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In The Garden of Eden
I wanted to be touched
The worst part about God reaching inside of you and rummaging around is that he won’t do it again.
Adam, the first man, understood this,
God prodding into his ribs for something to take.
Such violation—
The universe is touching you and you have no recourse—
But the worst part, isn’t that your organs are being parsed over like fruits—no, poor Adam, the worst part is the first time is the last time,
Lie to me, please,
Touch me and make me feel like a person.
On A Nightmare (The Camping Trip From Hell & The Heavens Above)
I am in danger and I know it because I am counting carnations.
I am thinking of all the colors a flower can be, of crossbreeds, and animal crossing
I am lying in my sleeping bag with a flashlight in one hand and a knife in the other.
I know I am in danger because the sun is setting and there are sixteen strange men shrieking around me
And they’re drunk to all hell and twice as high and stalking around the tent
I am texting my best friend with one bar and the crescendo of a snapping heartbeat (they keep on shining their lights thru! / lord, lay me down to sleep like my brother and my father please, they both sleep so gently)
Because I am thinking of carnations, I am thinking of mantras
I am whispering to myself without words, move fast, move accurately,
be quiet, be still, that’s it, you are asleep, as far as they are concerned you are dead, you are the pink and red carnations over a grave that doesn’t exist at this elevation,
I am danger because half of them are buck naked and coked out and high on MDMA and civilization is four miles away in the deep downhill dark
I am watching their flashlights, three feet away, angry, ‘they’re taking up like four fucking miles of camping space’
The word for what they are doing is tormenting
They are pressing their hands against the tent, they are surrounding us with the bulk of them, they are rummaging through our things and they are whispering faintly, so close to me, they see me sitting and they are waiting for me to fall asleep, they are messing with my damp clothes outside, and they are shining their flashlights inside, and they are slurring and shouting and screaming
I am in danger because I am watching dancing shadows and I am just a girl with a knife and a flashlight and shoes outside
And carnations come in white and pink and red and yellow and sometimes purple
I am counting because there’s fuck else to do and we’re in a lake basin and they’re yelling so i’m listening to their echoing
I am placing names to voices—Chaz, Joshua, T-Bone—I am counting yards between the campsites behind us and 9 feet away from us
Move fast, move accurately,
I feel the fear in my teeth
I am counting
I am counting footsteps and people and I am counting campsites and wisping flashes of light and counting my phone battery at 21% and as each guy in the tent to the left drifts asleep
When you’re in enough danger, your body buzzes, your body buzzes and you don’t realize it,
you’re hijacked by impulses—
Sibling and father, now aware,
We’ve got one chance, be quiet, no light, don’t use any light, we’re surrounded by all sides,
Put your shoes on, no—not the flip flops, grab your sleeping bag, put your clothes on, no, don’t take your backpack, grab the car keys,
I’m not tying my shoes fast enough and why are they wet and i am shaking with fear and rage
I am pushing my brother forwards, down towards the lake,
I am thinking of the ground and the pine needles and carnations as we walk so carefully so quickly away
And we stumble like deer over driftwood and fallen logs
And we are in the dark, crawling over the lake like refugees, hoping, praying, that there will be no tripping
Don’t slip, walk carefully, walk slowly
We are moving fast now, we are on the other side of the lake and we are darting through trees,
We are moving fast because we have to
I am ducking beneath and I am used to the dark because there’s no choice not to be
Climbing up to the rock on the far side of the lake, closest to the island sitting in the center, what should’ve been our campsite to be, a place to see everything,
We are whispering
From up here we will surely see them coming
My phone is at 18% and I am sending GPS coordinates to my best friend and telling them that if I don’t contact them by 4 am to
CALL 911
I am crouching low and hiding behind a tree because there can be no light, we cannot let them see, we cannot let them see where we might be,
No light, no light, say it over to yourself until you feel it
I am in danger and I am clutching onto the thought of carnations
I am standing watch while my brother and father are sleeping
I will see them coming,
I will see their lights bouncing
And I will hear them moving
God knows they understand fuck all about subtlety
You reach a point of such quiet,
where you aren’t breathing, your lungs are moving and there’s oxygen reaching, but it’s soft and insistent
like summer rain or anger
I am seething and it’s so quiet I’m listening to individual ripples in the water
I am staring at the sky and the faint cloudy bands of the milky way, because it is dark but I still can see their dying light this far away
And the stars are beautiful and everything is cold and awful
I am aligning the stars with the horizon line,
when that one dips an hour has passed
look that one’s gone and that means it’s 1 am
go back to sleep, now,
I know the rocks and the dirt hurt, brother,
both of you go back to bed
The stars are falling
And I am watching
I will watch until the morning, I promise you,
I won’t let anything
bad happen.
