LIKE VICTORIANS EGYPTOMONIA, I THIGHMANIA

I obey the sovereign state of your thighs. I allow myself 
to be ruled under the cruel Emperor. No democracy, 
I live and languish in your birthright, thightocracy.  
The only vote is for your thighs. The body politic 
starts with it. I behave best in the monarchy
between your thighs. Who needs liberty when I have the jail
of your thighs? The sci-fi of your thighs. I build a temple.
I wear white lace and am devoted to your thighs, make 
a votive. Like Crocodopolis, I mummify and deify. I am 
the high thigh priestess of your body. Worshiping the ham 
of you. I light candles for your thighs. Go on pilgrimages. 
Recite the sacred papers. Into the night quote passages. 
Study the cryptology of your thighs. Pretend 
the night is young and put my head between 
your thighs. Pretend the night is late and let your thighs 
become my fate.  Our erotic games, names, playful exchanges
could only go so far. When you wanted to give me a taste. 
You’d send me photos of your thighs. Heartbeats 
between the sheets where I dive. Give me the fetish, 
the crocodilian weight of your legs. The tooth resting
place called your legs. There is nourishment. 
Camouflage the milk inside my head with visions of your legs. 
When I am sick compel me with the broth, the medicine, 
of your legs. When I am scared send me the apotropaic magic. 
When I am bad sit me down and spank me on the flank. Some 
kind of bread. I am fed. When I am dead, O bury me in your legs.

BOTOX CENTO

If you told me that I literally had to eat poop every single day and I would look younger, I might.

— Kim Kardashian

All things change in a dynamic environment. Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you.

— Ghost in the Shell

Robobitch, robopathology. We are still stuck in the crack 
between empowerment feminism and reality. I suffered 

because of the way my body looked. Beauty is over. 
A stripper who wouldn’t stop at the clothes. She continued 

with old useless flesh. She pulled off one bloodless strip 
after another. Problems swallowing, speaking, breathing. 

Loss of strength; overall muscle weakness. I’d hated my body 
for years, felt both obscured and exposed by it, and subjected 

it to many acts that others wanted irrespective of my desires. 
Confusion over the boundaries between self and technological 

system. Double-vision; blurred vision; drooping eyelids. Culture 
depicts women as the signs of objects but not usually the processors

or subjects of knowledges. Here women and computers are structurally 
equivalent: friendly to users, not themselves users. She’d used up 

the currency of a youthful face. The frozen look—remember, youthful 
faces move—a maternal or feminine body to be penetrated, but up 

and manipulated in quests to appropriate and control resources. 
The relation between organism and machine has been a border war.

Women’s bodies are already ‘transitional objects.’ All humans 
are cyborgs all cyborgs are sharp shards of sky wrapped in meat. 

Not all humans are ready to call themselves glass stalactites pissing 
the bed. Loss of bladder control. Youth and beauty are not 

accomplishments. They're the temporary happy byproducts of time 
and/or DNA. Feeling as ugly as you feel, feeling your doom as you are. 

You’re looking at a manifestation of a connection so deep 
and rooted that it’s more real than I am. You’re looking at my face.

“Botox Cento” Sources: Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory, Cyborgs, and Cyberspace Ed. Wolmark, , Susanna Schrobsdorff  “Justine Bateman’s Aging Face and Why She Doesn’t Think it Needs Fixing”, Melissa Febos’ “The Feminist Case for Breast Reduction”, Diane Seuss’s “Beauty is Over”, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Botox Warning Label, Lauren Valenti & Chloe Atkins “Here’s What You Need to Know About Preventative Botox in Your 20’sDonna Harroway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”, Franny Choi “Turing Test_Love”, Carrie Fisher Tweet Dec 29th, 2015 9:51pm, Katie Berta “I Realized Skincare Would Not Save My Life.”

AN EROTIC GAME WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS

I am only yours when you’re not looking at me.
When you do look, I try to belong to someone else.

The only real danger is the imitation of the imitation.
If you fall in love with her, she’s a decoy for me. Meaning, 

she’s all of me except for me. My necro-crystal sister, 
I’m a decoy of a woman. A poor symbol. Rapid decoy decay.

I refuse to enter my body into the system of language 
where you write me next to every other woman you’ve met. 

I’m a champagne slit. You cannot drink. The ice age 
between us, within. Enigmatic megafauna. Molten come 

lava. If you really can’t touch me, I’ll be fine. The safest place 
to drink in this town is the church bushes. Don’t ask me 

how I know that. But if you see me there keep walking.

I WANT TO TELL YOU LOVE IS CASTLE

SEX IS A PLANET, AND WE ARE ALL DOGS

WITH VERY SPECIAL LEASHES

I bleed for months at the temple doorways so you’ll let me in. 
I am tracing the vermillion border of your lips with my finger.

