crooked as corkscrews

I found the rooms between
the violence of comets. I threw myself into anything’s path. Even the sky
bent around me. How lonely to be something that nothing wants to kill.

I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory
When’s it gonna get me?
In my sleep? Seven feet ahead of me?
If I see it coming, do I run or do I let it be?
Is it like a beat without a melody?
See, I never thought I’d live past twenty

Always the loneliest one
in the room, now.
Always gnawing
at the bones of love,
of hot wings, because
the meat isn’t enough,
you need it
to sting.

Always the hungriest
one in the bed,
at the table.
Always asking for seconds,
for more, licking your fingers
because you’re shameless
when you’re not alone.

If love could fit inside you
it would eat you
from the inside out.
Hunger eating hunger
until you’re just
a girl again.

You are not the only survivor
of the empty stomach, but
you are the only one
who survived
in this particular way.

No one else knows what you do
when no one wants what you
have.

No one else loves a hand
with something in it
as much as you do.

Look! Look!
What is this dark death
that opens
like a white door?

Sometimes courage
is swallowing the ocean
that tries to drown you
but sometimes it’s drowning
and drowning
and going limp but still drowning
and going salt but still drowning
and making snow angels
on the ocean floor.

i was born from the heavens
so crack open my bones
and galaxies will spill into your palms.

The Badger is the thirteenth astrological sign.
My sign. The one the other signs evicted: unanimously.

So what? ! Think I want to read about my future
in the newspaper next to the comics?

My third grade teacher told me I had no future.
I run through snow and turn around
just to make sure I’ve got a past.

My life’s a chandelier dropped from an airplane.
I graduated first in my class from alibi school.

There ought to be a healthy family cage at the zoo,
or an open field, where I can lose my mother
as many times as I need.

When I get bored, I call the cops, tell them
there’s a pervert peeking in my window!
then I slip on a flimsy nightgown, go outside,
press my face against the glass and wait…

This makes me proud to be an American

where drunk drivers ought to wear necklaces
made from the spines of children they’ve run over.

I remember my face being invented
through a windshield.

All the wounds stitched with horsehair
So the scars galloped across my forehead.

I remember the hymns cherubs sang
in my bloodstream. The way even my shadow ached
when the chubby infants stopped.

I remember wishing I could be boiled like water
and made pure again. Desire
so real it could be outlined in chalk.

My eyes were the color of palm trees
in a hurricane. I’d wake up
and my id would start the day without me.

Somewhere a junkie fixes the hole in his arm
and a racing car zips around my halo.

A good God is hard to find.

Each morning I look in the mirror
and say promise me something
don’t do the things I’ve done.