Poetry

I sit, as stuffed as a sardine, on a city bus. 

I sink into the patchy, never-cleaned seats 

that possess psychedelic patterns 

like the ones I see when I close my eyes 

a little too hard. 

I pluck a fiery hair from the felt on my chair 

that looks nothing like my own dirty-blonde locks. 

I imagine it got lost there years ago 

by a woman like me, 

disposable and breaking, 

and exhaling exhaustedly 

in between the felt and her own feelings. 

I wrap the red hair around my fingertips again and again 

until the circulation cuts off, until I tease them into tingling. 

I force the follicle up to my face 

and start furiously flossing the hair between my teeth, 

threading it through each one 

as if it felt good— 

someone else’s filth inside my own. 

The bus driver swerves, 

branches banging the outside of the tin. 

The exterior vibrates 

and I can feel myself hear the metallic echoes 

as I remain alone in a sea of people. 

And I proceed to thread her hair 

up and down

and up and down 

until my gums bleed, 

but the string still remainsrubyred, 

and I still remain helpless, 

flailing on the bouncing bus 

up and down 

and up and down 

and up and down 

My presence changes nothing.

Gagging and gloomy from the smell of red wine, I sit on the floor,
looking up at boys who have taken ownership of my furniture
(and my festering feelings).
I contort my body to fit the space on the floor
just as the perspectives of my friends contort
from the alcohol.
No one even offers me one of the pillows that I picked out from the outlets
(they are cheap enough to touch the grubby ground)
so my body aches and cracks
like the wine bottle would if I’d released my pent-up anger against it
and my friends get drunker, but I get more fermented
(like sour grapes)
as men consume me and my couch and my sobriety—
‘but there’s room on his lap.’ my friend suggests with wine-stained lips,
and sure, maybe sitting on a man would be less degrading
than existing below him like his bitch on the stiff, hard floor.
So much for a girls’ night when it seems girls exist only for the boys.
No man in this room will ever be a husband of mine
(but maybe it’s because my body rejects
the trickery of man-made red wine).

October has grazed 

The daisies, among other things, 

But the stems and buds appear black, stale, and sickly, Yet unwilling to cease entirely to autumn 

The once-yellow petals 

With blonde pistols and leafy and lively stems Are corpses 

and I don’t understand how, when this happened 

Their heads hang low under the street lamps One of the bulbs flickers, but its inconsistency, Instability is unbothersome 

Because the light only embroiders the darkness 

I fear upon descent 

Every crimson leaf that brushes 

Against the flower corpses 

Won’t compel them to collapse, but snowfall will. 

I find them ominous, yet ravishing. 

Pine needles litter the sidewalk 

Next to the morbid and perishing flora 

And I hear the train