woman or wolf

is it better to speak or to die?

the boy who cried wolf

lied

until death

lies still

the girl who tried

truth

denied in court 

tried still 

fang indents choke 

her neck, wrists crosshatched

by claws 

she dare not reveal

her phantom pain 

invisible under oath

stigmata seep 

through white sleeves

bleeding down each button 

woman or wolf

the judge squints

while the courtroom constricts around her

red-handed in defense

rejected by justice

truth dies with her 

immunity

my mind shouts sabotage 

SHAVE YOUR HEAD

PIERCE YOUR NIPPLES

TATTOO YOUR HANDS

while my body whispers mutiny

feel, forgive and release

to protect these tortured lands 

she etches the manifesto
between my ears and behind my eyes

the pain you resist persists

in my dreams i brush my fingers

against her braille and repent

grant me rest

free my conscious breath 

only to wake up blind 

bound by the mind’s mouthless voice

AVOID

  DISTRACT

       DESTROY

she pounds on my skull in morse code

deafening dits and dahs until i answer the door

only unconditional love will set you free 

i roll my eyes back into their sockets

pocketing the last of my strength to twist the knob

light spills through the hinges

not blinding, not burning

only a steady dawn 

there is no rush to evolution

yet i feel the revolution rising

with each quiet breath

bechdell test

1. the work must feature at least two women, 

2. these two women must talk to each other, and 

3. their conversation must be about something other than a man

my sisters help me slip into my second skin

zip up my suit, and offer me breath 

through a sandy tube i grip between my teeth

my gills thrash and gasp for air 

“fight the discomfort and evolve” 

they sing like a lullaby

sirens lure me into the water,

gifting my toes a temporary tail,

fins that carry my buoyant body

into the ocean’s swaying womb

i  stare into the salty unknown

Atlantis thrives under this inverted sky,

city lights shimmering in garibaldi scales,

lost treasure lurks beneath an empire of sand.

graceful hands guide me through aquatic gardens

knuckles interlaced, we swim through a shared dream

they point toward iridescent flashes 

and propel me across the liquid mirror 

under the shifting of sand 

an ancient shell floats from the surface 

a mossy angel ascends into heaven

to remind us of our mortal lungs  

she radiates wisdom in ripples across the glass sky  

before politely declaring her decent

down into the depths of darkness 

where her secrets remain disguised 

her whisper bubbles up above her shadow

air saturated with her secrets

rises to the surface 

and evaporates into our open ears

“our voices echo longer than our lungs endure”

detangling

clutching only hair

i pull blonde from my brush 

gold threads wound round each bristle

until whisked away 

from the paddle like cotton candy 

i roll you between my fingers 

where the webs of my hands

once held your hair 

strands so silky and elusive 

they slip through the gaps of my grasp

the scent of coconut milk lingers

shampoo i once scrubbed into your scalp

now i only wash for one

while i reminisce about the smoothness

of your wet skin and soapy smile

and i never liked blondes

or dated girls before 

but i would wear a wig of her hair

as a helmet to protect my brain

from losing any more of her

at night i dream in tangles

each strand a thread back to her

my hands grip like bloodied rope

i wake with fists closed

clutching only air

rose

draw me like one of your French girls
on the page i am prettier
you get my nose wrong
but i forgive
posed as your muse

i admit amusement of your craft

appreciation of creation

we similarly worship
yet under this holy light
of your inspiration, i radiate
nothing but a flat draping of skin

you capture me
trace the edges
of my boundless existence
onto some foreign medium

then bow in inflation

stab your flag through my flesh 

in conquest of beauty

weaponize the arts
to imitate intimacy

you hang that frame of me
hostage above your bed
a forged vision
of a girl you never met

nude neighbor

I am the nude neighbor
watching you from the window
don’t you dare stare back perv

incognito comando
in my birthday suit on business,
an attractive alias
meant to lure or warn

the real girl next door
is nothing than a blur
in your window’s tint,
a shadow smudged
across the back of your eyes

you think you know me
after stealing my skin
from a distant glance,
but I am the one
undressing your mind.

