i. boy feeds on light — a hasty poem i wrote last night for a bps prompt.

account inactivity notice

As some of you may or may not have noticed, I am no longer posting a lot on this blog. I haven’t been steady with uploads for a few months and I think I’ve been in denial about the fact that I don’t feel as inclined to share my writing on here as I once used to. Long story short: I just do not feel secure in posting my work without being protected by copyright laws. Tumblr has been an enlightening experience, and I genuinely appreciate everyone who supported me, reblogged my poetry, sent me nice asks or even just a message ever so often asking me how I’m doing. It means a lot to me that so many of you have found my writing inspiring, and that it’s helped you in some little form or another. The instant gratification I received from maintaining this blog however, feels counterproductive at best. Not to mention the plagiarism. I don’t want to go into the visceral nitty gritty details, but ever since I started this blog I’ve had, on more than one occasion, been informed of people stealing my writing, claiming it as their own and even going so far as to attempt to steal my creative identity—all of which, as you might imagine, left me feeling extremely bad, and at a complete and utter loss of what to do. It was extremely demotivating to find that people were taking advantage of the fact that I post my poetry here on the internet for free and reading it as a free-for-all for anyone to exploit. Other than that, I have found that tumblr is just no longer somewhere I feel confident in displaying my writing. I’m currently looking to start my own independent website/blog, publish a chapbook, and hopefully finally dip a toe into the professional world. I want to be taken seriously as a writer, and that means putting my writing out there—outside of this small corner of the internet. I’d also like to start sending a lot of my poems out to literary magazines and such, all of which consider posting my writing on tumblr as a form of publication in itself—rendering said poems incapable of being posted elsewhere. In light of all this, I have decided that I will be going on permanent hiatus from this particular blog. I will probably keep most of my old writing up, as there is nothing I can do about poems that have already been reblogged, and I do not plan on deleting this blog. That said, outside of the occasional excerpt or ‘internet rendition’ of a project I’m working on and hopefully advertising my book at some point, I do not see myself using this account anymore. I will make sure to hop on every now and again to let you know where to find me, and I might reopen applications for Bruised Peach Society (a startup poetry group where I will eventually be posting some of my works, along with the works of fellow members). I think this is the best step for both my mental health + my career, and even though I’m going to miss being active on here, I hope you understand why I’m taking this decision. It’s a difficult one to make, but I believe that it might be time to move on. Thank you again, if you’ve ever supported me and my writing. It means more than you know. (p.s I will be deleting a few poems I might want to use elsewhere, but the majority of them will probably still stay up).

i want a small, tight knit circle of poet friends. i want to essentially create an informal poetry group to get to know other writers/poets where we can exchange feedback, writing resources, share inspiration and basically support each other, as writers and as individuals. my primary goal with this group is for people like me (hopefully you’re out there) who don’t have a poetry circle of their own but really want to network, and hopefully aim to create lasting friendships. we’ll also have a public platform, a joint poetry blog (@/bruisedpeachsociety) where we showcase & highlight one another’s works + provide weekly prompts etc, and maybe even potentially work on some cool stuff like zines together. here’s the basics:

if you’d like to apply:

other details:

if this fails to generate interest, oh well, it was worth a try.

my writing is DEEPLY METAPHORICAL y’all pls take it with several grains of salt djfkjs

october is starved / half-skeletal across cheeks crinkled / over in fog-ridden light / october is visible ribs and a fragile wristbone and choking on mouthfuls of / bad meat. october turns its back on you / its spine set like a clenched jaw / under too-thin skin / october is a bad hip / and sixteen poems about hating yourself / october forgets to drink water / has dilated pupils / blown out knees &— / listen, october is /trying/ to be human / october is breathing electric air / & taking any small boned thing that wets its apetite / right with it / october is wild / october is primal / & famished / to be famished / is the very concept of hunger / which is / to desire / and the very root of being starved / which is to / abandon that which you / desire most.

dig what’s hollow out of me, past skin that ripens & is unceremoniously peeled away. something or someone reminding me i have a voice. that i have a voice and it reverberates like a backhanded slap. the opposite of which is silence. a silence that prickles hotly at my eyelids. heavy & rolled back. the skull exposed. ribcage a box of fried cables. a green-red glow in evenings. the hand that feeds you, and starves you in the same breath. the fingers bent backwards & acrobat-like. thin and undeserving. the mouth pulled into a taut line. a telephone wire, birdless & humming. craving touch, like the tip of a wing. the horizon upon which, these bone-tired mornings are fleeting. a sudden shock of white, & maybe you’d like me better like that. my body turned inside out. my body in the distance. my body a suggestion of light. and the light is plenty here, gutted & left brutally maimed, its spine crushed & heels chafed. its resolve skinned alive.

