"I lie as still as a bar of iron.
You can stick a needle
through my kneecap and I won’t flinch.
I’m all shot up with Novocain.
This trance girl
is yours to do with.
You could lay her in a grave,
an awful package,
and shovel dirt on her face
and she’d never call back: Hello there! "
"You were sitting in a bathtub at the hospital and you were crying.
You said it hurt.
I mean the buildings that were not the hospital.
I shouldn’t have mentioned the hospital.
I don’t think I can take this much longer."
"Why does my life so often
feel like a slither of entrails
pouring from a would in my belly?
With both my hands I grasp
my wet guts, trying to force
them back in.
Why does my life
so often feel like a wild
black lake under the midnight
thunder where I am drowning,waves crashing over my face
as I try to breathe."
"The pharmacist said klonopin, lamictil, lithium, Xanax
The doctor said an antipsychotic might help me forget what the trauma said
The trauma said don’t write this poem
Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones"
"You will not
hear me completely even at this early point
unless you hear my emptiness:
go back:
how can I
tell you what I have not said: you must look for it"
"did you miss me or
not, was it too close
to the bone for you, was that
pain, am I gone? Nothing’s
broken, nevertheless I’m skinless,
the gentlest touch would gut me.
Slowly, slowly, nobody wants a mess."
"my soul was a milk bottle yearning to be full,
my stomach made of concrete, had a long wooden table
where six dressed kittens sat, holding up their bowls."