I am an open book

spread from my sternum

flowering open 

my breasts staring back at you

what good is an open book

when you are illiterate 

in the language of love?

men do love picture books. 

and the conquest of eye contact 

until they realize 

that I have been staring first 

all along.

hyoid

Between ligament and muscle, the hyoid. The hinge of speech. The bone Neanderthals lacked.

hold your tongue 

grab it by the root and tug

until the tension of its sound is flattened

to a punchline

tongue tied you never tried

to pronounce Truth

only hissed in dialects

designed to dilute wisdom into water

each flick of the tongue 

every patter of your lips

casts a spell, a vibration

contamination of the honest air

swallow your words 

and pray you do not choke

there is no heimlich

only 

the hyoid bone 

to keep your tongue in place

mitski’s pearl

It's just that
I fell in love with a war.

Nobody told me it ended.

And it left a pearl in my head.
And I roll it around
every night—
just to watch it glow.

while my baby twirls me
in the hush of her tide

you ricochet
off the walls of my skull

 like a pinball machine—

shame spinning wild
ringing loud inside,
while my baby sways
to the silence
that only
she
can hear

if pressure makes diamonds
you are carved of a sister stone

pearlescent pain
fossilized inside
the dome of my solitude

smoothed and sanded down
by the current of neurons
that flash
in memory
of a forgotten war

my baby loves my brain
and the fun facts it spits

though it suffocates
like a claustrophobic clam
suffering a small obstruction
lodged in the back of its throat
clutching its breath

so it won’t choke

there is no help
no heimlich

no hand
deep enough
to reach
what lives
in me

so i listen
to my baby laugh

admire how it harmonizes
with the ringing
in my brain
as it bleeds

 oozing quiet
from my ears

 my pure white,
opalescent angel
planted gently
inside my skull

 glows there still
watches over us
as i endure
it without hope

Every night, baby,
That's where I go.

pp

prozac princess! please come back!

you left your prescription at the top step!

without it you will wobble

then wish you were dead

your SSRI smile will fade into fog

and the pumpkin carriage you arrived in will be gone!

please take your meds—return home

this is not the matrix

no red or blue pill to polarize your mind

just one white pop! you are real i promise 

have some water to wash it down  

your psychiatrist told me of your symptoms 

in confidentiality of course!

skipping around your meds will only make it worse

i fear you cannot outrun the synapses in your skull 

nor the ghosts that will follow

paranormal agitation and fatigue

after the insomnia sets in—

you will be begging 

withdrawals of an addiction?

no! your daily prescription!

gulp it down in the same breath of adorning your crown

princess, your throne is just a chair now.

sit down. swallow.

burnout

you press the ass of the cigarette

sensually against my sternum

as if to isolate my sins with scorch 

the sizzle stretches into an echo

we both wait for my reaction

my seared flesh screams in mother tongue 

a lost language invisible to my ears 

the human condition i cured like a common cold  

i apologize for the failed exorcism, 

yes, 

this is really me 

though not how i always was

i could tell you it is the prozac

the perfectionism 

the pride i allow to blindfold my sensations 

that made me this way

but my heartless facade 

is bound by fired nerve endings

synapses burnt out from rapid fire and forgiveness 

all resources exhausted—

as am i 

with nothing left to give, i retreat  

heat had always been easier to heal from than hope

jellyfish

ethereal flesh
floats upon the shore

sand sprinkled between each striation
attempts to make her sheer skin decent

aphrodite’s solid tears
boneless yet buoyant
intrigue the human perversion
if she does not sting
then she shall be undressed

her tentacles teased 

poked and prodded
smothered against the sand
dissected and demented 

upon your every demand 

how easy is it to dismiss the transparent–
to stare through its vessel of truth
as ego’s magnifying glass
to reaffirm reality as an opaque
substance you can see, study, and praise

you foolishly forget

she was once a siren’s secret
a pulse suspended in salt
not made to harden, only to feel
to bloom with the moon, to bruise without notice

her absence of bone

you torture as defective
unworthy of structure
but dont bones break too?

tell me, is it better not to bend in resilience

than to break in resistance?

