1.
What did you call that moon? forgive me the lenses
of my eyes are blurry and are urging me that separation
converges here. right now a cold hand is on my face; I think
it may be mine. Afterward
2.
an apocryphal refraction, a discussion
of prose I can barely
understand. In the apiary I am stung
over
and over. I sit as doors are blown open, the occasional
hiss
3.
of a mouth filling
with the blood of a bit tongue. "it was the greatest night
of my life and still
4.
I couldn't laugh." In fact, I could feel little
of anything except
the intervening orbs of necromancy. An ambience
of "i love you" A bending
even I couldn't describe.
3.30-9.6.2005
This is the way you are, & the shower
of my life drops totally into ampersands & (&) [&] makes it so hard to wander or wonder or draw on the battered papers I used to burn. I’m glad
that you are able to breathe. I’m glad that you’re able to perforate
the way the tandem of tetra fish (delicious, this flesh I offer to you, though antiseptic) in the enclosure of a fish tank—this is the way
you are, glinting thru what you meant when you said
Certaines substances fermentent sous l’action de l’eau ou de la chaleur. A pair of dice scatter. I am turbinating; here is my room, here
are my windows, filthy; I will
drop them
down, filled with the light of winter settling into the snow, the tar, the icy roads skidding with cars. It’s dawn by the sastruga—a morning covered with piss
& dust. The purling of the wind between
my legs is
the wrapping of the morning around the trees. Flowers show
their creamthroats, spark
their alkali blaze.
9.4.2005
the place of hanging puppies
in my brain is where you assume the gun
wasn’t,
so I ignite
the building we lived in
& I awaken a mile from
myself without shoes
on; I walk
on my knives over the ice as silence holds
my hand. well, it isn’t so much my hand
as the hand you let me use
each day when you don’t
hew my wrists—your love for me
is simple and does not
make me nervous—
still, I am filled with winter.
this morning
we oversleep; we must trample
over the eggshells of maybe and
maybe not, yet I love
the texture
of our running (you have kept me naked
except for the scratches
on my legs deep
as the schism
between after
and before.) I’ve found
this way more than once staggering
around holding our metronome, drunkenly spitting
out seconds; each time
I trade whatever pennies
I have in my pocket for a blanket.
it is freezing here.
it’s not up to you to keep me warm, you say:
phenomenology of love:
it’s not really cold.
it’s not really happening.
you’re not really there.
you say this
with a blade between your
it glints
in the light which extrudes
from your mouth.
you are mine
but you are not mine,
you say,
gutting me.
6.5.2003-9.8.2005
Michelle is a senior at Florida Atlantic University with a Writing and Rhetoric major. Some of her main early influences were Anne Carson, Adrienne Rich, Diane Wakoski, Ai, Laura Mullen, and Diane di Prima. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and has been published in numerous magazines including AUGHT, BlazeVOX, X-stream, and upcoming in Word/ for Word. She has three collections forthcoming.