give a fuck. I feel sorry for her. I am proud of her. I pick her up and hold her tightly, squeezing every inch of gargantuan flesh her body contains. Her hair’s a mess. I fix it for her. Her makeup is smeared. I remove it for her. I take care of her like any friend would. At this moment we’re both sitting face to face, tears and snot streaming down her cheeks and nose. She smells a mess and looks it too. The stench of her fingertips finds its way to my nose, gripping my nostril hairs and choking the breath out of me. I smell
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her pain and I see her pain, but I refuse to discourage her destructive actions because I am Queen. The bathroom is soiled. She could have tried to aim for the toilet, I think to myself. I pick her up and try to get her to help clean, but she falls back on the floor. “Get over it. You’re bulimic,” I start to say. “I fucking can’t,” she will reply, so to avoid any further confrontation I pick up 117lbs of fat and I carry her to the bed. “Stay here and relax, Princess. I’ll clean everything up for you.” I told you I truly, honestly give a fuck.
I called it her two-day trip to salvation. Two days without throwing up. Two days she’s convinced contributed to her gaining three pounds. I tell her all the time I care about her, but yet she blames the bulimia on me—throws me under the bus for her own sake. Let me tell you something about Princess. She’s the type of girl that never takes the blame for her actions. She’ll lie on me just to make herself feel worthy of something. She’s a condescending bitch. If I really didn’t care, why am I the one in the bathroom cleaning up after her disordered self? I’ll tell you why. It’s because I truly, honestly give a fuck about her. I need Princess and I know she needs me, despite the fact that I am helping her kill herself. It’s love.
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We find our way back to the kitchen. She stumbles in agony—her stomach is eating at itself it seems. She searches the pantry and refrigerator for foods that won’t unsettle her stomach. Nothing seems to spark her taste buds and she slams the refrigerator door. “Eat, Princess.” “No,” her eyes stay fixated on the cold tile. “What?” “I said no, Queen.” She looks me in the eye. “I’m not going to feed into this anymore. You don’t have to deal with the pain. I do.” She’s never stood up for herself. She’s never looked me in the eye and told me how she truly felt. I’ve never looked her directly in the eye and what’s strange is that she closely resembles me. “Get over your fucking self, Princess. Open the fucking door and eat or I’ll shove it down your throat my damn self.” I step through the door, forcing her to step back. The look in my eyes lets her know I mean what I say. “Did you not hear me, Queen? I am not throw ing up.”
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“You’re such a fat fucking slob, Princess.” “I’m not fat, Queen.” Her head drops again. Tears start to build.
“You are what I say you are.” I tilt her head up with force. “You’re a beautiful girl, Princess—beautiful be cause you have this control. I’m only trying to help you. Just one last time, for me?” I smile. I wipe the tears from her eyes. My manipulation is keen—her gullibility is pathetic. She wants this cycle to end—but she’s always been the one to keep the secrets. I have always been the one that wins. I got Princess back. She nearly cleaned out the refrigerator, and now she is in the bathroom, coating the bleach white toilet bowl. This time she let me join her. I watch her close the bathroom door and bend over the toilet—she never kneels. She bends over as two fingers slide down her throat. Gagging, she vomits up every piece of food she just ate into her left palm. This keeps the sounds of throwing up to a minimum. Princess lets the food drop into the toilet silently. The taste of stomach creeps up her throat and she coughs, face beet-red, blood vessels popping. This excites me.
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She looks at me and down at her palms. Saliva and puke drape her fingers—blood stains the index and middle. She rinses her hands off as I keep her balanced. I flush the toilet and we head back to the bedroom. She shakes uncontrollably as I lay her in bed. I give Princess a kiss on the forehead and stroke her fire-red cheeks. “Welcome back, Princess.” She ignores me. “I’m glad you made that decision,” I say. “You did really well in there. I just want to let you know I love you.” Her eyes roll toward me. She knows I’m lying. “I should let you get some rest now.” I get up to walk away but I am stopped by a weak, almost pathetic, “Queen, wait.” “What is it, Princess?” “Don’t ever leave me.” He eyes hold need in them.
“Till death do us part.” She nods her head softly, turning over and folding into the warmth of her bed. I know she’s crying and I know she’s dying, but I flick off the lights, anyway.
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I Work the Cadence of
the Electric Ladybug like a cascade of pink demons dropping heavy thumps across the shaft of my spine—
So fucking cognitive, I’m a misbehaved mama with suga-veins and fruit punch lips that go pucker pucker kiss me fearless— The bones of me are so so big I tilt and tumble off my feet, catching myself like a perked melody gleamed glamo ous— If my lashes didn’t bat with anxiety, maybe you could peep the romance anchored within the parenthetical arches alongside my nonexistent hymen— The damsel you see likes to take it slowly fighting the feeling of touch while your fingertips graze my unholy— Call me your gold-shackle-chained game-changing-chica and I’ll flap my wingtips to the tempo because for you I am that kind of mama.
