wyrdwind

Do It Weird

The best roommate I ever had,

after we hung out twice,

showed up at my apartment

one year later, after hackin’

into the university mainframe

to find my address

and said

“I love you.

Let’s be roommates.”

To be clear,

she already had a place,

she just decided

she’d rather live with me.

And since that sure was somethin’

I said alright.

One night

on the other side of our studio

in the dark she asked,

“Do you cry yourself to sleep a lot?”

“…yeah.”

“Wanna go get ice cream?”

You know what, “Yeah.”

Look, neither of us

were playin’ with a full deck,

firin’ on all cylinders, you know,

so, midnight ice creams, drivin’ ’round,

pinky promised to always eat dinner

together no matter what was goin’ on,

takin’ turns to cook,

kept her dick conveyor belt

out the house, always checked in

clockwork like I was her pimp

or her mom.

Runnin’ from the cops,

trickin’ the nastiest creeps

we could find on Craigslist

into the Mandarin Buffet parkin’ lot

for a bit o’ booby trap,

watchin’ on our bellies from the balcony

like catfish Batmans.

She always made me eggs and coffee

when I was up late writin’ essays,

with cheese, for my brain.

Held her hand

for her lady appointments

literally.

Broke my classmate’s windshield

because he thought “group project”

meant “date”

just for a dramatic escape.

When the day came

to part ways, she revealed

(formally) that she had BPD

and had been off her meds

the entire time.

I was like,

yeah.

How was it?

She said all the worst

symptoms were so much less

when I was around. Manageable.

Didn’t have confidence in herself

until now. Her former psychologist,

appointed by her guardian

hadn’t kept her best interest

at heart. Their goal

had been to compel docility. Compliance.

Like how hospitals, when faced

with a woman in agony,

are more likely to administer

sedatives or tranquilizers

instead of pain killers.

There’s a difference,

and it’s sinister.

No, we weren’t normal.

Nope not at all.

But we sure were

somethin’.

(She found a better shrink

and better meds

by the way.)

Show Your Work

A professor almost accused me

of plagiarism. He wanted proof

that I didn’t copy my essay

word for word

from a professionally published paper.

What he got

was a notebook doodle read

Dionysus v. Pentheus

with a mess o’ swirls explodin’ off

the former, one daisy sproutin’

off the D. My boy got a flower

’cause he’s good.

Pentheus got nothin’

’cause fuck him.

I am a simple woman.

I do not take notes.

My concepts and theses emerge

fully formed from the sea foam.

Have I mentioned

this class

was at 8am?

No.

I do not show up

when it’s borin’, especially

if it’s a sausage fest, I do not

enter class discussion

with people who tense

at the word

anarchist.

I sit down

for a written final

and do it in iambic pentameter,

drop two sonnets at the end,

and hope extra credit

neutralizes the attendance score.

Proof.

The nerve.

Like men ain’t imprison

every woman alive, invent church, order cheek swabs,

blood tests, have the whole court watch ’em fuck,

just so they can tell themselves

they’re the father

and still skip child support.

‘Bout to choke your ass

with this umbilical cord.

Sober

It’s hard to explain

unless you’ve been,

I’d walk around in the cold

cryin’ all night, not loud, just

breathin’, frozen tracks down my face.

Nearly every night. Like my ancestors

said you gotta keep movin’ or die.

Waves and waves of gnawin’ ache.

So if I struggled, a stranger by day,

that’s why.

For this there’s no name.

No substance to blame. I don’t do drugs,

I just cry. Sorry, gotta go,

it’s high tide. I know,

a few minutes ago I was fine.

Got chilled green tea bags

for my eyes.

There was a woman

I meant to be, but she was not

inside.

There’s a moment

at first light when the tears

are spent. Refracted beams

through heavy, glistenin’ lashes,

a dewy dawn palette and birds

peep, chitter, and stir. Fog wisps.

It’s not numb.

We made it.

Have I mentioned

that class

was at 8am?

Fuck.

OCEAN

Theory is,

your core personality, your nature,

is more or less established

between ages five and eight,

by which time your subconscious

has achieved summation of your environment,

knows what you must become

to survive.

If your caregivers were responsive,

showed genuine delight in your presence.

This is your root, your medicine.

Change

beyond this point, purposeful or perverse,

requires extraordinary duress,

extreme effort.

Our acronym means:

Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion,

Agreeableness, Neuroticism.

Most of my friends

have been bright, vibrant, warm

and loud. Saw a hideous gutter bird

and said that’s my girl.

