May 2011
1 post
Dearest abandoned followers,
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.
?
January 2011
1 post
Robert Creeley reading his poem "For Love" →
My favorite poem being read by my favorite poet.
November 2010
2 posts
1 tag
a note
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...
October 2010
2 posts
1 tag
catie's 21st
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...
The Daily Bugle →
I’m collaborating with a friend to post short fiction here. You should check it out! (Sorry I’ve been inactive lately, dearest friends)
September 2010
23 posts
1 tag
what he doesn't know won't hurt him
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.
1 tag
where it hurts
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...
1 tag
11:11 is too cliche
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...
“I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We...”
– Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (via fuckyeahliteraryquotes)
1 tag
a pie without a crust
oh she’s a prettysmartsweetfunnycharmingyoung girl she’ll recover, no worries - nodded reassurance between friends who got too busy and boys who got too scared. she’ll float in again on those stubby little legs with a flower in her hair and a story about an old man and his puppy and end it with a giggle and a punchline so bad her audience can’t help but laugh. she’s...
1 tag
untited
lying in bed i imagine bouquets of roses (red, not yellow), bare feet in the sand (cool, not hot), little boxes with big price tags (it reminded me of you) and i feel a little sad and sick inside - the tangibles of love, worn on my friend’s fingers and grasped between their hands; they feel misty inside my stomach, drifting and dragging through my organs like the moments before bile bursts....
1 tag
contemporary art
the painter, crouched on the floor, his back bent like a nail kicked out of wood; he jotted blue paint, half on the canvas, half on the wall, and i wondered what he thought he was doing - what color is that, sir? what does that stroke mean, and that, there, to the left? do you use blue because you’re sad? and that shade, the deeper one, is that because you were sadder that afternoon than...
1 tag
dark room exposures
your eyelashes against my nose i wonder if you can see all the faces hiding within my tear ducts, all the letters and numbers, words and dates, the splitting and restitching of stomachs and hands and eyes. i wonder if you could dip your lashes into the crevices, small and soft and pink, like the tender flesh under a fingernail clipped too short; watch memories spin by like a bruise fading then...
1 tag
i'm no expert on gender studies
my hair tucked under my chin i wonder what it feels like to be a man with short, coarse curls budding out like the hair down their navel and between their hips. i wonder if it feels like testosterone, the manifestation of masculinity; a natural sticker on their face - “hello, my name is MAN”. my face, small, round, young - i imagine twelve year old boys gluing mustaches to their lips...
Anonymous asked: At the last possible moment before I disappeared into the apartment, I faced you in the courtyard and poured out every beautiful, tucked away thought that came to mind when I looked at you. When the impulsive flow of my words ended, with nothing to hold onto but your level, slightly quizzical gaze, I ran. Taking the out offered by my need for appropriate footwear, I ran through the door, down the...
1 tag
waterloo bridge
Composure, like arcs in monuments and little girls in toe shoes, skids above my shoulders, digging its heels into the air behind my ears; a little too late to land in me, but with just enough time to linger, like cool air, the aftermath of September rain. My heartbreaks, my stomach tosses, my legs shaking, and my knees on the ground - memories dig out from behind my eyelids, drawing fresh tears,...
1 tag
value and acclaim
the girth of lives saved, tears wiped, babies smiling - the fruition of a good samaritan at work. the worthiness of biceps and triceps taut like ripe melons on bones and of ink on chest and back, labeling your code of conduct for those in front of and behind you in line at the grocery store. dismissed like the soft smell of evening hours and the notion that girls look most beautiful upon waking,...
“I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when...”
– “Joyce Carol Oates” in George Plimpton, ed., Women Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 1989 (via fictionz)
1 tag
how to structure a love story, part 2
pretty girls fall in love with boys before they fall in love with themselves, drifting in and out of sun-licked afternoons like morning-dreams flickering in and out of evening boredom. they think, i need to learn to love my uneven thighs and the scabs on my elbows and the way i snort every third time i giggle. they sit in front of the mirror and brush their hair out not because they want the boys...
A question for you, dear followers
First of all, I’d like to thank all of my new (and old) followers. I don’t really know why, but my blog has grown tremendously lately and I want to thank all of you for reading my work. I also want to thank all of you whom take the time to like, reblog, or comment on my writing. It means a lot.
To me, a creative writing blog is just that - a blog which posts creative writing, probably...