La Rana
Frog daughter,
you were so beautiful once
you are not allowed to be natural
nor are you allowed to be artificial
Oh poor tadpole baby,
baptized in rivers of convention before you were born
wondering “why aren’t i pretty”
“why don’t i look like the white girls on tv”
they put borax in the water and convinced you the poison was your fault
until it was a conviction,
until it was pure and unequivocal hatred
told you to “reclaim” your femininity
when you weren’t even aware you’d lost it
they took your skin and sold it back to you at 15% off
they stole your body and your beauty and marketed it back to you wholesale
they ranked you by mid to fuckable—porn category to fetish and now you can’t even exist—
Poor frog daughter,
always watched and never wanted
you were so beautiful once.
Not Beating The Yearning Allegations With This One
The most natural inclination in the world is to be upset because you want something.
I am upset at myself for going back to bad habits,
I am upset at myself for wanting to touch the stove burner a second time
I want the lemonade from six years ago and the sunlight when I was thirteen and everything I can’t have
What you want is fundamentally different from what you need
I am clutching at my chest with a racing heart and the sudden realization that I may die in my sleep and all I want to do is go back to when I was three (nevermind the bad parts or the black spots in memory)
And none of this mattered
I am upset at myself for chipping a tooth again
I am upset at myself for scraping my chin for the thousandth time
What I need is bactine, bandaids, and maybe therapy or maybe I should take up drinking or maybe I should consider learning
It is upsetting to find yourself wanting,
downright humiliating
Look at all this hunger,
whatever will you do with it?
Your Very First Memory (You’ve Already Forgotten It, But I’ll Remember For You)
You were born when all the alarms went off. Three days after, the power was slammed shut by an avalanche and we sat in the dark because propane was mighty expensive in ’05.
You were born from your crying mother, and like any good imitator, took after her and began screaming.
Your very first entry into this world was a howl.
You were born when snow was still on the ground, even though the crocuses were coming up. You were born, on the edge of nowhere and somewhere, caught between the juncture of the furthest edge of the world and modernity.
When they bundled you up, they bundled you tight, cause the winter, just like you, had a tendency to bite. You didn’t have your teeth yet, but we knew it, because, goddamn, was it in your lineage.
You were born in a bathtub. You were born drowning. You weren’t born dead and you weren’t born alive. You were born dying. You were born under a bad sign in a birthing center, ten minutes and ten thousand dollars from a hospital. You were new and perfect like a good exit wound. And you were new and perfect to hold, to cherish, to wrestle into the dirt, to toss into the snow, to cradle.
When we took you home to that trailer park and you slept in the car seat, we hefted you with one arm inside and laid you down to sleep on the couch with the radio played low. You slept through the snowstorm, the salmon killing, the crocuses blooming in the front yard, and the gunshots, and the car crashes, and the drunk neighbors.
And you slept through the avalanche, too.
Nothing bad has happened yet.
Everything bad has already happened.
Ruby Beach
For the first time in a long time, the world is calm
Yes, the waves are cold and scrutinizing and imperceptibly fast
But we can taste the mist,
The four of us
The coastline stretches on for miles
I take pictures of all of you, because I don’t know how else to love you
Two of us, wise beyond our years
Two of us, young and free
I stood in the saltwater waiting for you here
It was too cold to swim and I laughed when one of you forgot your shirt and wandering eyes followed you in confusion when it started to rain
We got wet anyways
Stripped down to my underwear in forty degree weather
Soaked jeans and sandpaper flip flops and
we’re all just children masquerading the grown—
listening to Jimi Hendrix on the ride home and talking about the election
The fog’s coming up on the edges of the world
But that’s okay, because, just for a moment, we’ll be here
Time Loop: 1971, Saigon
Apocalypse at the edges of the eye
Fill my mouth with water and napalm
Strike me twice
And I’ll be yours forever
My favorite parasite
Oh you’re so bad for me, baby
Got eyes like bullet casings and twice as worse of a cigarette habit
¿Qué se hace, mi amor?