a human shield

split-lip autumn. i’m only ever half-awake but i never sleep. my eyelids an afterthought, turned translucent as a prayer made in an empty room. gardenias sprout from the backs of my knees, the sky stretches bone-like & skeletal. i spend all of august with someone else’s skin stuck in between my teeth. october is the silence that follows. pronounced, more felt than seen. like those neighborhood kids with their faces like jack-o-lanterns. the dead bird i found on my front porch on tuesday. i miss michigan and its odd weather. the stars outranked. the wounded light. the shallow cut in my forearm. the way it felt [like a primal rage] like my faulty sternum plugged out of its socket. a pulmonary blackout. because i said ‘i want you to love me,’ and you said ‘no, not today’ [&—the damage was formidable]. a linear regression. the heart an animal bleeding out on its side. the spine reshaped; used as an ore. & i could drain every lake we ever swam in as kids & i could reach out to touch you as long as there’s stained glass in between us (a church in between us). & i could throw my body in front or your body & still i couldn’t get you to want me.

October 18th,

I cannot love without violence. My hands are bound behind my back and the air is thin where my wrist meets yours—like fog hanging over a grim florida sky. And the hanging is the easiest part. By which I mean, I saw my reflection at the butcher shop, and I thought about how I must be ruining us both. I must be ruining us both. By which I mean, I am a bloodletting. Rendered red & bad meat. And It’s not an exaggeration when I say this feels like fucking stigmata. This feels like a crucifixion. My head lowered and the exposed air spitting salt into the cut. And God, I’ve been thinking a lot about my ex, lately. We used to curl up on my ex boyfriend’s grandmother’s spare sofa with her mangy little cat between us. He was functionally deaf and had three legs. And she would sit us down on that god awful floral-print sofa and pour us ginger tea. She’d tell us about how his previous owners had given him a funny name, one that meant prince in Urdu or something. My ex boyfriend didn’t like cats. He didn’t like cats but he always made sure the cat was fed, anyway. And I thought that was why I loved him. I loved his small kindnesses, the way his jawline felt underneath my fingers, how he always wore his shirt collars up, but mostly because I thought he had beautiful eyes. And I thought, maybe if I could have something beautiful love me, I could diffuse all this negative space. And I wanted to be beautiful, too. But I stayed empty, and the sky grew errant and half-demolished by the setting sun, and I still phone his grandmother sometimes. And I’m sorry for the hurt I’ve caused you. It must sting like a bitch, I know. You deserve better than a slit throat and a machine gun and knuckles that throw themselves against your door at 3 am begging to be let in. You deserve the moon, and all of its phases, too. A gibbous throat and crescents sitting in your lungs and a full heart. Rabid with light. Maybe I will never learn to be anything other than concave. A skinned husk with all of its innards cleaved whole in a butcher shop window. And how I look at my ex now and think: fuck you, I did this for me. And this morning, I was at the 7-11 down the road and I was talking to the cashier, and I told her about my empty, and she said that she was the same kind of empty as me. And I bought six packets of spearmint chewing gum.

auspicious day. and i have touched the light that clings to your shoulder, like a moth against a glass window. once again, i sleep without the peace that comes with sleep. i am slack-jawed & tired. the sky abovehead is stagnant. a hot glass of milk left on the table. a light left on in your childhood bedroom. the ceiling with the peeling plaster, and the fan that stares at u all day. you long to be something other than concave. an emancipated limb. a frail shadow. you are retched with longing. heaving into the sink, white fingertips sprawled out. your loneliness is a gas leak. it spills & spills & spills from you. you watch starry-eyed lovers on the train back home. you want the bone and the marrow of it, too. your emptiness pulled out of bed & shot down in broad daylight. you want hands that warm yours when it’s cold out. u rediscover fire. starved touch. a glow that stirs half-awake and kisses you back.

8.26 PM.

I hate my poetry. I don’t like the things I write. They feel scripted, drawled out in a monotone by a deadpan newscaster on a lazy Sunday morning. “And there were 57 injured, 13 dead.”  I sit in my bed and stare at the wall all day. It’s comforting. I think I’m starting to really like the colour white. It has nothing to offer, nothing to grab. It is not greedy hands or a smile on the way to work. It just exists and is nothing. I think about that a lot. About nothing. About how freeing it must be to not have to be. What’s the stupidest animal again? I don’t know, I’m uneducated about things. I cut my finger on a blade and googled how to stop the bleeding. The bleeding never stops. The outside world makes me nauseous. I don’t remember  when the sun set today but it’s already dark out. I watch the cat outside my window and wonder what it would be like to be a cat. I want the world at my feet. I want nothing at all. I spent over 6 and a half hours on Youtube today. How embarrassing. No, yeah. I forgot to text back. Sorry about that. Haven’t thought about my ex best friend in years. I don’t want to die but I think being alive is a lot of hard work. What’s the difference between seeing happiness as a destination and seeing happiness as a journey? Neither of which is real, anyway. Because happiness isn’t real but the way I feel when I take my first sip of coffee is and maybe that’s the same thing. Probably not. At night, I can’t sleep but dreaming is nice. My dreams are ostracising, pull me out of my own picture. I am the runt of the herd. I am formless. I want someone’s fist to meet my face because I’d like to meet the violence halfway. I’m sorry I missed class, I’m sorry that people know me, I don’t want to be known. What’s left in the absence of knowledge? Was there anything to learn in the first place?