1 tag
how to structure a love story, part 1
your scruff on my cheek and froth on my lip i wonder what it looks like when people fall in love - how the stories told to friends, then parents, then children, then grandchildren change as memories stay in tact, then blur, then become the only things still clear on soft summer afternoons. i wonder what details are kept secret - like the way birds’ wings flap harder just before landing - and...
1 tag
life cycles
nibbling at my fingernails i wonder what it’s like to furrow my teeth beneath the nails and tissue and flesh and tear it apart like airplane wings slice up clouds. i wonder what it’s like to shake and feel puss pour out of my eyes and ears and nose. i wonder what it’s like to become dirt, or maybe dust, and be cleaner and purer than the sagging stretching restricting skin binding...
1 tag
consumption
your eyelids are sore? here, let me slip my fingertips beneath the skin and pull it back and loll my tongue around your eye, moisturizing and replenishing. let me straighten the lashes and pinch their middles with my fingerpads and curve them like the shape of your waist and hip while you lie on your side, lazy and languid, like sun streaks sneaking through broken shades. let me breathe over your...
1 tag
a penny candy for your thoughts?
folding the candy wrapper between my fingers i wonder if you’ll read the note i wrote inside. i did it carefully, at first: i taped down the edges, took out my ruler, and lined enough room for my little words with patience. this is what love is, i thought, while i watched the light pencil strokes darken with each flicker of my fingers, stalling for the time no one else was counting. first...
1 tag
what hollywood doesn't show
the times before this i was frozen, stiff, solid; stuck in my place like ice crystals lining a freezer. i hated it. now, i am liquid. the sun is bright and i wonder, idly, if anyone was sitting up in the trees and watching us on my bed, the pink sheets pooled on the floor, the pillows pushed against the wall. your tongue on my throat, slow, lazy slides down my chest and i laugh, a little, because...
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want...”
– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (via quote-book)
August 2010
39 posts
1 tag
ice breakers
Do my eyes look red to you? Here, touch my shoulder - is it stiff? Do you think these marks on my knees, are they from kneeling for too long? Your fingertips, the slightest touch, the flick of flesh and fingernails feathering feels like absolution: look at me, look through the skin layers and the platelets and the membranes and nuclei and read the secrets written on the inside of my organs,...
1 tag
““They are not brave, the days when we are twenty one. They are full of little...”
– Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
1 tag
the gentle cycle; hold the bleach
I stripped my bed. My mattress, stiff, cold, dissolves while I press my fist beneath my pillow and imagine the curve of your chest, my head on your shoulder, my fingers tracing love notes on your stomach, hips, thighs. I imagine you guessing at the letters, decoding messages like finding harmonies in wind chimes. I imagine the slight tang of sweat on your shoulder when I kiss your skin - not a...
1 tag
picture perfect
the frame tipped like my torso on the stairs and hit the ground like my knees skimmed the railing; hard, fast, sudden. i heard the glass break and felt raw - the fingers were back, digging themselves into the slices in my knees. the chunks crumbled around her face and i wondered what it meant, where the symbolism lay in a swift kick from the hot August hair knocking her to the ground, cutting up...
1 tag
untitled
you tell yourself, this is the right thing to do, this is what will make me happy, happy like cotton candy lining my cheeks and the pink staining my wisdom teeth, coloring my intelligence, making it naive, soft, malleable. like your voice when you say my name and i imagine you stretching your arms above your head and your shirt sneaking up your stomach, your hip bones peeking out, playful, hard....
“I don’t want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally.”
– Zelda Fitzgerald | submitted by girlwithoutwings (via quote-book)
1 tag
moving on
the seconds swoosh by like your stomach on a water slide, face first, arms out, and you’re thinking I can do this, I can do this, I can do this and you hit the ground and your elbows are sore and raw and you rub them yourself and your eyes sting and you imagine his lips on your skin, his tongue, pressed against the secret layers of your organ, and you cry.
1 tag
happy father's day
they say little girls grow up to love a man like her father, but the jaded ones say all he did was show them what they didn’t want. i drift - the muscles, tight, beneath my fingers, they grow and shrink, curve and flatten, the eye color, dims, and brightens. i imagine eyelashes, soft, long, heavy against my cheek, like a baby blanket tucked under my forearms. his hands lifting my feet,...