We’ve been here before
We’ve done this a thousand times and more
Orange and green and purple and blue smoke signals
Watch my insides explode like fireworks
At the end of the world, the smoke’s rising
But that’s okay
It’s all a meaningless loop anyway
a/n: apocalypse now playing in the background, rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead by tom stoppard and borderlands/la frontera by gloria anzaldúa on the table, random bruise on my thigh, tab on my laptop about parasitic mating and anglerfish from nat geo, water bottle on the table with a mr. orange sticker from reservoir dogs, ramona vance's ambient concept album 'this world is upside down', and the sound of gunshots down the street
If One More Person Says “God Doesn’t Make Mistakes” I Am Going To Beat The Brakes Off You In An IHOP Parking Lot
A man from my parents’ church was killed in a car accident yesterday.
I am thirteen years old.
I think I stopped believing in god when I learned why drunk drivers usually survive fatal crashes
It’s because their bodies are loose
If you’re going to be rear-ended, get loose
If you’re going to end up in a three car pileup along the unforgiving roadside, get loose
If you’re going to die,
get loose
The year he died the world got quieter when his mother picked between casket and cremation
The year he died the world got a little bit sicker
They rented out the town hall
Put his face on a projector
Ate M&Ms in the parking lot, angry at god
For a man I’d spoken two sentences to
For having to be at a funeral for the young
You reach a certain point of grief
where even your cells need consoling
Elbow to elbow
Melt into the mint green covered concrete
Must’ve been a thousand people mourning
Well over ninety percent believers in the omnipresent
‘God loves him’ - sacrilegious self-serving pat on the shoulder move your hands elsewhere
but he couldn’t save him.
why not?
he was only 27
Drunk driver, oh you motherfucker
Posted bail and with your loose loser body and scrubbed away every trace of yourself
And skipped town
When I graduated highschool, they held the afterparty in the same room
The walls were white now (get loose, get loose)
All the adults ate Safeway cookies at your funeral and sobbed the whole time
They will comfort themselves with copious amounts of religion and fucking and drinking in their cars when they think nobody is looking
We were pissed off at angels and circumstance and the universe and atoms and everything that had ever existed and nobody would admit it
Reception is in the same room
Lean up against a table in formal wear
There are tears and snot everywhere
Poor son, on a stairway to heaven
Stares down from the stars (that’s not what death is, it’s a cut to black, it’s one final dream, it’s the recycling of energy—get loose, get loose)
His mother still weeps for him but she doesn’t cry anymore
She’d like to be angry
But she doesn’t have it in her
Instead, she will sit with the crumpled black and white pamphlet of her son’s face in the hallway
and breathe
First her husband
Now you
(Later, her second son will join you)
You died in 2019 on the 101
In a head-on
Your mother
Dreams of seeing you in paradise
But god keeps on taking her babies away
Litany I & II
The following is based on a true story:
In 1969, the bridge hadn’t been built yet
Poor Araceli, mother of five
By the time they pulled the third child out of the river
She had collapsed,
Clutching at her chest
Clawing at the skirts
Betrayal of a sinking truck, a selfish impatient man, and a husband
Poor Araceli, mother of five and three dead bodies
Back then, it was only a trail down the mountains from El Salvador down to Tequila
Only burros and donkeys and horses alike—maybe a truck sometimes
Three hours wayside
Husband hitched a ride, told his wife and children get inside
Piled into the cab next to the smoking driver
When they called in divers, we smelled it first
The smell of rot
Of the third son, so young
Ay, the six month old, the one she had last summer, widow next door whispers
As they dragged his bloated body through the street
It was only a raft in 1969
Poor Araceli gone to church
Whole town’s come to pray
A thousand hail marys
We will pray until we are sick
We will pray until those poor children are in heaven
One person goes first—ninety nothing prayers—the next starts to lead
Lord bless these poor babies
All we had was prayers to give
Baptized in the rivers of Amatitán
Raft unbalanced as it tips over the side
Sending the family of seven wayside still inside
When they announced it on the radio that the divers found the third child
And Araceli looked at her two young children left in guilt
And stood quiet as they told her, we found his head stuck in the back window of the
This is punishment for surviving
This is the punishment for living
Lightning’s struck twice and god’s abandoned poor Araceli
Come town crier,
She’s a victim of a man’s hurried desire
To get across a river
Whose bridge had been embezzled and immolated seven times over before it was born
Bribe the priest
To bless the funeral and bury an unbaptized baby
Husband sits so perfectly, so angry as they lower them in their final restings
Poor Araceli,
Sits vacant-eyed
Husband can no longer speak to her
Mother in-law combs her hair, ushers her here and there
I’m afraid there’s just nothing that can be done here
Mother of mothers could not save her
We buried her about a year after.
