cruelbod

the teens are sitting on the bleachers at the highschool
but they aren't teens, anymore, basically 30 now
kelly is arched back in a vermilion haltertop
and tad lays flat, looking at the stars.
she graduated from highschool
and comes & drinks rose on ice
on the bleachers
she does reverse cowgirl on the bleachers
tries to pee between steps
as latenight athletes run the track.
God, why aren't YOU running with them, she accuses tad
who exhales smoke
and sips rose, ice clinking in his plastic cuppy.
I know, right
kelly sat with brody
on the highschool bleachers
when she was pushing 30, a couple of augusts ago
she was wearing a white dress and a denim jacket
and brody was drinking a big beer
he was trying to convince her to just drive with him all night to nevada
so they could get married
she thought that sounded like fun
but they'd just met the day before
and she knew they'd get sick of each other halfway there.
she never sat on those bleachers when she was in highschool,
just after she moved begrudgingly back after years away
and it was only twice, and past midnight
with guys named tad and brody.
kelly only fucked brodys, now
she was done with seths and aarons and todds.
she is feeling pretty superior in her vermilion haltertop
she is looking good, teenlike
she tells tad about the jeremy she'd been harassing
and tad tells her, kindly, that she's been humiliating herself.
she is gleeful
she doesn't care, has nothing to lose
she claims a lack of cruel organs in her cinnamon bod.
but she's a liar,
and pathetic,
and she's alone in life and she's mean
so she smokes & she chugs
& she takes her shoes off and pees freely.
she's got those good strong outside peeing legs.
she says Whatever
I'm Me
never growing up
just justifying her moves
with evil eye glimmers
and secret, hopeful tears

sucker

I'm a fad

I'm a goosewhite

walk on the ice, little webbers

  rubber sticks rubber suctions

they swish the cold out, could

I'm a variable

I'm a water

    Molly Stoddard, you're my hero

 you're my baby

I am a graduate

magma cum laude

I'm a suckee

I get sucked out like you wouldn't think

 the empty water, a wash

 flash flood, freeze me

walk on me

   congratulations

I have hair for centuries

 to comb,

  to braid on the beach

   to look at under nightlit light

those veins musthave gushed

I'vent straw teeth

I'vent suckers on

I'vent reasons to dig

I'vent bloodlust thrustin

I've my own blood for guzzling

& mine's with the white fighters

& the murdering connivers

birdhouse bodies nesting

  near the ground of me

  settle in

  get your young down

  fluff in 4 life

I'm no cannibal, I'm a husky eye-ear-mouth haver

I'm no ear-mouth-haver

I'm a husk lover

I'm a fillyou-upper

I'm a 

let me in

  I'm a toogood

of

an idea

       to let you have

29

it's official

summer is here

I baptized everything

at do-it-yourself doggy detail

the proprietor is a giant man with dredlocked dogs of all sizes

he said, When you shave a dog like this, 

and we look suspiciously at the collie,

You have to go at it like you're scraping ice off a windshield

it's official

because Nickey made us a birthday salad

like she made last year, when I turned 28 

& discovered bulleitt bourbon

Everyone cries on their birthday

& I was in love again or still with someone I'd loved 5 years before

and I left the bar alone

so the bar could be alone

so I could be alone with my middle-aged present 

& my maudlin I-miss-you past

we drank the bourbon with salad sap,

rhubarb syrup

we took it to the river with us, 

and a shorn collie

and our beached chairs

and I climbed into the river, under the water

and while I was inside her for those seconds

the hard seconds, my being very much aware of how

soft & warm

my innards are

how they're encased in a thousand knives stabbing you all at once

not to beconstatly reaching for titanic quotations, but

it was a bliss

a true moment where I wasn't terrified

because I am 

soft & warm

at least inside, still.

and I surfaced, gasping, mouth gulping sun

my wet seal hair long down my back

the droplets on anxious tired flesh

trying, breaking, popping 

in the light.