We are warm dunes of Martian pink snow. I want to know, 
what would you get on your knees for? I haven’t asked because

the answer is not me. You are trying to control time. Slow it. 
Speed it. Like a nature documentary in reverse, you burgeon 

then seed. Why know me, then strange me? Why not keep me 
strange and never know? The sun rises the same way on days 

I’ve told lies. You lean in to touch and kiss my sinister side.
Tonight, the moon is eel skin wrapped in cellophane, 
or a dancing cartoon elephant whispering:

be warned, I have barely any tenderness left. 
Tho, I’d give you what I have, if you asked for it

THE QUEEN OF THE UNCHOSEN

It was a mistake to think pain connected us. 
We met in a dark cycle. Venus in Leo.

I should have known in the end all you’d want is innocence. 
The girl you chose has little armor, little hurt.

I saw a snake give birth to ash when you turned away.
I was trying to teach you something. You think you know 

but you do not know about me. Are you listening? 
I am the widowmaker, like my father said. So soft and

open, bugs go in and out like I’m a spirit, and I am.
But I am also bleeding into the new year. In the end 

I am so porous anything that wants to get in 
will make a home. Grief, pain, the worm of nothingness 

boring more nothing inside of my softness. You’ll want me 
when I’m so open anyone can have me. 

I’ll be royalty by then. A reflection
of the people who love me, the people who loathe me. 
This grief of beetles a crown I wear. 
This sad of crabs, my jewels.

ALL MY HOLES EXCEPT THE ONE IN MY HEART

Their hunger for me invented me. Married couples message me after I become single, and start by saying they’ve always found me attractive. Like they discovered me, like I had never been.

All their FANTAZIES: 
school gurl < < pony gurl < < Princess Leia Rapunzel braid bikini < < 

alligator queen of the Nile < < doming while eating a sub-human

sandwich < < Eiffel-L’arc-De- Triomphe-Humpback-of-Notre -do-me < < 

star-spangled naughty banner < < X-Files with ears and a tail < <

coughing Victorian lace while cuffed < < Kitty Jackie-O < <

FANTASAYY: 
bisexual woman as conduit between two people < <  glass skyway

connecting riverbanks < <  dirt passage between two castle chambers < <

vital stem connects flower and bulb < <  pillar that holds up 

the house where life takes place < < silent egg in the batter that sponges

the cake < <


Curiouser & Curiouser! These couples ask for holes where there are none! Me, a brunette gravitational pit. Spelunk my bitchy chasms. Prospect for pockets. Hunt for keyholes. Open. Open. Wider. Wider. Big enough so their relationship can fit inside me. Galaxy gaze. Wonderlanding. Drink me. Eat me. Paint my roses red. What they really ask for is my early death through opening new holes. Off with my head. 


I have a FANTA-Z: 
Someone asks how I feel at the end of a long day < < 
A beloved reaches underneath a mess sheets to seek my hands, my face, in 
the dark < <


Just now, a voice said, oversharing is giving away energy and keeping secrets is protecting it.

But I am not using protection in this poem.

If I open any wider, make any more holes, I will fall into myself and never climb out. 

Note: This poem previously appeared in Gulf Coast.

THE NIGHT I KNEW I LOVED YOU

I DREAMED I WAS A SMALL HORSE

IN YOUR HAND

I tongue at your seasonal lakes.
                                 Watch the creases
grow in your creeks, 
                                 prehistoric.
The soft minerals, hydrology,
                                 of your hand.
I am a mare
           of your offerings, a mosaic.

Nourished in the longitude
                                 & latitude of you.
Cantering the ecoregions
                                 of your hand,
I nuzzle the palmistry.

Sometimes you tease me,
                                 whisper
show me your horsepower.
                                 I gallop down
your wrists.
                                 This makes you laugh.

The white stars of your teeth
                                 guide me
to the caves of you.
                                 I want you to ride me
but we know
                                           it would crush me

& you don’t want to hurt me,

                                           invalidate
my horse needs,

                                 so you tell me
you’ll try another time.

Will there be another time?
                                   I am precious
not powerless.
                         I threaten to run away. 
You stretch your fingers
                                 out, say go
if you want to go. I snort 
                                 & stamp.
                      You touch my tail.
We are so surreal
                      together, I say,
         caressing your palm

with my hooves.
                    No, we are factual.

But look at us!
                    I cry. I push.
If we were surreal,
                   there would be
a ladder, an elephant,
                   maybe a window,
arrows, something
                   melting. I would know.
I’ve been surreal before
                                          you say.
Oh? I say.
          Oh. You say.

You cup me into the deep
                                    of your palm,
pretend to drink me,
                      which tickles.
I pull your real fingers
                      over me to sleep,
where we dream
                      separate dreams all night

together.