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Breasts and Solitude I climb the four walls of your gentle chest, gripping the rigid rocks that form your pectoral muscles. Those vessel mountains made up of mahogany pigment melt me into the cerebrum of you, my magic man. — I fell into the freeness of your formfitting slacks. Honey, this is how I got to know your joints so well— each and every fold and syllable of you more complex than origami as striking as pen on paper — Only you can cleanse me, savor the flesh of me and put me to rest in those bed sheets I call the palms of your hands.
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Lady, Jupiter i don’t mind being your solidity of she that celestial nebula of spiritualized exoticy you orbit with impatience. render me your day night falsecolored fluorescent black white mystic atmospheric goddess with cosmic cateyes that know your motive if i allowed you to rock my cratered moon hips helium hydrogenate my skin to silk n’ wet my whereabouts with an interstellar encore of cognac-colored supernova climaxes that contour and gravitate this mass this sass of a planetbody will i be dipped in gold and become your universe lady? or will my axis tilt with a sway like a bitter aftertaste because you have turned me luna blue?
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The Smoking Rectangular Kinswoman body pink species spawns her animal, flexible like hollowed trinket boxes with detachable sidings designed for vertical dugouts. the she-diet is limited to curving, scattered confinement cobwebbed inside her—coochie cocoon corroding crown pussycat that meows for placenta juice purrs for seasonal flavorsome typically agape, like the dandelion planted and plucked on her pelvic bottom ready to soft-serve the cream in her ice cone body frame. lick, lick like the neck of the semen cement barricade stuck in between the hole-y bible twat goddess and her rose walls that travel up up and into hiss, hiss
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like the unsettled kitty that launders her fleshfur with her tongue and teeth angled to pounce prey when fetuses dissolve like mangled kittens into preface dove babies inside her bitter body pink lady folds and vintage bones that smoke her womb like puff puff and away
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If Mona Lisa Were a Black Woman, she’d sit proud. Fist righteously above her kink and coil of hair. Eyebrows just as thick as her lips, reasoning she ain’t go’ take no one’s shit. Those eyes, a mocha couplet of whisperings for the baby Mona Lisa’s that are hungry for contentment within their chocolate-dipped art pieces of a body.
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The Feminine, Divine My teacher told me once how she walked the streets of Delhi. The same sidewalks where that woman, a dismantlement of puzzle piece organs, died, amongst the Indian government. She was an extraction to the earth. Her body, a juxtaposition between her vagina and the Goddess. Nirbhaya, the Indian Goddess, was a malfunction to Delhi her body, nothing more than a shame because her insides were woman —the blood she shed, a smear across the face of the government. My teacher told me how she felt Nirbhaya’s organs dissecting themselves. Those self-eating organs— the Ouroboros within that Indian Goddess, a creature the government did not want to understand, those blind sons of—Delhi, I hope you’re listening to the fragile breaths of your women craving your attention to their bodies. Can you hear the plea of the body? Nirbhaya was simultaneously raped by six men—dissecting her to the organ. She was “bright, intelligent and focused on achieving her dreams,”—the epitome of a woman.
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Did you ignore the cry of Nirbhaya, Delhi?— along with the fucking government? The rioters, them protesting the fucking government, trying to sew her back, stitch her goddamn body, anew. Those feminist women and men of Delhi praying to her failing organs— telling Nirbhaya, the Goddess, it is okay to sleep, woman. She was removed from her placement of things. That woman, positioned within the patriarchal government that took advantage of her inner Goddess. They laid her on a palanquin made of women bodies, her iridescent bloodshed—her organs treated like they were not important enough to Delhi. My teacher told me once how Nirbhaya’s body helped her understand the internal organs of a Goddess and the injustice of the fucking government.
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The Hungry Woman
it was the bacteria on my tongue the bitterness a mouthful of lemon couldn’t calm that kept the fingers dangling down my throat if i could i would remove them
esophagus stomach tongue stack the body like a set of blocks and watch them wilt next to the vase of white orchids
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Harmony
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Don’t Believe the Hype III One night, staggering down Sunset Blvd., you stumbled into a poetry slam. Immediately you loved the energy, the folks spitting words and bobbing heads. It was then that you really began to write. You often wrote by moonlight. Writing seemed to take away the madness, made you sane, and somehow help you stay alive. It let you and your red lips escape from that inevitable mental implosion. So you popped four Vicodin and wrote. A few days later you took too much OxyContin and wound up with needles and tubes being dug into your flesh by a white nurse with tangled hair. She made you drink liquid charcoal that made you shit and vomit simultaneously. The substance was smothering, unsettling. She forced you to spend two nights in the psychiatric ward, with a large black woman who snored and stunk of piss. You were released on the Fourth of July, and in celebration, took four more Oxy’s. That night you were paralyzed, opioids flooding your body, subduing you with an unlikely sense of content and highness.
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Unlike ( ) adjec., prep., verb 1. Not like; dissimilar; diverse: a) His hands caressed my hips in unlike amounts. I could tell he preferred the left side of my body over the right. b) The right was more dishonest and scarred, arm and leg covered in unlike keloids—speed bumps in the roads of my flesh.