When I'm 29 I will police my emotions

I will make arrests

I will cuff me

I will throw me in the back

I will read me my hurried rights

I will put my heart on a leash

in a chokechain

& demand it next to me

legless, dragging along

taught tether,

slack tether.

that water was life-affirmer

my river hair, passion-confirmer

vehement future-asserter

(The other day she asked, how do you pronounce that word, vehemence, and we said it aloud a couple of times

I don't know that I do anything with vehemence, I said, and there followed the scoff of the century.)

When I'm 29 I will write down the names of everyone I've been in love with

and the list will crush the planet

the names will fall into trenches

into little graves

with headstones in ornate decay

How many people have you been in love with

Are you in love with anyone, now?

I used to ask two questions

when I was falling in love with someone, I'd say

Are you in love?

and

Are you an alcoholic?

It used to be that I'd turn away when the answers were yes

which they often were

but mostly I'd stay. Else how would I keep it all so relevantly destructive?

There are new questions to ask

like,

Do you love

or

Can you?

How many people have you been in love with

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 9

or

1,2,34

or never say forever, and never forvember me 

nevember me forever

things we know about me:

I am 26 (I am 23)
I've lost seriously, and twice, within four days.
I've made a list of things I am no longer allowed to purchase.
I am sick, but this time just hearts & brains.
It doesn't matter, the dressed body.
I'm extremely good at giving myself pleasure, in wool tights, in the darkness of a terrible night.
The weather is perfect for me
I tried to ride my bike on the ice with a cup of coffee, it spilled, we slipped.
I am not ready for pool and pitchers anymore
I am ready for different places, like colorado, and tropical places, and new york.
I am an Exhibitionist Atheist Romantic
I used to be Vegan.
I used to be Vegetarian
I used to hate animals.
I used to hate mushrooms.
I like the past
I still urge that I don't believe in magic
I have no problems with those who believe in magic
I used to cry, but now I never do
I cry when I laugh
I am almost alive.
I am a twostar occurrence
& If I'm not worthwhile by the end, won't at least the progeny be.
I am not invested
I don't want new friends.
I like the ending.
It is utter.
I hold grudges because they're tangible.
& I am apologyless

tonight it's near to see

prettylittle, 67 - 70

Tonight it’s near, and how dissension nods his head. We both arrived; I found altercation for a minute. We were, that very night, attractive, contrapuntal. And how the emerald outside would still pertain. Picture me on a skylark, attempting, though repulsed by counterpoint. There. Can you, begrudgingly? Smoke the idea in music, composed. I’m wearing the yellow dress to dinner with light kissing melodies sounded; I remember this morning. Rust. But my love, it's an island to leave, I suppose.

A blast from forever. Whistles, rocks, and then the noticing cold remain true. Melody cliffs neglect the beautiful cold to him, the beautiful cold to my own fugue. I’m barefoot to take a snowstorm at last, it will be to violate. To climb up how he didn’t, too lonely and difficult to oppose anything at all. To contradict me I wish he would, a drop of airsnow, nothing like the ice I have. I think small and he holds my face of watersnow. This group of trees I’m climbing, those which the earth tends to unforgivingly deliver, will definitely make inner. I don’t slip and fall, dying beautiful white stronger, and I envelop brief silence things. Sparkling extreme of floral leaves. Anything happened, a snow everywhere; accusatory of a flower I wasn’t. Your mind at which I look, I’d simply love to live in.

A delicate texture I make, looking. I look around lovingly forever. Of a color other, that little peak. Be confused fearfully, too. Green, typically, that little tree on top. Your mind from across a slim whorl, I see. A piercing platform. We stumbled within, I see.

Be confused for a need to look upon sepals; that tree above right, straight at the garden, and enclosing. There’s a bird. Red chipped opaque sky, here it's rained all day. Reproductive. An eagle exactly in baby blue, the perfect midwestern call. Organs, bald like mine, a black winter. I find I know minute bodies, who every once in awhile be actively doomed. Cells in the water. And with a real winter. Too bright to failure, especially. Red blood is something to see.