The old King wanders the halls of his lonely castle. Sunlight catches dust, daggers in stagnant air. His Ivory roses swell with buds as a gentle snow falls in the grand courtyard.
Mouse bones, mania, gods and mountains imagery
Blue Candy
Backyard Summer Storm
Summer storm in Cat Washington’s backyard always in a magnetic dance, welcome the thunder bow to lightening bathe in turbulent waters
In silence she steps lightly in beat with the tremble of Golden Cosmose, in tune with swollen grapefruit with gloves she trims dead branches, just a few at a time she carries to her shed.
I watch her tend her garden.
She moves lightly but with deep purpose, her face blank. She does not need to smile to feel. The tree, she had to take the bird net off of it earlier in the summer.
“It was suffocating,” she explains.
Cool Kids Go to the River to Make Out or to Cry
Cool kids go to the river to make out or to cry.
Swamp Bunny creeps down vines and wire, bricks of concrete
pushes past sweet olive trees, beer cans, and
the final brilliant wildflowers of the fall.
Full moon lowers the tide, swelling
somewhere more delicious. River’s
Bank exposed, lithe and bare and she
beached an electric pole, for bunny
To rest and twitching whiskers
Watch the barges pass.
“You could wave but you don’t” Ms Alligator croaks
Scaled rolls of reptilian skin sink luxuriously
in quicksand as Bunny hops to perch on
rocks at the water’s edge
There should be crabs here but
she comments to Ms Alligator,
“What a paradise of urban wonder,
yet just Pelican seems to feel at home”
“Maybe so can you, bunny, maybe so can you.”
Twitching whiskers, “Ms Alligator, I tried to find a shell but, only
Trash and oil slick, only this dried white bean, yet
Softened in the throat.”
“why you’re welcome, little bunny” she flashes
those soft fangs that her love so admires.
Bunny blushes and a bigger ship a
Foreign navy ship goes by, “I could wave
but I don’t.”
Waves rush them in his wake.
“River’s so excited to see them, I wish I’d
Waved to the sailors for her, wish I’d
Told them she misses them.”
“But she did it all on her own” Says Ms Alligator
Wind wildens bunny’s hair, she returns to feral and
The winter sun bites fresh, the wind burning somehow
Still warm, She is somehow still warm.
“I’ll keep you warm, Ms Alligator, don’t you worry at all.”
Emmaline-Sue
Confidence
is a Gothic Lolita bonnet named Emmaline-Sue and
when I pin her to my head as a dark halo and
tie ribbons across my wrists,
I am a fucking god
Arm in arm with my dark ruffled ladies,
Sipping tea under an oak downtown.
My menace partially obscured by her outstretched wings
Framing powder blush, deep lashes, and crosses on chains
Draped
Here and there
How sweetly she blinds me from the
Mundane spooks on the right and left
Fearlesness is her perched on my golden curls
A feral meditation on being forced to face what is directly ahead,
For she presses her lace into my cheek and whispers so sweetly
“you are fucking beautiful you unhinged angel of Satan.” And
I cannot help but strut a little sexier and smoother and
Cock my chin at the perfect angle, to set my lowered
Eyes on fire so when they rise to meet those of
My enemies, they fall weeping to their heels
Bloody and
Begging to kill themselves in
The chance it might
Make me smile.
SJC Spring 2023
Delicate Geometry
To Chase
A Feeling is
Not Real
What
Fleeting Poltergeist
do I wake at night
and fantasize about
As I touch myself
Desperate
For a feeling
Some vague desire
To be real
Delicate geometry
Pressed against
The corners of my windows
Peering in
Crystal is ice
Reflecting parts of me
I’ve said goodbye to
Please come home
My bed is warm
I become
Pink & soft
Simple & holy
Just a little creature again
& forever I can just be good and that can
Be enough
Ice crystals catch upon
My midnight window
Your winter kiss
I shivered all fall
Your frostbit exhale now just
Simple condensation on
The slick meat of rosy cheeks
And finally, palms eternally released,
Held in
A lullaby of Goose down fever
Freed from the search
Of all I am
Supposed to be
SJC Fall 2020, edited Spring 2023
Sex, Women, Ostara, and the River
Loud seagulls
Descend upon the city
Like awkward tourists
I brush Maroon Velvet hair
From her sweet eyes
And welcome sin, because I told the witch a lie
How much art must I create,
How much beauty must I gather
In a wicker basket
How many mewing kittens
How many chocolate eclairs to
Sanctify this existance
There is sun flitting through layers of canopy
Dead vines in large arcs, dirt packed
Tight with old glass, with orange needles and wild flowers.
It is the first day of Spring and the Mississippi river creeps on by
To the drumming of a wild mare’s trot
Serenaded by some angelic choir,
somewhere
dripping in gold and mercy
Somehow here is sadness
& the heavy soot of shame
This feels contagious
Here is some goodness
So much energy to be happy
The river, releases ships to navigate her curves
On Path
Somewhere there is ending
Somewhere she lets them fall into her great mouth and
Her fat tongue carries them gently to a quiet tombstone
With Lillies and dasies tossed here and there
For she does not ask
SHE TAKES
Holy selfishness
Sacred Masculinity
Yea, I would let her hold my wrists down and make me hers
I’d let her run rivers through my body
I’d ask for more
I’d kiss her till my mouth was bloody
I’d ask for more
I’d let her make me come
I’d ask for more
Little Blazes: We Have Faith the Sun Will Return
You were born a raging fire
With a sacred violence in your eyes
How long will you smother rage within
Some, storybook creature in a beautiful cage
You are not a hoax
It’s almost like there is a neighborhood of tiny fires
Little blazes we all keep secret
It’s almost like they saw our flame as sin
Oh holy decadence
Oh Bashful sun
Little fires in our pockets in the cavities of blinded eyes nestled into old rancid wounds, tucked into vulvas and in the arches of blistered feet. Little fires in the poison of our jaws.
Let us gather our children
While they are still breathing
While they still carry Camelias and Junebugs in their hands
All our smallest secrets
For desire was wrapped into sickness
Our fires are more than sacred violence
Our fires destroy to create room for life, for beauty.
And don’t let anyone ever fucking tell you that’s not Holy.
There is a prophet amongst us
Frozen in a sarcophagus
Underground Junebug
I heard a rumor there is milk and honey
There were whispers of song and poetry
I heard the frozen daffodils are turning green
Tiny beacons to hold on to a promise of warmer days
Faint stirrings, of a god somewhere
In which drawer you hide your pet fire?
Carefully measuring pills to keep it quiet.
We must have faith, the sun will return
We must continue our weaving before the hearth
For you were born in an iron forge a liquid muse
With limitless ability to mesmirize with song, with dance
and you want nothing more than to set the world ablaze
To Trance with Skeleton Man Pt 2
A trance is
supposed to feel
like something special
Abandon the miracle
Which colors suit your
Coffin the flowers in the
pocket of your date to Sadie
Hawkins, the freckles
On her thumbs
I wore the story of a
Mythical creature until I realized
A fantasy is unattainable
I killed myself to trade flesh with the devil
To don black diamonds in the eyes
Of twin serpents, a spine’s
Forked tongue spits incantations from
a young nun’s feverish lips.
There exists, in some version of some hell,
A water moccasin with my dead eyes
Young Witch, are you sure you are in a trance,
Or are you just running from your aching body?
Lucid Dreams 