Litany II
In 1969,
The truck driver fled
Scared of being strung up for his ways
Returns
After the family is long gone
They are all publicized relics now
Twists his foot inside the widow’s door
My love, mi amor
Fucks her while guilt or maybe narcissism or maybe the fact they should've gone one by one—family first, then the truck, then continue on—eats him from the inside
Smoking rolled cigarettes and drinking a fifth
He's got a scar on his lip
From the last man's wife
Son plays soccer outside
So childish and so immersed in violence
Teenage boys getting drunk under orange trees and fighting and crying like lost babies
They have all seen men die before the age of eighteen
It’s depressing, really
Sitting in a sleazy bar,
Drunken, bragging about all the girls he’s done before
Son sits with his friends
Listening to his unrepentance
Oh look, here comes the widow’s name
Out of his mouth
I wonder what the son will do now
Get my mother’s name out,
Laughter
Carries on talking about the boy’s mother in this manner—
Storms out
He’s hotblooded and he’s got the anger and the firepower to prove it
Cantinas carry a collection of bullet holes around these parts
Today, there’s another one
Marking the spot in the bar
Where a son shot the truck driver
We ducked beneath tables and watched him bleed.
Ojo por ojo.
Diente por diente.
Dead daddy’s pistol served its purpose
And so the son flees
And the world continues on, furious and bloody
Families fractured, saints delivered, guilty guns and well-loved widows
Mother of mothers, come save them
Pray over each of their caskets
May they each find their way to damnation
May they each find their way to salvation
Mother Mary, if we are born to die,
please let it be nice
In the early 2000s, the Puente de Amatitán-El Salvador was finally built.
Today there is a dam. Today there is a road. Today there is a bridge.
This does nothing for them.
Growing Pains
Strippin’ my clothes off because it’s too damn hot
I was seventeen when I ate the world
and spit it back out
Run my tongue along the wet lines of my jagged gums
Killing things is heritable in my family
Some people’s genes require
The pulling of teeth
Not me, I was born with this wideness
Carry my wisdom teeth in my mouth like wounds that’ll never heal
Rub lime and salt into ’em to make it stick
Felt them budding in the back of my jaw when I was just a child
Growing pains, they’re growing pains, my mother’d say as I tipped my head back, possessed, at the kitchen table trying to will it away
Shimmery sweat sticks to my skin, I was born into sin—
And I am thinking about dead things and the vacant deer on the side of the highway and the salt of my mouth and the salt of the earth
Father of my father’s father—a murderer—found himself dead—
His son,
wrangling anger and his children
beating the desire to tear into them
My father slaughters
a deer—i’m going too far back let’s skip near the present—a pig
crucifies it like he’s still catholic
hangs everything he kills upside down and does what he knows
Over and over,
killing things since we were just babies
chewing on the world cause it never gave us anything or made us worth remembering
Where does this cycle
stop
I would like to think it ends with me
But, lord, I know that I am born to eat