The sunniest spot

of my college career

was the most well adjusted person

I have ever met. Not without skeletons.

Discovered I too grew up on a diet

of Within Temptation and Theatre of Tragedy

and kept a bottle of olive oil on the toilet tank

and knew right away

we were soulmates. We’d always

get along. That was it.

I was her person.

And you know me by now.

I was built to boo up.

I love to love.

Grandpa just about never

put me down

So there we were,

proper meals and all,

if she put her hand in mine

all a sudden now and then

that’s just how it go.

A massive bang shook the store,

everythin’ went dark, and both

of us immediately grabbed each other

with our off-hands

and weapons in the right. Full Neanderthal.

‘Bout to go ape shit some fool pop out.

Didn’t occur to me until she said so,

’bout her havin’ PTSD. Said it was less

when I was around. That was somethin’.

Well of course, with her big heart, determined

as Dawn dish soap on oil tarred feathers,

we were sittin’ at Starbucks

talkin’ ’bout class and she said

that on the surface I was like

a corpse pterodactyl with spikes and poison,

cold as moonlight, basically a demon.

But that’s not who I was inside.

She said the truth,

if someone really looked, they’d find

I was a phoenix. I burned

hotter and brighter than the sun.

I was fight, fire, and love.

And man I tried to be nonchalant,

how do you even take a compliment like that?

Literally no one on Earth

had ever believed in me more. I still cry.

Anyways, remember your root.

Ask not why your ship is haunted, derelict,

got shot by cannons and shit, what matters

is who’s at the helm.

Othala

Got more old friends than Aragorn,

broody, distant, and wistful ’cause

I’m always missin’ someone,

never had a full house

but sure would like one sometime.

A family that’s mine.

You might ask

why your mama got

hair like a crone, well

when I was young

I gathered up the hungry, lonely ghosts

and brought them all home,

housed them in my bones,

listened

and felt all their pain unheard,

so that you wouldn’t have to.

I may have been small,

but I wasn’t scared.

The greater the hunger,

the hotter I burned.

That’s why we live way up here

with volcanoes and white mountains,

where some ice never melts.

As for why your daddy’s Like That, well,

I like hair, whimsy, and mischief.

I am a simple woman.

I love consistency and can’t abide boredom.

Weren’t gonna be no normie’s bones

laid down beside mine.

Called every favor

in my stars just to produce a creature

has the timbre of all my nights underfoot,

the range for these acoustics, the right touch,

knows a fuck thing ’bout the places I’ve been,

anythin’ approachin’ what it takes to be my man,

could say I invented who don’t exist. So I tell ya

he’s around.

You might ask

if you’ll know the ghosts too,

gods the whole world’s drowned but

ghosts are your mama’s medicine—

yours may prove different entirely—

and they’ll take their rest

when I do.

Compound Fracture

Where did they come from?

Well by now you’ve noticed

the only other person wears your face

is me. My mama. Her mama.

Once,

the Earth was green.

Our people lived

in the forests and swamps

of the Mississippi Delta

and beyond.

Imagine everywhere there’s asphalt,

nothin’, and cement. Brick.

It was trees. Our neighbors

cared for grasslands vast as an ocean,

waves crested with tails silver and golden.

The night sky was a great river of stars and spirits.

There were more kinds of life

than names given for.

The air breathable. The water drinkable.

Even the sun was kind.

Our foremothers protected the Mother Mound.

Everyone. Our people loved

to see somethin’ of the wild

in a face, such as beasts or birds.

High cheekbones, aquiline nose,

fine, angular features. We were known

also as Long Hairs.

The face was not round and wide

as a child’s, we did not aim

to pose for pictures

or live in a screen starin’ at ourselves,

to be easily digestible.

We were out there

with all our winged and many legged

sisters, brothers, and cousins.

Then the colonizers came.

The rape of the Americas

was the largest genocide

in human history.

In one century, a heartbeat,

they murdered 90% of her tribes,

about 1/5 of the world’s entire population

at the time.

The land

stripped first of her protectors,

then of her trees. Those white folk,

they invented hunger. Famine. Brought disease.

Loved coin more than the forest,

paid no love or respect at all

to their women, who were chattel.

Allowed no freedom or choice.

Bred to death.

They poisoned the mind

with religion. Kept the body weak.

You do not see your face

because they killed us all.

Nearly all.

Our bones

can only echo, a wail

barely begins to describe

everythin’ we lost.