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The New York Minute 1 I feel a certain type of security when you, that dignified man of midnight grabs a hold of my worry two sturdy palms and the moonlight kneading into me like your dough shhhhing me working out the unease teaching me how to preserve my cry for moments that more deserved the tear.
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2 You pull it out of me even though you know I like to suck suck suck like a s u c c u b u s until I can’t suck it, my thumb anymore. It’ll destroy your smile one day, you say—Always right tic toc ing timely, always. I place it back into my mouth knowing
the fear to smile is inevitable.
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3 I heard you once say Yo, B. Fuck outa here for I split cha fuckin’ wig. Literally meaning, Excuse me, Brother. Please vacate the proximity before I shoot you in the head. You had an honor code, I know. You had a religion, that meant: 1) the need to learn how to decipher New York ebonics should be urgent and 2) respect your gangster.
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4 My father was expiring quicker than milk. You told me, see him— before the cirrhosis eats the man to the bone. Year two thousand eleven, I lost him, my father and learned how to value.
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Don’t Believe the Hype IV You were happy for once because you loved your therapist. Jeff made you laugh. You confided in him with your eating disorder—you thought you could confide in him about what happened to you when you were younger.
You said— “Jeff, I want to tell you something, but I’m not sure if you’d have to report it or not.” “You know the three rules: if you’re suicidal, being hurt, or have the intentions of hurting someone, I have to report it, Jasmin.” You knew all three rules applied. Jeff’s hair was golden against the sunset that put Beverly Hills to rest. You couldn’t tell him you were molested. Instead, you decided to never go back. July spilled into August and you somehow ended up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Your friend Adriana called you out of the blue— “What have you been up to?” “Raves…pills…needles,” Adriana answered. “What the fuck are needles?”
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“Take a guess.” “Heroin, Adriana?” She fell silent. You listened to her heavy breathing for a few minutes and hung up. Reality sunk in— dense, impenetrable. You knew immediately once you got back to LA, sober and renewed, you would revert back to nothing but a drugged-up doll in heels. You thought you were stronger, thought you were a survivor. What you failed to realize is you thought wrong. Your friend, Adriana, is proof.
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Placement The Santa Fe trees here, those occasional bushy things that shade dusty everything, make me want to create under them—let their green sprouts sway back and forth with the motion of my hand. Sometimes I feel like I need to exhibit my work, show those trees that I am, well, all woman and these are my breasts and that is my poetry and I just need to show my talent to, present my hunger for the word the blank canvas of New Mexico, it’s Native American face that has become my place
definitively so and so I write—
about my internal weather that is, just as, untelling as Santa Fe, about the plenty times I’ve died back home because Santa Fe truly reminds me what alive feels like. You know, sometimes I don’t feel the best about my syntax and diction and caesura choices
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so I look to the Santa Fe trees, those non-judging oxygen spewing snippets of bark and green, to reassure my placement of something amongst a town of nothings.
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The Man With a Forest for Eyes papa was a quiet storm the tender force of a breeze blowing the louisiana trees into a somber autumn seagram’s gin and agony gave that Newport-puffing man a rhythm to his mercy god bless ah-whore-ica he’d say raising his pint to grin and gulping it gone with two swigs and a half one for america two for america’s whores the half for his angled tongue that allowed soot and film to cake under the fingernail olive iris and liquor bottle as he watched his corrosion patiently soft insides turning cobalt papa’s patient amber rust and july’s conclusion to his deep forest green eyes
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Mom, You deserve a SUPER WOMYN trophy. Thank you constantly for picking me up whenever I’d fall. You mean the world to me and you’re everything a mother should be, plus more. I hope to be half as strong as you when I am older—and half as beautiful. I love you the moon, stars, and sun.
Dad, You are the reason I keep pushing forward. You promised me you’d be there to see me graduate. Even though you’re not here physically, I know you’re looking down on me, watching me with those forest eyes—smiling, because you know you’ve taught me well. Thank you, Dad. I love you.
Vernon Anthony, Where the hell would I be without you? I have nothing but love and gratitude for you and the knowledge, thoughtfulness, and inspiration you’ve instilled in me and in my poetry. You found me at my worst and continue to help me strive toward my best. You are truly a blessing— and honestly, I thank you for being that consistency, drive, heart, and reason I write. Thank you, Jr. I love you.
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Brandi, You never been one to judge—and that’s what’s so amazing about you. You’re that person who brings out the good in others with a single smile and that beautiful, talented writer that composes lyrics naturally. Honestly, you’ve inspired me to be a writer. Thank you, Kussy, for constantly having my back and uplifting me. Just know you can always count on me.
J-Davis, You’re the best teacher a student could EVER ask for. From FTA and till now, I still count you as one of the most important people in my life. You’ve helped me find that womyn in my poetry. Say what!
SFUAD/CW Department, Thank you for being my eyes and audience for these past few years. Dana, Liz and Matt, thank you for helping me recover my inner writer that was lost. Morgan, thank you for keeping it real with my poetry. Friends/Adams Family, thank you for being my motivation. And last but not least, thank you, Corine—for being the voice of womyn.