Bride of comparison,
you have found me
living through lacy love letters
to the glowing voice of the world.
I have loved and lived
and lavished
like a euphoric angel,
all over the world.
See how North America quakes beneath my hands?
Hear the tender whispers of my name from Europe.
I am tired of molds and braces and boxes.
What They have is not better than what I have.
Always They come with a capital T and claws.
They possess than,
But I hold hands with then,
and waltz over the sea.
An envelope locked out of sight,
buttercups giggling in the fields –
and then a pink fog rolls over the view.
It is all so dreamy.
Don’t bring a mirror here.
Gloomy, graceful ghosts
lounge under the beach umbrella.
They are nudists.
They are like frosted glass.
No sunburns will befall them
as they get drunk
and carouse on the beach where they
washed ashore.
Welcome to the Life Center
With sparkly resources to help you warm winter.
Are you a cartwheel?
A suspicious glance?
A still wind?
We can help you get back to work.
We offer many courses:
Earth Spinning
Bone Knitting
Light Painting –
and certifications in
Prebirth Fantasy,
Pain Sculpture
Freeway Fashion.
Visit us today in the building of roses,
at the corner of Air and Fire.
Eleven mirrors watch videos of sky.
Clouds breed above the enemy.
What sleeps inside my teeth
that my hunger has become so fragile?
My face is a tapestry unfinished.
Below the town a garden planted by boys
grows velvet tumbleweed.
Olivia
Bridges of rubber band
of twine do not bend under your emptiness
the handsomeness of starvation, of Ana has you blind.
She is a surgeon
She will remove you piece-mail.
I am collecting the hair that falls exhausted from your head,
to bind a textbook,
a book I will write in your name about control
having it and losing it and needing it
and the freeing beauty of being human, of need, the pleasantry of a satisfied hunger.
Let shame bleed out under the table.
This is your body. This thinly flowing soup your blood.
This is our last supper.
Dine.
*There was a time in my life where I used to pour over pro Ana, thinspiration websites. I bookmarked pictures of girls so thin their bones would show and would use those photographs as inspiration not to eat the next time I was hungry. The pro anorexia world is dark, lonely, and evil and I feel pain for the girls and women who are lost in its vortex.
The Sky Is
Enormous.
Silent.
Private.
A forbidden food is silly
but demonic and understandable
on a Tuesday when you clock in
(If people can turn clock into a verb for such
nefarious purposes, they need to stay away from my sofa and window.)
and you feel five feet wide and are at least 1.
Chocolate bars are exotic and exciting. Do not listen to
the pizza. He will charm you out of your 2s and into 10s.
Eat your salad.
It wants to die,
is dying,
wants you to follow along.
Ignore the demeaning soda. It hates you.
Your teeth whither.
Why are all the women in bigger sizes so much smaller than you?
Your bones shrink at the reproach.
Parisian plastic and crisp churches
Line the rain with loveliness.
At the edge of wet and dry reflections fly free.
I am painted with velvet sound,
eating my turpentine soup.
How lonely are the days baked in my face?
The scent radius of a rose as a unit of measurement.
My smile weighs too much,
crumbles off my face.
I’m sick of fried hair and unstoppable worry.
My secrets hate me and my eyes betray me.
On the beaches are boxes of life
watching the great red shipping containers float on the horizon.
Simply put
I have no allies I have not bought
And I drink old snow.
You are a systemic failure,
a weed I will use to make a poultice for my feet.
My jaw is slack and exhausted from talking to God,
my ears reverent from listening.
Sunlight colonizes the window glass,
makes cities we can see but not feel.
Poem in the original English, followed by translations to Xhosa and Afrikaans and back.
Blue light chases me.
My soul is cold,
spirit still dreaming.
In a meadow I roll down the hillocks
over and over,
my little sear suckered skirt frilly
over my still narrow hips.
A movie an angel might wish to watch
or a pederast.
Translation and edit:
In the meadow I roll down the hillock
my short skirt ruffled.
On my stretching back now,
a starlet with one hell of a fan.
Miniature Moon 