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.
wyrdwind 