Lucy the Fuckdoll
There is a box on my porch / too wide to get my arms
around. / I shove it / upstairs. This box slaps / a reminder
of how fucking stupid / you are. I assume you forgot /
to cancel my birthday / present, so now I’ll have to thank
you / for mailing your heartbreak / straight to my front
door. Knife cuts / tape — reveals box within box — / reveals white box and
disembodied / torso. In hot pink / letters: Fuck Me Silly. / I panic / re-wrap
the boxes / knowing you won’t notice, / your idiocy a blessing / for once. She
is entombed / on my table and I can’t / resist. I Google the torso:
She comes in two flavors. She is easy
to clean when you’re done fucking her
NEVER say no holes. She won’t talk
back like your last woman. You can
hide her under your bed or in your
closet. She is always down. Pleasure
in her authentic feel, better than real
pussy. You can flip her on her back
& fuck her with no condom, no
commitment, & no bullshit.
My brain spins red flags. / You live with your parents /
and which closet will you lock her in? / You made a separate Amazon
account / just for this purchase. / Tonight, Ruth Bader Ginsberg Guy will
moan, / his mouth between my legs, counting how many / times I cum. You /
spent $300 on a fuck toy / when you don’t have a job.
My phone buzzes. Your text:
I have a very important package
arriving today. Can you please
leave the box on the porch?
My Ex-Husband Ponders How He Can Live Without Me During Season 10, Episode 24 of Grey’s Anatomy
He posits this just as Cristina prepares to leave.
When she reminds Meredith that she —
not her dreamy, neurosurgeonwiththegoodhair husband —
is the sun, the nucleus of potential,
the brightest star, the possibility
of destruction. I had always seen myself
as Cristina, but in this metaphor, he has cast us
both as Meredith, blind to our own solar energy.
If he is the sun, then I am bioluminescent
plankton, aroused primarily by my own hand.
Then I am mold & fermenting yeast & mushrooms
sporing in a gloomy basement & a bat
colony — possibly vampiric — & anthrax
& crocodiles & voles & the entire plot of Blindness,
which he think was written by Julianne Moore.
If I am the sun, then he is desert
sand, suffocating in its own inferno.
Then he is my great-great-great Aunt Flora’s
thermostat, always set to 80. Then he is
the dust bowl & broccoli someone planted
next to concrete & newborn skin & all the times the moon
forgot it was August & a bloated lizard drowned in a resort pool.
If we are both the sun, then we are imminent
drought. Dust devils masquerading as oases.
Meditations on the Lines “She Listens Like Spring, But She Talks Like June” from Drops of Jupiter by Train
Even a well-executed escape must end eventually.
Red giants with painted lips orbit
solitude’s last chill: space between her ribs growing
more luminous, more electric.
Who could have known that loss was a palpable thing: a cosmic scream
or a shuttle that orbits an inhabited planet,
sends love notes to land, cutting-edge engine trembling. At the planet’s response,
it sputters, becomes space dust.
Wonder: that sensation she’d almost forgotten,
like how to curl your body into another body like a ringed
moon. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she heard
agonizing silence, but saw star clusters. Said,
There is somewhere a firework pushing through
black holes. There is somewhere the galaxy
is not fractal. There is somewhere a nova
discovering fire.
An Open Letter from Gretel to Ursula
We sang in underwater castles while hurricanes raged
ships. We slithered through
wreckage in pursuit of broken promises.
Let me tell you about voice and glory:
soundless bubbles, puppy love, unconvincing
and foolish, leveraged by girls
against their own power. No, home is not your wish.
More like women written without claws for hearts,
freedom from hunger, a life
unobstructed by trees. Your wish:
a father who would not suffer
your abandonment; bread crumbs
made from hand grenades. Yours is the tortured
wish of a prisoner, eager to rusty blade her own arms
if it means she can save her body. Child,
that urge is only shadow. It is not real.
Contour your shoulder blades, escape
your bars, and keep your fire
burning. We have lost so much already:
drowned it or left it in vast forests,
like the last of our best memories,
which now only come to us as dreams. Remember,
lost is just another word for begin.
We are already everything. Let us sing.
Hydria
after Hieu Minh Nguyen
At least a small part of me is still the myth
I use to nightmare myself into loneliness.
Kiln-fired hydria, beasts of burden
dragged into its wet skin with sharp
precision. A man once offered me money
to let him feed me. He had fantasies
about where the food ended and his fingers
began, a prurient itch to accidentally
be chewed up and digested. How easy
it would have been to let my teeth slip
on the raging skin of his hand, provide the expected
laugh and lustrous gaze as I licked each digit
clean. Isn’t that what I always wanted?
To be naked and shelved and looked upon
with desire? Rotund
muse, an open, uncovered vessel,
reverent and delicate, even just for a moment.