Sta.sh
with the subject "Demonstrably Deviant".
this journal and read the other works. now, onto the main event—
The 26thThere is a Christmas tree in my hallway, decorated with globes and gold and lithium words. I pass it everyday on my way to the metro, to catch the 9 o'clock train heading out of town, out of state, out of life. The holidays have long since passed, but you insist on leaving it up, believing in the off chance that they might return someday. I know they won't, though, for the empty boxes are all unwrapped and the holly wreathes have withered from prolonged exposure to desolate, teardrop snow.
Every morning you wake me up, bells on your wrists and a red hat dangling from your head, your voice an enthused whisper as you tell me Christmas is here
"Every morning you wake me up, bells on your wrists and a red hat dangling from your head, your voice an enthused whisper as you tell me Christmas is here. I pretend to believe you, pretend to have hope and stumble out of the room after you, and pretend to be disappointed when I find the tree's needles have all trickled to the ground."
summergirlNow read aloud over here. Do give it a listen, won't you?
i. summergirl,
you are crowthroated and tumbling
through the aspen grove
hair on fire with sunrise, lungs
full of sky.
eyelashes like wildflowers
and every morning brings
a new spray of freckles
and a sharper curve to your collarbones.
the cornfields hold no shadows
for your lighthouse eyes
and there are no endings in that
surefooted smile.
ii. you have grown
so fast.
autumn finds you with broken ankles
leaning on an oak branch
and watching the skies.
crow to sparrow--you are quiet.
summergirl, there is peace in silence,
perched treetop,
fallen antlers in your hands.
you will come to mourn your deer.
keep them close.
iii. by winter you have paled,
and like the streams
your eyes have frosted over.
you feel the chill--
there is no need for sight.
summergirl, th
"summergirl, the snow is deep.
the river is hungry."
In Piecesrum-lust lips make gentle friends,
words slurred in hands blurred,
burning in between the lines to find
some
drunken concoction of wilted laughs
and heavy sighs, scented sultry
with desperation.
you are that
rasping in my throat when my voice
deteriorates and I am left breathless
and hopeless and raw, my
muscles ache in memory of the
motions to forget-
we do not let go.
and cold beds call, stability,
metal frames and sunken heads –
rest now, rest with
a prayer on your lips you don't
care to share, a dream in
your mind you'll never get back;
rest and the earth will lend you peace
and
you will stop. the rivers will cle
"you will stop. the rivers will clean
your bones; the sand will smooth
your tongue; you will stop, brain blank,
as smooth ivory promises persist."
"then you will fucking watch me cry like a thousand
children lost in the wilderness, or leave me
to my element without a cause"
"Don't know what to expect,
how much to accept;
don't know much at all."
escapeescape
---------
I shall leave the windows dirty
and the doors unopened
and when I awake from sleep
where I make a world of my own
I shall read
and watch
the worlds created
by those who've already flown
to a place where there exists
only one of each thing made
Lancelot Price 2012 December 31
"I shall read
and watch
the worlds created"
four thousand and onei've smoked about four thousand
cigarettes this year and i still see nothing
but ash and empty packs. i had a lot to learn.
i didn't learn any of it.
all was funeral gray and washing dishes till
my fingers felt like land mines. we were
not finished being dumb when you died
and i found out that night under the speckled
window lights still on how those lights could
look like stars if we looked at them in just the right
way--
and i didn't believe you were really
dead, not then because i couldn't shake
those two in the morning smokes
all summer while you drank
your beer and i my diet coke and
talked about nothing in particular
"and i'm scared to read the things that i
wrote then because i'm scared i'll
run out of god and run out of cigarettes
and run out of money and run out of you"
this new yearwhen the clock was counting down
I was trying to write a letter
but the hiccups caused my pen to stride
in terrifying leaps across the page.
How I pictured
in those erratic inky tracks
a fawn
that lowers her head
to taste a rare winter green
and pauses, then,
to glimpse upward at the night sky
and wonders, for a brief
inconceivable moment,
about the nature of her origin
below Zeus, Jupiter, or Hera,
what the future may bring
and all the uncountables in the universe
and that is all I can ask for
in this new year
—to be the fawn that lowers her head,
peers through delicate lashes at the stars,
"How I pictured
in those erratic inky tracks
a fawn
that lowers her head
to taste a rare winter green
and pauses, then,"
straddled stung strokedkissing you like being swallowed
kissing you like swallowing like
wanting to get at your throat
but caught transfixed by your mouth;
the obscene jut of your adam's
apple and realizing i can bite at
your slick lips your slick tongue
your stubble your jawline and you
will let me. my stomach stretching
taut with bewildered bewitched obedience
at the upward slide of your dry hot
hand. my ribs, introverted as bones
come, begging for mouths to use to
beg for your palm at their peaks;
you take as graciously as the grind
of my hips against yours, quiet
and secondnature. i give as openly & as
desperately as i can manage, inviting you
in as
"but caught transfixed by your mouth;
the obscene jut of your adam's
apple and realizing i can bite at
your slick lips your slick tongue
your stubble your jawline and you"
:thumb341553389:
"and maybe there was a bomb in the oven
inside of you that i couldn't find- but i swear
i tried my hardest to catch the gun powder
that rolled down your cheeks before it fell
onto the insides of your ashen wrists"
Your Saturday Morning Features are always looked forward to by me. Thank you.
fixed. this is what i get for making this after a night of no sleep.