Poetry - a taste

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that chemical tastant


h. d. told us to embrace living in a toxic world. 

break down the sordid barriers, entropy will


envelop all of us in time. i don’t know how to reconcile 

piles of my maintenance as waste in 


another’s home, i’m sorry to the wrasse,

 you are now living in a toxic world — 


did you taste some of my shampoo yesterday, did it turn your mouth purple? 

i know it didn’t clean it out. 


she told us to accept the respective time for the secular to break down; 

hours, months, days 


some things vanish in an instant, other things stay. 

but there aren’t enough bugs & sea slugs for plastic 


to turn to palatable waste. 

toxic angler in the mariana trench, 


an island that floats away / 

only to expand in their throats. 


we’re used to formaldehyde, foreign & plastic face masks at a funeral, 

goodbye forever wrapped in a polymer sheet. 


(on inheritance— inventions of things that bend without break, 

continue to fall into synthetic laps. how unfair is that?)


entropy, in a large scheme, is reassuring. 

my body will become a fig, that fig will become a cheating wasp. all that is lost 


will become the dust to which something else is made. 

even dust in the air is something, it’s enough.



fig trees & their wasps-


i’ve been thinking of

fig trees & their wasps 


& how every fig

once held a wasp chick


is my jam filled with

insect essence, rife


with adolescence?

& tree - pollen dense. 



winter dryness-


I.

chewing layers off.

little circles, odd,


come off my lips. dark 

ovals remain, stark 


difference in shade

between valleys laid


& the stiff peaks (of)

the periphery.


II.

sudden flares of the

skin catch me — aware


patchy streaks of heat

on an ankle, reap


lashings unsterile

by nails sharp, feral


reptilian heat

firing up 1B 


dryness, lingerer.

or spiders? under


III.

lavender grin, soap

got into your mouth.


washing dumb with paste

pause, sense the tastant,


mint & wet swirls still.

remember the fill


of bitter & acid

on the wake? amidst


worst part of the day

morning dry / mouth stay



spring


now that spring is here i still feel liquid bubble up in my throat /

& here i thought winter was the problem.


cryo’s gaseous state to meet the sky, unfrozen & freed from 

the ground, resounding heat in the gods’ eyes, hands, ears. 


it is too much. i don’t like springing anymore. 

my apartment is turning into a swampland, again.


here i am, studying the brain of a mouse filled with cysts, drawing him close to feline death. 

toxic parasite on the screen of a / desk that is falling into saline & peat.


i repeat, maybe if i were a fig wasp in a fig things would be more conscionable.

i think // about grasslands, about pollen & the wafting heat from the pizza place below


long ago, a squirrel found a chestnut & buried it deep. 

do you think it lasted the winter?


i pick plastic out of my spring leek soup.

somewhere, methane is rising from permafrost, a ghost.


it stays low & haunts the breath,

i lick a floral stamp & also take out a pen.



i was born into this place a bit of fire & a cancer


i was born 

a screech owl in the day, an angel after dark. never phased 

with the stones of the recently birthed, miles or gem. i slept as if 


my creation was a translation, split syntax yet essence the same, 

wrapped up in sheets dreaming of ascension & lost languages. i


ate like i already had teeth & screamed like it too. wisdom pulling 

at the edges of my gut: i understand what that animal is, i know 


his name, when a dog runs it’s towards, when a cat does it’s away. 

i never thought that a ruby fit july or my disposition, its color 


violent like the earth after she was birthed. i wanted to be the sky 

after she settled & reflected her breath with liquid salt. i wanted


to be my mother’s ring & maybe her pet for awhile. she said we used 

to be friends in past lives & lived where snow filled our lungs.


we lived where light won hide & seek but i still slept fine, always 

snug under the ever-shift of celestial parts. we were friends away


where rubies are the same shade as the sky / & in a different place, i   

suppose i may have cried instead of shrieked. the same day she 


adopted my first word, distinguishable from a howl, was the day 

she had her wisdom withdrawn from gums & placed in a metal dish. 


dizzy & swollen she called her kitten ike, like the sound of her 

teeth falling into foreign terrain. i never loved him because he   


wasn’t mine but he explained to me the difference of how we came into this 

place. that when a human runs it’s disparate, towards you & away.






swamp angel, not even a little brackish


i am not a salted girl. pour on me gallons of fresh water / i’ll soak

heavy & shake like a fed dog. i let my skin hang loose most times.


i do things everybody does but alkaline. imagine being ready to 

swallow pitcher plants & avoiding saline sponges overrun, while


texting mom. i am what your dry mouth thinks of in the morning. 

bitter, sweet / the patches of shimmer on any lake wished they’d


float as easy as me / the egret call wakes them when the sky turns 

from grey to a white, she sounds like she’s crying when she belts 


her morning bleats, keeps ‘em tired & sinking deep. i try to live 

without a vein of toxicity / you know / all i need is electrolytes 


from quenched thirst (& a light belief in karma), to keep on. 

i move like sand turning to glass or relentless wind in a flat place, 


in a place with no buildings & no trees. the only time acidity ever 

fixed me was after ingesting botched pasta sauce. i don’t need that


element. i am stained enough without it. i don’t need to heat up, 

break down, tear apart for a pastime activity. from what i hear 


that leaves you hollow. i want to be full of blossom & bud, carefully  

hand-fed from my spotless liver & revived from a midday wake.