In midautumn, the sun sits heavy in the sky. Spine curled up and in on itself. Face paling, almost as if it knows that it is unwanted. That momentarily, it does not belong. The sky ripe with caramel colours and there’s all this careful light splayed out in all of the strangest spots. Beyond your bedroom curtains and underneath the edge of your elbow and tucked behind your ear in the evenings. 22 feels like a deboning, all that careful light sitting in ur garden pulling my ribs out one by one. I don’t talk to anyone from 10th grade, anymore. I don’t listen to music the way I used to or maybe I’m just forgetting the lyrics to every song that got me through high school. I don’t say ‘I love you’ and mean it. My voice stretches and stretches like a declining sunset off a deadend highway and soon enough it’s just blackness. Sparse stars, a light left on in the kitchen but the home empty. Growing cold, growing skeletal. On a late Sunday morning I think about getting on a train, finding a home in the mountains somewhere. I want to plant hogweed and mulberries and I want to drink raspberry tea only. I want to forget this lonely apparition of a life. My hands are still small but I’m a far cry from 17. Back when life used to be warm, honeyed down the throat. All that careful light concentrated in my limbs. A guiding hand on my back easing me into sleep. The sky vast and open. Ripe, fruit-like & waiting to be plucked. But I’m breathing lakewater and J and I haven’t talked in months and I miss the comfort of the hot springs in Arkansas. And I’ve given up on so many dreams.

after the rain

slow, pent up morning. hot milk warming my tongue. a crow flickers in and out of sight. my neighbor’s dog whines. somewhere, the world is ending, by which i mean, it’s storming in Oklahoma right now. and have you heard the news, the terrible news? are you prepared for what might follow? do you still hold your breath under your tongue like a concealed weapon? i wish to be druid-like & never there, the empty space in between fingertips. i wish to be small-boned & noiseless & like the static in the air before it rains. before it rains and rains and rains and our ribs are flooding with it. i read somewhere that hyenas are not cruel, simply misunderstood. and that the lion king lied. i think we’re too quick to jump to conclusions. i think we’re afraid of things we deem ugly because we’re afraid to See ourselves for what we really are. rotten & quick to bleed. the sky’s blue-grey and it reminds me of the summer we caught mudbugs at the lake & j’s eyes. stillwater-like. reeling. i’m going to fall asleep on the kitchen table. my hands too fragile to hold. there must’ve been a black bird in my window, but the world moves it out of sight.

1/10/19

i’ll learn to be small. i’ll learn to be quiet. i’ll stop asking things of the world, i promise. i’ll be the husk of a moth on a dust-rimmed wooden tile. i’ll be the flickering kitchen light. i’ll split the universe open down the middle & carve an X into its chest & when it says “ouch, that hurt” and curls up on its side i’ll walk away from the murder. i’ll stop asking for things i can’t have, i promise. i won’t demand anything of the sky or its trembling knees. i’ll bite down on my tongue; swallow it whole. i’ll be an apparition in the mirror. i’ll be a late october chill. i will close my fist so tight the white of my knuckles will be all that remains of me. i’ll be Nowhere. a childhood bedroom forgotten. all my 22 years of growth or a crucial lack there of. i’ll be a primal regression, a sad inching back. i’ll delete every poem i ever Wrote about you i’ll be Covert. i’ll be two fingers crossed behind your back i’ll be Liquid sunlight. on warm waters. i’ll be a child gone missing i’ll be listening to ‘nobody’ by mitski on repeat for 4 days. i’ll be blue. a picture of a moon in a storybook. bent nose, soft eyelids. see, i’d very well like to be Nonexistent. the bee that bit into sweet skin and died instantly. the mouth never meant for speaking; the teeth rotten and skeletal. the body that sits down in the middle of the road and patiently awaits being run over. the thin, frail light. the pulled curtain. a body that is not a body so much as a silhouette of one in white chalk. caution tape & police sirens. i won’t Write about you. i won’t write. i’ll keep the words in my throat until they make me sick. i’ll hold back. i’ll say, here, you can have all of me. or none of me. i throw an ultimatum like a knife that never lands its target. i become a lake. i become a dried leaf in autumn. i have nothing. Left to Give anymore. nothing makes any sense. i’ll just close my eyes. i’ll run screaming into the woods. i’ll be an incomplete thought. i’ll wake up and i’ll take it back. i’ll take it all back. the hurt and the spit and the body bag. i’ll listen to my ribs hum. and nothing. not even the stars with their eyes rolled back into their heads--will be the same.