▲N ▲NTHOLOGY

i feel like a bulimic who has just purged
an entire German dark chocolate cake.
i am staring at vomit; my spine, it is
ss
hh
a
kk
ii
n
gg.
everything i write is forced; i stick
quills down my throat and puke ink.
i am projectile vomitting an incosistant
ss
tt
y
ll
ee.
All I know is my vomit is always black.
God, I wish my binges weren’t so fucking
dark.

June 7, 1991

Mother, I thought more of you.
Mother, I empathized with your fight.
Mother, I had compassion for your bruises-

on your face, below your veins, on your thighs.

I never should have asked questions.
I never should have searched for answers.
I suppose the soul leads you to them when you are ready. But,

Mother, I was not ready
to read what the doctors wrote
about you, about us, about your visit to
the clinic. The shit on my foot you didn’t
wipe clean. Mother, you were mean; you
coyoted me into loving you, and now I am a woman
3 years short of the age when you had me; I can not begin
to fathom how I can ever put myself in a position where I may become you:

Vodka induced comas,
negligance, abuse, abu
SE, ABUSE, ABUSE, ABUSE

Mother, you are truly cruel.
If only June 7, 1991 could have been
April 8, 1991, maybe I could pretend I owe you
some civility. I am older now, less defenseless now:
I know exactly what it is you tried so desperately to do to me.

If you really couldn’t bring yourself to have an abortion,
but had the nerve to try and kill me in your own apartment
you could have saved us both the divestment of our realities.

You could have killed yourself before you had me.

My grandma,
she is the woman in
Edward Hoppers “Nighthawks”

She sits next to my grandpa;
she stares at the cigarette he
put in her hand without asking.
She doesn’t know what lengths
she will go to keep up appearances.

You see, he’s married with 2 kids-
both boys.
He says he loves his wife
enough of the time.

My grandma, she’s just another one
of Edward Hoppers girls caught
stark naked at night.

She glances at the man across the counter
and notices he isn’t wearing a wedding band.
She wonders what her life would be like
if she had come here with him instead.

“Light the damn thing.” My grandpa says. He sips his coffee. He stares.
There is only one bone on his body
that has ever really cared.

My grandma, she is one of Edward
Hoppers girls frozen in time-
an aborigine who has had her soul taken-
lonelier than the shadows etched in
Hiroshima.
The future end to the war she wishes
would call my grandpa away.

For My Biological Mother

I didn’t do anything today.
I barely spoke today-
Imagining that alienation was a metal
barrel on my teeth, I stayed quiet.
Couldn’t even reflect on an accurate
Inner picture of myself.

I AM NOT SYLVIA PLATH.
I AM NOT ANNE SEXTON.

But I would be lying to you
if I did not tell you my
incredible want to die.

Does genetic memory form in the womb
before or after your mother contemplates
your abortion with the same blood
creating your growth?
I was born with so many reasons to feel
Rejected in my bloodstream, that I eventually
grew to resent and reject myself.
It is not sad.

I am not Sylvia Plath;
I am not Anne Sexton.

I merely want to greet death very
violently, very
quickly-
from the time I was 12 to the second
I die,
because these past years have been
so full of fire- of brimstone, that I
want the white light I’ve seen
in my dreams to guide me
to a soul crushing
orgasm.

Listen, I do not doubt that fate wanted me
to be an abortion. Do not doubt that my
mother defied her path and now lives
a life of
shame and wonder, guilt and schizophrenia-

I feel it in my blood.
Can almost see her sitting at
a clinic, or with a wire coat hanger
in her hand, a bottle of vodka or a
boyfriend with a bat.

But last second- she puts her hand
to her belly just starting to show;
feels her heart beat in her chest and
imagines my heart beginning to grow- and
she leaves the clinic, the back alley,
the bottle unopened on the table,
the boyfriend all together.
Carries me for 9 months
scared and alone, defying God
because He left her with a hole in
her life so big she doesn’t even feel
like she has a life to live.
(maybe she thinks i can fill it)
Yeah, it’s why she’s a speed addict,
why she ran away from home twice.
Her parents beat her, so
she doesn’t mind when
she’s in juvy.
But she’s 24 now- there is
no juvy. Just a jail cell
that’s smaller than the
studio apartment she
sketches in to keep
herself occupied-
keep from doi
ng drugs.

It’s been 9 months, though.
I’m no longer filling her; I
am outside of her.
I’m red faced and I cry
because she keeps me
unattended for hours at
a time, she feeds me
when it’s convenient
for her, she hates me,
she loves me, she ha
tes me, she loves me,
she has been off her
schizophrenia meds
for over a year now (
no money to pay for
them that she doesn’t
need to spend on dia
pers) and she can no
longer tell if she really
does love me, or if she
really does hate me.

I am 8 months old, and after an
episode in my mothers brain her blood
gets hot and she can not understand why
she didn’t abort me.
I am 8 months old and her hot blood
is inside of me
asking why I am still alive.
I am 8 months old and my only self-defense and validation
is to cry.
She puts me under a heating blanket and
turns the apartment heat on high.

There has been no event
in my life to over shadow the fact that
I was meant to die,
no event in my life that validates any reason for
me to be alive.

And,
it’s not sad.

I am not Sylvia Plath;
I am not Anne Sexton.

But it doesn’t change the innate knowledge, I am not meant for this earth.
The fainting spells in dry heat, at the
sight of blood, at my own cursive hand writing on pages that were once bare-

They all serve to remind
I have always, always
been meant to die- and
that’s what makes us
so similar: my mother and
I.

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
—>the horizontal&vertical lines in fabric that make a shirt too small
—>the elastic in denim that doesn’t stretch enough
I HATE ALL THE DEVILS THAT ARE OUT
—>instrumental, and
—>supportive
I HATE THE GODS TO TELL YOU TO
“love yourself, no matter what”
and to
“do unto others”
It’s just more details to add to our existing demons,
Telling us it is ok to look in the mirror
and hate what you see.

There has never been an angle I couldn’t find that didn’t make
Me look fat, demonic fat, like a
Baby who is fascinated with its
Own folds, demonic fat
That the bubonic plague would
Have wiped clean.
—>In a past life, I suppose I was the
Bubonic plague
—>the AIDs virus
—>tapeworms
—>cholera

I am any bit of detail in your physiological make up that will
Make you purge until
You are bare bones,
Caving in,
Angelic.