1 tag
first year residents
dad, will you help me raise my bed? the question repeats as tired eyes roll and shoulders slouch and everyone checks their Facebook status - is she single? a non-smoker? good! i’ll walk by her room twice on the way to class and see if she picks up on the fact that i’m in lust with her. i stand still. i hear: dad, will you help me raise my bed? i want to put some notches on it before i...
1 tag
can this be our profile picture?
i’ve made pictures of us but they’re not real. they’re tangible, here, in my hands, a little damp, because i get nervous easily, but visible none the less: i’ve taken care to draw the lines with a ruler, to shade the angles, to shape and soften your lips so they look like they do when i imagine them dragging down my shoulder blades. i love them. i hide them around my room...
1 tag
date night
the nail polish is chipping and sometimes i think about sitting up swinging my legs landing on my feet walking to my bureau grabbing the remover but instead i lie in bed flat on my back with my hands above my head like the morning you rolled on top of me and said i was beautiful, beautiful like the aftertaste of starbursts when you roll them under and around your tongue again and again but...
2 tags
virgin 2.0
holding cardboard pens I wonder what it’s like to be a plastic pencil shoved into the desk of a resident whom hasn’t checked their homework or written in their planner or called their father in almost two weeks. I wonder what it’s like to be a Styrofoam cup in the back of a coed’s car while they’re going 60 in a school zone and laughing with one arm out the window...
1 tag
snow white
Pick me. I’m red and curved and you imagine your hand slipping down me, admiring, fingertips varying pressure, light to hard, hard to light. You’d like me - your grasp, tightening, holding my middle like you own me, because in your mind, you do. Toss me up in the air a few times for good measure. If I perspire, wipe me off; reassure me that you’ll never let me hit the ground....
2 tags
inspired by the lovely ms gluck
kissing your ankles makes you laugh because your bones are big and thick and wide and you’re not a girl or anything, not with your almost-kicks to my face while i’m lying on my stomach with my lips on the top of your feet. smooth, like the skin on the back of my knees and the spot next to my breast; i wonder why you don’t look down and smile, like i do, when we’re sitting...
1 tag
the aftermath of hard conversations
My eyes are sore, like the spaces between my ribs and the joints in my fingers and the struggle to remember the last thing we talked about - it was good, wasn’t it? I think it was, and I smile. If it wasn’t - my day is ruined, distracted, disjointed, thoughts of our little victory garden getting weeds. The aches drag, drifting between my shoulders to my tailbone to my calves to the...
1 tag
it's a preparation for spontaneous kisses
I’m sorry, but I can only be so useful. You reach for me often, your fingers grappling in your pocket, and I feel the tension burst through your legs while your fingertips snag on the material above me. Is it gone? Shit. Sweat and sap spread from beneath your fingernails to my cover when you trudge deeper, slipping me into your palm and welcoming me back into your sight. Pop off my cap, open...
“- Love is fragile - she was thinking, but perhaps the pieces are saved, the...”
– “May Day” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
1 tag
state of mind
The neighbors dissolve first. Despite my hand-ringing, my pacing, my peeking through the blinds, their faces blur first. They can’t hear my screams. The person on the phone dissolves second. What? What? Are you okay? What are you doing? Why are you acting that way? They’re talking to someone else about something else; when I see them for dinner tomorrow, they’ll tell me about...
1 tag
untitled
rubbing lotion on your legs, i admire the fine wrinkles on your calves and the bones bracing your ankle. i wonder if my legs will stay small, slim, and if i’ll ask my granddaughter to rub lotion on them to make them beautiful again. i wonder if my hands will lose their baby fat and if my nails will grow hard and firm and straight. i wonder if i’ll close the windows when someone yells...
1 tag
what it feels like for a girl
heat: fingers, long and wide, scratching up my stomach; small! bursts! of! cold! like weeds curling around grass; power! struggle!, jutting inch! by! inch! into my lungs, freezing my breath; power in release. in my throat, tickles - sensitivity in untouched —- muscles, constricting. over my mouth, hard; north & south = tight. heat: like lightening burning fine grass on my hips,...
1 tag
vanilla softserve
the ice-cream makes my teeth ache and i wonder what it feels like for you when i let it drip onto my breast, barely bare, and ignore it while i stretch my legs - tinted from sun licks - and keep my eyes on the frays of my cutoffs, long and thin, like your fingers, stretched on my knees. i imagine it aches like stomach spasms, cold and sharp, like fingernails carving their initials into your...