Jennifer

i am at church with my family. it is almost ten o’clock, and we are the last ones in. we are late but the sermon hasn’t started yet.

i am walking with a flock of children from the church to the school. we are passing under some pine trees, and i run off with a friend. her name is jennifer.

behind the church there are burs in the bushes. we pick them from their branches and we create people with them. as we pick them apart and from our clothing, she grabs my hand.

she compares the inside of our palms. her skin there is lighter than the rest of it. she tells me how one day her skin will be light like mine. she tells me it will start from her palms.

we communicate with each other in false foreign tongues until our stomachs begin to growl. the school bell rings and we run.

Lauren

i am entertaining friends at a house that may be mine.

the afternoon is coming to an end, and the last few of them depart. i bid them a well evening, and i retreat to the bathroom. i am intoxicated. i am stressed and tired. i take my hair down from its knot.

i watch as large dead scalp continents fall from my crown into the sink. i tousle them free, the ones that are stuck. they create a landscape in the basin below.

i am alone and falling apart.

out the window, through overcast light, i see a discarded mitten. the mitten is mine. i dropped it there in the budding of winter. the snow is gone now.

i wish i was that mitten, soggy, cold and sluggish. asphalt for a bed.

feeling the sun would be so nice.

what are little boys made of?
daymare, will, of make-believe?
monocarpic tendencies cause
the calloused and their bereaved
pulchritudinous putridity is
wishful thinking on both ends
emasculated monologue
disguised as self-conceit

what are little girls made of?
of hopes, of dreams, of stars?
hollow ivoryminded mimicry
disgusting spitefilled wars
inside a flesh accessory
lie sad and lonely toils
an inexhaustible apothecary
of self-abusive lore

“six and seven bath Jupiter and wed,”

and we shed Our skins and hair
to completeth by the Seventh day,
the work which we hath dared:

we hath weaved the Night and then,
from the dander upon your bed—
oxford dreamings, dolly-struck,
(menstrual pools beneath Our hands)

i then moved and the Day with me,
and i suffocated within its folds,

“ceaseth by the Seventh day,”

without you, i am Dead