wyrdwind

Anxiety

I never left my room

unless my brother was home,

in the summer, per custody arrangement.

He’d carve his initials into the table,

any wood anywhere, whoever woke first

immediately went to wake the other.

We never fought.

Not one hard or sharp

remark our entire lives, no matter what,

and that sets a certain standard

of acceptable behavior. Drift

compatible, pilot a Jaeger or bust.

He didn’t like the other boys,

loud and crude, baying and shallow,

and I found most people

painfully dull.

We did everything together,

day in day out, he’d respond

to my thoughts as if spoken aloud.

He taught me to draw. Wilted

under confrontation or unknown terrain,

but we’d spend hours on RTS regardless

at his behest.

If I was hungry, he’d ask for food

or drive to get it himself. On Thanksgiving

first to the table

just to make sure everyone and their dog knew

my favorite was legs.

When I fell and tore my knee open

on a mountain in the dark

and he wasn’t strong enough

to pick me up, instead he walked

in front of me and announced

every rock, divot, root and branch

until we made it back down.

Reprimanded our parents

for their carelessness that whole trip.

His infant brother

had stopped breathing

and died in his crib

and he just

became the most Goose,

fully embodied the brood.

I did nothing alone.

Prepubescent boy out here

doing the work of ten mothers.

Would I sleep forever?

Not on his watch.

You know

he’s said it three times

in thirty-seven years.

Woke every morning at his house—

sunshine yellow inside like mine,

goth shit everywhere—

to find coffee and a protein pancake waiting

on the counter.

I don’t need to hear the words.

Ear to the Ground

I typically operate

on actionable sympathy

rather than empathy.

Much like the grasshopper mouse,

I resist paralysis, venom

turns pain killer in my veins,

I’ve got binding proteins

you wouldn’t believe.

Nocturnal predation

in the most secret places,

closing my eyes on the new moon,

I hunt by touch. Sensation alone.

You’ll hear my howl

100 meters around scaled up,

the call to battle.

Life on Earth is fungal based,

the mycorrhizal network

a vast consciousness fed

by all of us.

When I’m tapped

for systems maintenance,

my sleep cycle brings a problem

to my attention. Non-linear,

no tense, full circle,

all at once.

I dreamt

a stranger’s coffee table in the night,

traffic running through, mundane discussion,

nothing to see here, city lights blurred outside.

Mexico.

I just know.

But the longer I stared

at that table, what I felt

was choking despair, frenzied

for an exit, a helping hand,

the absolute certainty

of demise.

So many.

Trapped.

State sanctioned USA

concentration camps.

Children dead of typhus.

Women giving birth in chains.

What’s more,

I felt the land, a gaping,

festering wound.

The bone chilling ache

of a silenced mother.

Not dumb, ignored.

Call it what you want,

sometimes words

are like photographing the moon

with your phone. Dreams

chart data points, make what’s distant

real.

Personal.

I felt Her desperately

asking me to hold

a barely swaddled baby,

shrouded in tattered threads,

a shrieking void in need

of a name.

They Grow Up So Fast

He was a picky eater,

I cleaned my plate.

I’d be ugly on purpose

because he hid his face—

so what got skin like a toad’s butt,

I like toads,

toads are good, anyway,

they put him on Accutane,

so we avoided sunlight.

I’d always dig in

and stay up late. Do whatever,

talk about anything. Watch how

your inner monologue

starts to sound like mine,

ugly duckling blues?

Not in this house.

He’d reinvent himself

every few months

and I kept in my closet

every piece of every version

dead and gone.

If he threw it out,

did some inverse Dorian Gray,

I picked it up,

gave it new life or a final resting place.

None of those guys were trash.

He liked slow mopey folksy metal-ish

and I jammed to anything sounded like

two titans fighting to the death—

we met in the middle on Dax Riggs

and some jazz.

He found all my favorite bands,

brought Word and Culture from the City

like it was the 1700s. Scottsdale man.

He came to live with us first chance.

Where he drew warped corpses and gore,

graphite only,

I drew wild and colorful beasts and fairies.

He asked me to sing

Small Two of Pieces from Xenogears,

and I couldn’t fathom why,

but I complied, for I would never deny

him such a shy thing. I really hope

he deleted that file. His wife

proposed without hesitation

after one year. Always says

he’s a fucking unicorn.

Asked me to perform

the handfasting

which I then had to learn

on the fly.

When asked after all that time

how she knew,

what made her decide,

she said you gotta look

at the most important

woman in his life.

Sleeper Agent

When you combine

maximum Arizona drawl

with maximum poetic efficiency,

on paper, what you get

sounds a helluva lot

like an Irish accent.

Found that out the hard way.