you flatten her to a punchline
because she refuses to sting on command

no, she will not perform her pain for you

you grow bored and bury her in sand 

in attempt to erase her gelatinous existence  

and when she dissolves,
you won’t remember the way she shimmered

only the taste she left on your lips
strange, saltless, and suddenly gone

sightless supernova

i pridefully say that 

i am a poet as much as i am a scientist

i doubt therefore i think

i think therefore i am

myths and mathematics are intertwined

the moon’s calendar written by indigenous intuition

only later approved by westen calculation 

the two tend to stubbornly agree eventually 

galeleio’s heliocentric model 

gutted humanity's ego

there is nothing left to do here 

but orbit and observe

perhaps stare at the stars…

science lends us sight

simply squint

through the telescope’s lens

penetrate heaven's gate

identify flecks of light

quantify their orbit

predict their death 

down to the decimal

calculate it faster than 

the speed of light

you are no god,

 but an observer 

convinced by a kaleidoscope

how about a closer look?

expose a miniature solar system

squint your eyes once more into focus

under the microscope’s magnification

the nucleus gently glows neon green

probed with ethidium bromide

fluorescent bulbs that blink blink blink 

as if to mock all other beauty that goes unstimulated 

unperceivable by the naked eye

pulsing with the intelligence

wound intricately inside each of us   

as above, so below 

i have to put my glasses on now

before i can properly see stars 

though the astigmatism in my eyes

when i am blinded by their absence  

make their light stretch even wider 

into a sightless supernova

i soak in the strain of my retinas

bask in the beauty of my blindness

i feel i see them best this way  

the stars whisper secrets 

only to be heard in the dark 

they glow an iridescent 

truth written in metaphors

a light not captured by measurement

but mirrored in verse

okazaki

okazaki fragments 

lag along the street

they discontinuously drag

across the pavement

leaking secrets between their separation

my eyes trace each gap

attempting to read between the lines

i ooze mental glue 

if i can manage to paste them all together

maybe i can continue— 

across the fork

they glide without stop

no second thought to skip

and hop around absence

just smooth replication across the road 

every idea i prime 

is pried from my mind

train of thought lifted from its tracks 

steered toward a distant destination 

i can never quite reach 

fragmented and faithless

i contemplate the sum of parts: 

if the template of my whole is 

puzzled in pieces, perhaps it is no accident 

but an advantage of editing 

blind in chinatown

i forgot my glasses in the flat
blind in chinatown, san francisco
in the blur of city stimulation, i can make out
the decor of orange peels lining the streets
shriveled up into forced smiles for tourists.
coastal air carries sparse exhales of sewage
through the gaps of the alleyways
where pigeons peck frantically at rot.
mass-produced souvenirs swirl into a mosaic of madness
kanji commercially pasted onto greeting cards and shot glasses
neon hums against the fog
sputtering characters i can’t translate-
somewhere between invitation and warning-
each flicker a stutter in the city's tired breath.
steam swirls from a vendor’s stall
the scent of soy and five-spice drifting
unraveling like a memory i was never meant to have.
i follow the glow of paper lanterns,
drifting sightless through a sea of voices
that blur like watercolor on wet pavement

i mistake a storefront mirror for an open doorway
my own face lost in the smudge of a thousand fingerprints.

the airs secretes a scent of floral seduction, seconds later
a woman in a red coat brushes past me.
the clatter of her bracelets swallowed by car horns
and the sharp inhale of a man lighting a cigarette

a pigeon startles, wings flapping against twirling scraps
paper fortunes scatter from a torn plastic bag
folded futures dissolving into cobblestone runoff 

as above, so below

as above
blinding white light
shears through the velvet
evening fabric with intentional cross-stitching, the yellow burn of yarn
looped through my doc martin boot, laced
around its neck like the noose of my lover left dangling
the stars seem more like exit wounds the longer i stare
i slip off my boot to air my bare feet between blades of grass
graciously licked by the accumulating morning dew condensing quietly
in the night consumed by grief and haunted by memories that
stain the glass of my prescription with faithless pessimism
i spiral on my descent down into my subconscious
attempting to stab through its skin with shards
of hope to expose holes of light so to
keep me from drifting into the dark
deafening endless depth
so below

desperate to forget

do you cauterize your wounds shut?  

