a collection of poems from summer 2024

written in motion

nyc

-

Keith Wakes from a Nap
(For Donna Harraway)

Lying on the couch

Keith ambles over

Bears his teeth

Then rolls on his back

I scratch his stomach

He edges closer

In touch

I tumble

Through sandy spit

Rooftop sunrises

Grass stains on Hannah Arendt’s skirt

Standing at her grave

Stones stacked

Keith stares into my eyes

An unknown feeling

Google tells me

Dogs snuggle

Out of Love

You told me

Joy is in mastery

Love an accident

A confused awakening

From this thing

That depends on you

Maybe

You never had

A companion

-

Write Poetry in Black Pen

A Poetry of Affirmation

-

Piercing glass against the distant birds

A flurry of bubbles

Burst in the morning

I’m the scraped static

I’m the ripped paper

I’m the lingering gaze

I’m the forgotten layering

I can’t tell if I’m who they’re talking about

In my linen skirt dress

Or my angel black skirt

Or in my little pony tail

A dollhouse pigsty

I’m the bugs eating my hairy legs

Over an emotive free verse

-

soft echo

i am unheard

collapse into

my distorted cry

is my desire fractured

or am i fractured

by my desire?

-

2 Bitches in Prospect Park

Cunty Bitch

Running Against Traffic

Nike

All Black

Visor

Sunglasses

On a Sunday Morning


Faggy Bitch

Pug Licks Her Face

Blue Metal Bike

Dyke

On The Highest Gear

Past By Acrylic Bikes

I Must Be So Beautiful

Right Now

I Am So Beautiful

Like A Witch

Bathing In The Weeds

Hot Writer Bitch

-

I’ve finally become extremely hot. My hair framing my cheeks and jaw bones, giving me a softness then lost in a psychedelic haze. My green eyes pierced through the “brat” green streak and we did listen to charli. My legs toned from walking and biking. I feel closer to my gender when I wear this mesh top from M, this cult-like robe. Maybe I tell the students my pronouns are they/she. I guess that’s what’s in a name.

Talked about clowning in a park after leaving my airpods in the park with a cute, smart woman who found them on a date a week and a half later. A clown plays a good trick and maybe I’ve gotten away from trickfulness in my depression but I feel full of tricks in my zoloft-therapy-zen smoothie.

Too early

Too Late

I bought

A glow-in-the-dark

Heart-shaped-ring

With a

Frowny face

Some tricks I liked:

-Struggling to get the microphone in the stand

-Collecting trash from the audience

-Accents

-Oscillating b/w social critique and absurdity

-Research and performance practice grounded in ecology and place

-Funny

-Hot

-There’s some type of funny and hot that’s its own category

Love a late start at the clown show

-

Dyke walking

Around with music

Playing out loud so

They can hear

The neighborhood

-

Max Gordon Corner

Lounging on the rock

You are beautiful

Stand up

Street Lights Flash On

-

Clown Glitch

Strawberry Icecream

Money and cigarettes

Sweat flashes my eyes

Your arms are my cocoon

Ebay watch

Stop with the poppers

For a second time

Finish the painting

Relax, enjoy

Reestablish sanity

Avoid electoral politics

-

Two lost phones

Collectivize

Butterfly hair surprise

At the bottom of my green tea

Bottle of wine

You’re so hot

Washcloth covered cum

In the afternoons of my solitude

3 Bat Tattoos

North Carolina’s consuming trees

Green blonde, jeweled hand

Few clothes, confidence

In the afternoons of my solitude

-

Sunday Morning at the Met

Porcelain Figures

Alchemist and Assistant

Harlequin

Guitarist

Bonnard, Before Dinner

George Braque

House Behind Trees

Van Gogh

Madame Roulin and Her Baby

Reclined in a river, grabbing

A branch

“A painting is something that requires as much trickery, malice, and vice as the perpetration of a crime, so create falsely and add a touch from nature”~Degas

-

You have to talk about liberation

You have to talk about freedom

You have to talk about revolution

They must flow from the vitality of my experience

-

“The castle”

How strained

The words that sing become

When spoken

Under seizing sympathy

When whispered

Over prosecco and chocolates

I see myself

A number in the index

A knock on the door

A phone call

A protocol

How strained

The words are

When benevolent tongues

Lap down my less than professional

Confessional

Hildegard’s drama

My castle intrigue

A pity and ecstasy

-

I feel the world cracking open

See the shock splashed

Across everyone’s faces

I ate insomnia cookies, thought about the cookie police

W 14th

X=conversation/life

The

Ticking

Cross

Walk

It’s ok to be a fat girl.

To try on clothes with no intention of buying them.

To dream of an electric bike ride across the rotting time

Biked to the post office

Grip tape at haven

Hummus, fried rice and asparagus

Painted white tendrils

Biked to Paperboy’s

Then punk alley

Storefront

Walked around

Ate a bowl

And a cookie

Feeling round

I feel like

I am at a place

where I am writing

The narrative

Of my life