Be careful with clarice

She’s a shock. A hot current through the ring on your middle finger. Twitch. A fly zapper. A bee sting in the soft corner of the eye. Brush her off and let her swell. Do let her swell, sting you again, with a line—Really nothing happened on that gray afternoon in April. And she’s in you again, isn’t she? Small as a spider. Buried in the wood like a bedbug and she likes how you taste. She comes from the page like a scent to tug at your nose hairs. Come closer. Her language is every luxury allowed. Cigarette after cigarette. Rio de Janeiro. Cocktail hours all morning long. The ocean ever within eyesight. Closer now. She casts spells in her bedroom. Smoke hovers above her skin. Cold gray robe. She’s almost got it now—Not being devoured—she writes—is the secret goal of an entire life. Such strange fire the dragon breathes into the dawn, neck stretched, fingers like green fangs. See how she transforms. How she calls to the north, south, east, and west to conjure the prose she uses as protection. As glamour. As lifeline.

Boyfriend Box #7

Knives here too. A said, “I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to flirt with the idea.” He taught me to crave a wet blade between my legs. Almost a stranger the first time he curled up in my lap, but he was so about me, for me, with me, there was no good reason to say no. A was the type both sweet and sinister. Both tongue and teeth. This boy kept a knife in his bedside drawer. Soon enough, there was a colder blade he preferred to press flat against the whites of my thighs. When he touched me like that, I shivered, but I wasn’t cold. I confess, I craved. This boy was so about me, for me, with me, that he followed me to Brooklyn for no good reason, no good promise. He knew what I felt and what I didn’t, knew what I craved and what I kept hidden. When I think of A, I think of raw oysters sliding down the length of my throat and dry-humping on the dance floor. But knives too. I think of knives too. I knew it was over the time he humped me so hard that there was nothing about, for, or with me. When I stumbled away like that, he shivered, but he wasn’t cold. Soon enough, we were curling up in other almost-strangers’ laps. At our last bottomless mimosa jazz brunch in The Village, A said, “I didn’t want to love you, I just wanted to flirt with the idea.” 

Suddenly, Brat Summer

Brat summer made me want to get back into my body. My body I treated so badly in so many ways a good long while, a good long while before I could no longer lift my arms. My body I hurt both on purpose and accident. My body always a disaster, a mess I tried to compress, restrain, refine, not express. Now there’s Charli on the stage. Neck bent back nearly every night, blaring her body for baby angels, exploding like a dark star in all directions. Like her body, my body wanted to stomp through the shards. Tongue the flame. Claw out of the underground to find my fame. My body wanted to hurt like it’s hot. Cry like it’s art. Rock the fucking micro-shorts. My body wanted to kiss a stranger, kiss a friend. Break my own belligerent heart. Dream of heat lightning. Bleed in neon green. I wanted to be so summertime broken. I wanted to be so suddenly free.