i've grown tired from each repetitive  

grab of roots, fistfuls 

more faithful toward memories than truth

weeds that won't dwindle  

until the whole forest is burned to ash  

entire ecosystems silenced by scorch 

can you ever cut it out entirely? 

futile to pick and press on

a cyst oozing with pus

you refuse to close after extraction 

i've retracted my hands

yet the pulse flames hot and red beneath my skin

lesion leaking regenerative rot 

tell me, has genocide ever been absolute?

the kitchen reeks of insecticide  

infestation lines the inside of each crevice 

carcinogens cling to the table i dine 

though it's no use 

you continue to crawl in the forefront of my mind 

impossible to exterminate   

have you considered a lobotomy?

perhaps the doctor can pierce through the paired 

parietal lobes that store my  secrets 

release them onto the sterile silver platter

disposed of in medical waste 

the deeper they dig, the faster you metastasize

parasite betrothed to its hostile host  

i cannot purge you completely

without destroying myself in the process

perhaps we are one in the same 

a truth i cannot claim.

epiphyte

i am your mother’s favorite flower

not quite a parasite 

but a codependency

nurtured from unrelated blood

fertilized by love of her womb

that seemed to have missed you  

you would never have diagnosed

my limbless figure 

if you spotted me in convenience stores

propagated below my belt

see my spine arch over pot

an illusion of strength

hallucinates my frictionless stance

your mother weeps for you while

i collect her rain with sympathy

soaked leaves seep into my soil

it is her i wish to grow toward

but it is you

whom I must wrap around to reach her

fuschia stains her cheeks pink

while you pluck me limb from limb

to gift her a wilting timebomb

you, her fertilized seed 

shows no resemblance

to the woman who watered me

i wish to be orchid 

yet i am orphaned from this earth

by your son’s greedy hands

drained defiled deflowered 

to die on your flowerbed

as a connection that was never mine to claim

berry

berries bleed between my nails,
the more i sort for the ripest one.
the more i am stained,
the more i search.

i prick my finger upon
enchanted thorn—
welcomed by mother’s swift slap,
punishment for my pickiness.

i will not learn untouchable lessons,
but i will remember stains—
red, smeared across my hands,
a mark that lingers.

nightshade casts a shadow
over her sweeter sisters,
imperceivable poison
lurking beneath her skin.

baited by betrayal,
biblical in nature—
a deceptive disciple
melts between my molars.

in my wrongs, i am released
while sweet wine seethes
through my teeth, onto the soil
where god first planted consequence—

damming eve.

hangnail

a little lift

in my cuticle’s indent

beckons my caress

void of care

surgical precision 

compels my unskilled hands

strung by puppet strings

peeling the page 

onto the next

raw indent of red

long tender strips of leather

stick to their origin

hanging on like a child’s needy 

grip of their departing mother

orphan dermis

vibrant opulus  

blossom from thick

keratin plates embedded in sticky satisfaction

saliva drip spit

extinguish volcanic eruption

with the feline lick of regret

felt only after temptation wins

monet

oh what a curious clutz! 

always falling for artists

with their magical fingers

waltzing my joints around like puppet

strings, kneeling below their gaze

painting all things

with a beautiful glaze of pink

my eye’s precise prescription

for blindness and softness

consumes all grooves 

protruding from their jagged

scowl that i bend into a smile

art is interpretation after all!

and what an artist I am

in my ability to project my 

beauty onto such an untalented thing

an “acquired palette” 

is a polite way of saying unpopular,

which is a crystalline shell

of political correctness

bound to crack under the hot sun

melting away the sugar coated 

compliance with boiling fury 

birthed by betrayal 

foul, tasteless, and tone deaf

nonetheless I fall,

for their angst and ambition

to create 

a miniature god

i watch from afar in awe

until my knees bruised 

buckled beneath blues

and velvety purple veins

blood rushes down 

now bent into a stance 

tall, strong, and sightful

a monet really is horrendous up close!