Forget your personal tragedy.

are any of you applying for MFAs this coming year? I’m applying to Fiction programs (don’t worry, I know my poetry won’t get me in) and I have around eight on my list right now but I’m looking for people to discuss choices with. Best of luck to everyone and thanks to the hundreds (!!!) of you who continue following me even in my lack of posts.

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Dear followers,

I haven’t been posting lately. Why? I’ve had some major issues with people stealing my work. While I know this is a risk in web-publishing, it’s reached the point where I feel too nervous to keep posting new poetry online. I write my prose poetry for very personal reasons so it stings a little sharper when I see someone snatch it. Somehow, despite my lack of posts, I’ve gained an incredible amount of followers so I want to thank all of you for reading my work. I’m not deleting and will continue using this blog, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue posting a prose poem a day - there will be creative writing, by me, and there will be exercises, statements on poetics, literary quotes, &c but I can’t promise I feel comfortable enough to post my previously unpublished work every day. For those of you who don’t steal, and I know that’s almost all of you, I’m sorry. For everyone else, (and I mean this with total sincerity) please, please, please write your own work - you can do it, I promise.

If anyone would like to get in touch, please don’t hesitate to send me a message or ask for additional contact information. :)

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     I slurped an oatmeal cookie
        and licked dribbles
        off my chin, like
        crumbs
        of organs in my palms;
        the pieces I snatched from
        surgery, feigning intelligence
        in a nurse’s garb - mismatched scrubs,
            purple and blue, skulls on my
       stethoscope. Hours later,
        you told your mother
        “I saw the light”
        and asked her to sleep with you
        because if I were there,
        I would.
    

two sticks of butter, a bar or two of cream cheese, confectioner’s sugar - bah bah bah beat it and grease the pan and set the oven because it’s his birthday and this is what good girlfriends do; heat up a microwavable meal and set the table for one. eat the batter back in your apartment, alone, knowing this has got to be what he meant when he used the words equal effort and compromise.

i loved my little green pencil sharpener. you knew it, too; that’s why the day you left me you left with me everything - pictures of us, still framed, lining my bureau; your half-used bottle of cologne; an ache in my hips when i smell apple cider and pine trees - but slipped it into your front pocket. now, i nimble on colored pencils and watch the pink and yellow and orange and magenta stain my front teeth. i wonder if you’d still kiss me, lick your tongue over my teeth and laugh into my mouth; accusing me of ruining you in one more small, soft way.

your lips on my cheek, tongue poking out like your fingers grazing my breast, stealing my wishes. now, years later, i lick my licks and pluck a lash a day the way some people exercise or call their mother or make love. stripping down to the minimum, looking for wishes fate’s been hiding from me; my eyes, unprotected, cry a little easier, from the pollen and smell of piss. the lashes, stuck to the pudge on my round, little face, grin at me like war paint: sacrifices are a part of winning the battle.