The Bear Mother assortment

dredged from my older works

needed a name. I dreamt

someone held out a silver ring,

two knots winding side by side,

a disembodied voice

cut in and out from behind,

fuzzy signal, baby’s first quest shit,

wizard nonsense,

something like

trust that was broken

will be restored,

what was lost

will be reborn,

when two rivers

flow as one.

And like a fool

who’s never read Tolkien,

I put it on

because I wanted to boost the signal,

got me right in the fuck it why not.

Magic 101, fuck.

Suddenly I was surrounded,

someplace else entirely, a deep

sun laved forest. A massive congregation

of very much not Christian Celts

bustled around each other

to have a look. Their leader,

who wore a pelt, told me—

mind you I don’t speak Gaelic,

I understood

with my heart—

that their home was lost.

They could not return

though the way was clear,

because they could not rest.

Instead they would move on

here.

He explained

how a land should be,

how a living fortress

repels ill-intent, the importance

of remaining unseen

in both times of war and peace.

The relationship

between a people and their trees.

I saw what once was,

what could yet be, a golden horizon

in every direction.

Then it was just me,

but the land was alive

with very much more

than I could plainly see.

The only building

was my little cottage

and wouldn’t you know it

a baby bear was inside

tumbling around my skirt

in the kitchen.

I’d left my door open

to the forest.

I said

your mom’s gonna be pissed,

you can’t just trust humans,

joke’s on me though because mom

was asleep in my living room.

We all just lived there now.

I said

I gotta go to the bathroom,

and the goddamn baby bear

came too

because that’s what babies do.

Mothers never piss alone.

Have you ever tried to squat

with a baby bear half in your lap?

Fuck.

I woke up

endorphins run over, levees bust

with my mysterious photosynthesis.

Weightless, neither itch nor ache,

pure joy eternal everyone. What I call

Real Gold. The Sacred Heart. The opposite

of a black hole. Wellspring.

First thought,

gotta pee.

The next,

why the fuck

are the Irish here?

But when I looked back,

retraced my steps, I realized.

Oh,

I built a house.

Somewhat Stubborn

The very first time

I defeated my brother

in battle, he won’t acknowledge.

He always picked Undead

and I always picked Night Elves.

He played for maximum destruction—

how the game was designed—

and I played for maximum variety

of life.

My structures were alive

because they were trees. Walked,

though very slowly. Additionally,

elves possessed Shadowmeld,

stationary invisibility.

All that remained

was my mother tree.

I memorized the map, manner

and speed of his patrols, recognized

every unit’s pattern.

We walked.

I kept on

for hours.

Unless every single one

of my creatures were dead

he could not claim victory.

Hours.

Finally, exasperated, exhausted,

he came back to my room and demanded

that I concede.

I looked him right in the eyes.

Never.

And he believed me.

In what nonsense world

can corpses fight forest?

Forest eat corpses.

That is the way of thing.

I am not fooled

by your little game.

Green Gables

The inspiration for The Sisterhood

came from a dream wayyy back.

I was a spirit hovering

around a busted cement lot

next to an abandoned old-old

stone church. Guessing Catholic.

That jagged foundation was a junkyard gym

full of topless, jacked nuns. Fucking shredded. Also old.

Yeah, I know, what the fuck.

Moss, vines, ferns, and clover

burst and sprawled from every crevice.

They were waiting on a sign.

I tried to introduce myself

since this looked exactly like

my kinda party,

but they couldn’t properly hear me,

must’ve been the bad habits,

and I was like hey guys, helloooo,

why are we waiting?? For fuck’s sake.

When I peeled back the chain link

to survey the terrain beyond

it was a hideous city,

fresh industrial revolution poison,

devoid of trees.

A friend recently said

she couldn’t look at pictures of herself

from before her Baby died. That girl

knew nothing of the world.

Started going to church with her daughter

because she found solace in the companionship

of all the older women. Recalled

that time I told her about my cat

who wanted nothing more

than to drape across my chest

and gaze at my face purring

herself to sleep, one paw outstretched

to touch my cheek.

She’d met a lady

whose grown daughter a state away

with children of her own would play

her mother’s testimonies

when she tucked herself in

for her nap midday.

She said it was the same, head on the heart,

the Big Mama.

She never had one.

That girl

was dead, and every day

she wondered if she was strong enough,

if maybe she needed meds to function, I said

feelings demand to be felt,

you carry your babies all your life,

dead or alive. No one else

knows what your path must look like,

how much of yourself must die

or cauterize. But if my own mother

and grandmother

could walk off heart attacks

they didn’t even realize they had

because that pain was just

spittle in the ocean of discomfort,

then surely you can keep going too,

and whoever you’ve become

at the end of your road,

I’m proud to know her.

Key Victory

Fun fact,

grasshopper mice are so aggressive

that they can hunt and kill

venomous desert predators

54 times their own size,

whose natural diet

also includes mice. In single combat.

A particular piquant victory

over my brother, we had all gathered

for a game of Risk,

and the men were very generous

with their advice on the art of war,

and ladies we all know men are only generous

when they don’t feel threatened.

My sister turtled up

and flicked through her phone

in an eye rolling show of disinterest,

just letting the boys puff up

and duke it out. I puttered around

all 🙂 paying very close attention

to their advice. Fascinating.

Eventually,

she reached over and took my hand,

as I’d built a massive fighting force

in the “middle of nowhere”

and she knew immediately

my plan

and why I hesitated.

The boys teased

“Awww are you friends?”

And she had the look said

Go For The Jugular Bitch, Do It.

I got your six.

Oh they all looked sick,

properly aghast,

does the book say she can do that,

when I rained destruction

on their exposed backs. Bloodbath.

I was the hammer

and she the anvil. Iron sharpens iron.

It was like that side plot

from The Power

where two sisters separated

by bitter circumstance reunited

when one became a pregnant warlord

and the other killed her dictator husband

then sent his military into an ambush.

The boys pouted,

“Congratulations,

you have to fight each other now.”

To which she responded with ice,

“No we don’t.”

She gave me

all of her troops and stuff

as a present,

declared us one. Flipped the bird.

They had all forgotten

that only a map is flat.

The world

is round.

Coagulate

I can give you a peek

at what we’re up against.

The axis of my dreams, all of them,

since I was a little girl.

I’ve mentioned the atomless void,

it’s not death, it’s nonexistence,

negation. A cancer

that consumes everything. A mistake.

For so long I wandered crumbling landscapes

beneath a whispering sky, the rot

within every rapist and pedophile’s mind,

that which compels grotesque experimentation

upon our own kind. There was always someone

I was trying to find.

Time

was not on my side.

Hollowed by grief and battered wings,

I had to try.

The voices howled, screamed, chittered,

and I saw every hole I found filled

with whatever it took, made it make sense,

found a mess and put it right. Organized

aftermath, broke it down into usable parts.

Riding just ahead of the storm. Eldritch junkyards.

Apocalypse after apocalypse.

I pulled souls off ledges, whatever precipice,

at the last possible second. Found the First

ever violated and made her Watch

as I ripped the Red One apart.

A collateral save

is a save nonetheless. I wasn’t a hero,

I was looking for someone.

Asked them all,

have you seen this person I miss?

And yes, I always remember

my primary objective.

Fun fact,

all my dreams are lucid. The only rule

of control is that you don’t have it. Adapt.

My dreams are interconnected. My actions

within them spider silk, beeswax, a needle and thread.

Serve

a purpose.

If you find yourself incinerating demons—

for lack of a better term— you’re headed

in the right direction.

Most recently, a compound of scientists

fucking with shit they shouldn’t

suddenly compressed into 2D painterly

animation as It broke containment

through little more than a pinhole.

They mutated and twisted,

scribbled eyes and mouths, turned less than dust,

whatever sounds of anguish they made extinguished,

mute.

From within myself I heard

the Many Voice Woman lilting, sing-song,

leaden as a lullaby on the putrid floor

of a concentration camp.

“There’s no one left to turn to,

there’s nowhere left to hide.”

I think the fuck not.

Hole plugged.

Still looking. Oddly enough,

when my mother wanted us

to see the fortune teller once,

because she had…something to prove I guess??

That tricky island lady said

I wasn’t sent alone. She did emphasize

Sent.

Mass Effect

He bootlegged a second copy

and built me a better PC

so we could parallel play.

He wanted to know

what decisions I’d make.

I knew well enough his way.

Skipped all the dialogue,

speed ran only the main plot,

maximum aggression.

Me? I spoke with everyone,

everywhere, read every word,

equally ruthless. But helpful.

Asked a space ho on a space station

why she was sad, pimp stole her money,

so I slaughtered the whole cartel.

Gutted every den of iniquity.

I’m nothing if not thorough.

Things like that.

Farmers beefing on a haunted moon?

I got time. The human-snubbing

space UN and their favorite rogue operative

along with the Geth

could wait.

Colonel Shepherd Yes.

My brother and I

were tactically aligned

right down to the Big Space Bug Princess,

the last of her kind, being tortured

on a black site. Her children stolen

and enslaved.

We both freed her

amid warnings of extreme danger.

She said she’d sing of us

to future generations. Her children

would know our mercy. Our kindness.

This gesture wiped our respective Evil Points.

The difference

was he didn’t think she’d do it,

descend upon the galaxy as her ancestors did.

I believed

that to be within her rights. Fuck this shit.

Given the chance, Big Space Bug Princess

would become my best friend.

I’d make certain

she’d never see a cage again.

Anyway, our decisions only diverged

at the very end.

The Council’s favorite prick

betrayed everyone because of course he did

I fucking SAID, brought down the Geth

for a coup occupations whatever.

They hailed my ship begging for aid.

I chose

to take my sweet, sweet time.

All of them died. The galaxy

was without governance. I swooped in

and punched him to death in a corner

—took some doing—out of spite,

because the first thing he did from jump

was kill the lizard man I wanted to fuck—

the only one worth a hump—

I made the time. Then, I directed

patsy Admiral General Whatever guy

to rise to the occasion,

soothe everyone in the wake

of these terrible events. Humans

would become the angels.

Outcasts no longer.

The final cut scene

a blood red nebula

like I was some kinda

Sith Lord.

My brother was mortified

like, “That’s the government!”

And I was all, “So what?”

That was me out there

taking the time

to hear everyone. Listen.

Finding solutions to problems

on the ground, ones that worked.

He looked

like he’d never seen me before.

Rematriation

Well every moment you waste

is one moment more

than someone else had to spare.

Change is only gradual

for those afforded the luxury

to choose

whether or not they care.

Care is not

ritual social media flagellation

from relative material comfort.

Scooting money around.

Care makes certain

by whatever means necessary,

understands

the landscape

of blood sacrifice. Given two hands,

you must run the soup kitchen

and put Nazis in the ground.

You owe your allegiance

to the topsoil.

Where your food grows.

To the wild. I’ve said

sometimes through the mists

of night, woven wakeful between

dreams

a mother asks me

to hold her baby. A feeling,

not literally. Sometimes

I simply lay abed

and weep shuddering

before returning to sleep.

That’s how Nanih Waiya

came to be.

Imagery

from an old history

book suddenly

sprang to mind. The way

the author heavily implied

that his own people

were two-faced with a dark side, but

the behavior described

was Customer Service Minimum Wage.

Of course you smile at the racist moneyed Manager

in your impoverished right-to-work state

who bullied your coworker into miscarriage, play nice

then trash her car.

Don’t you know anything?

Tending a crop you cannot see

until exhumed by the spade.

How right up until she gave

her last, her children maintained

a joyful face.

The hollow

when it seemed

their mother’s love betrayed.

The grave was just their place.

Their grace had gone away.

You know,

first I ever saw the flag,

I went oh I know this one!

Moss, Death, Fire or

maybe Milk in the middle there.

Death Milk!

What do you mean no?

Catholic, Peace, Protestant?

Oh fuck off,

what is this

Wrong Answers Only shit?

Bad Brigid Only please.

Put some respect on my snakes.

A mother’s worst nightmare.

I remembered

from the news, pictures

and shitty comments

disparaging desperate mothers

who had walked the length of Mexico

only to have their children

snatched at the border

of those cartels’ number one customer

by people whose language

they didn’t know.

If they ever saw them again

those children had become strangers.

The look on those mother’s faces

I’ll never forget.

I remembered

a mural in my ex’s city of birth

that featured dark-skinned, Chinese,

and curly red-haired people

in the Aztec style.

He told the story

of how one day the Irish emerged

from the desert on foot,

followed the sound of church bells.

The sound of home.

The most flamboyant

piece of clothing

my Mexican boyfriend owned

was a kilt sewn

by his cousin’s 80 year old abuelita

on an iron Singer.

His favorite holiday

was St Patrick’s Day of all things.

Me? I’m not a fan

of anyone who hates snakes.

Finally, I remembered

the Eternal Heart

sculpture of my people.

The mound, the Trail of Tears,

the sacred diamond back rattlesnake,

mostly peaceful but warns you once

with a sound like sizzling rain

(if it’s of significant age),

don’t tread on me. I bite

fast as lightning.

My venom corrodes blood vessels,

unstitches organs.

I’ll swallow you whole.

As for the mother,

she did the best any could

with what little remained.

The loss of dignity,

of self respect,

when a mother must walk

with nothing and a baby bare

and pray

a stranger sees themselves

in her face. Has the strength

to fight in her name.

When your children survive

but still refuse you proper clothes,

can’t even

spit the cross out their mouths,

think the fight is over

which scripture’s dick to suck,

instead of 80% forest and ancestors housed,

they pimp you out

to the highest bidder,

keep you prostrate and overgrazed

by herds earmarked for export. Or else property

of the church. Ungrateful

doesn’t cover it. Think it matters,

makes a difference, if the pockets lined

are their own. For what?

Still paying rent to a landlord.

Placing their faith in the wrong flock.

Forgotten what it means to be a swan.

How’s that for some Goddess Guilt?

Girl, I smell the same pile of pig shit

by the hovel door

everywhere I go.

If you’ve read my work

you can’t say you don’t

know better. Cowards.

She doesn’t need to hear the words.