Masters in Fine Almost: poetics of a deranged grad student. by Angie T. Jeffreys

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8/6/2019 Masters in Fine Almost: poetics of a deranged grad student. by Angie T. Jeffreys http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/masters-in-fine-almost-poetics-of-a-deranged-grad-student-by-angie-t-jeffreys 1/21 some poems written by :Angie T.  Jereys 1. Second Creation Flaps of mud spray from under dirt-  webbed feet. Drops land on calves - they congeal, cake and chip flake under the sun baking a mud mask all over my legs. The earth squishes between my toes, and your dirty hand is rough and strong - closing in on and through mine. We don’t know that the puffs of white across the horizon are cumulous. I thought they were smoke signals from a rain god. We don’t know that the bodies all burned. The ashes flew through the wind.  We don’t know that  we’re the only two born or left.  We don’t know what the oracle foretells. 2. death by holocaust  Young Phaethon lies here, poor lad, who dreamt of mastering his father’s sky-borne carriage;  Although he sadly died in the attempt, Great was his daring, which none may disparage. I wanted to ask you just how did or does it feel  body entirely metamorphosed into a holocaust as your limbs crunched, cracked and rattled against the inside of  chariot - with four horses, flaming   wings on each of their hooves, galloping dumbly down through air.  your head, collided with  bars now molten and motion, ceased you are now reading: Masters in Fine Almost: deranged poetics of  a grad student

Transcript of Masters in Fine Almost: poetics of a deranged grad student. by Angie T. Jeffreys

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some poems written by  :Angie T.  Jef reys

1. Second Creation

Flaps of mud spray from under dirt-

 webbed feet. Drops land on

calves - they congeal, cake and chip flakeunder the sun baking a mud mask all over

my legs. The earth

squishes between my toes,

and your dirty hand is rough and strong - closing 

in on and through mine. We don’t know 

that the puffs of white across the horizon

are cumulous. I thought they were smoke

signals from a rain god. We don’t

know that

the bodies all burned. The ashes flew through the wind.  We don’t know that  we’re the only two born or left.  We don’t know what the oracle foretells.

2. death by holocaust

 Young Phaethon lies here, poor lad, who dreamt

of mastering his father’s sky-borne carriage;

 Although he sadly died in the attempt,

Great was his daring, which none may disparage.

I wanted to ask you just how did or does it feel

 body entirely metamorphosed

into a holocaust as your limbs

crunched, cracked and rattled against the inside of  chariot - with four horses, flaming   wings on each of their hooves, galloping dumbly down through air.

 your head, collided with  bars now molten and motion, ceased

you are now reading: Masters in Fine Almost: deranged poetics of  a grad student

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as you, consumed by 

fire, were possibly smiling 

even just a little bit. Spit sizzles

up off gumless teeth and naked jaws.

 your lonely heart, fingered by 

 you. It was warm and lapped upair with its unquenchable orange tongues

licking at the oxygen behind

 your face.

Skin, boiled and popped in fire - it shrivels

into bone dust, pillars of ashes still standing 

up in the sky all ablaze. Flames, sizzled

and smoked, slosh in cool tap water: all

the way in we wade with wet cold feet,

shin deep searching for a trace of DNA or

something fossilized despite the sunkissed tear

falling out of the Sun like a speeding bullet.

3. Thisbe to Pyramus

 We’ve spent nights with forehead melting our cheeks into wall, dreaming 

through the cracks, gaps where fingers cannot reach. Tonight I place one palm

against one stone in prayer before I steal from this cell.

I dream of of licking white berries like honey 

from your fingertips, your heavy-sweet shadows and limbs on all of me between skin and moonlight.

Toe into blade

of grass, twigs slit

my soles as my 

feet disappear into

frigid soil.

I drop a cloak and then

 white fangs drip red: I freeze into walls.

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4. speak, please

“echo thinks”:

I’m thinking of the soft touch of your voice it heavy-hums through the air tickles

me all the way from your lips your words float off your tongue like spit bubblescoming out for air or wetted petals from refrigerated roses that soft to the touch

maybe softer you’ve gathered them with so much care bundled them for me only 

 you spray sentences into a symphonic bouquet of hot-love and sticky-sex they 

 wrap around me through me thick on me and sweet memory-sap slammed back

down the hatch and hit me the way it doesn’t when you aren’t around.

5. the ‘other’ arrowhead

Under night sky, you’re haloed in starlight.

 You kiss her

cheek, it’s pink sugar

on a hot night.

Did you laugh, blink tears at which parts? ________________

Now, you quiver like a bowstring in flight

from fingers, snapping back into its place

pinched for a second and then forgotten

it already catapulted a whistling arrow, black and heavy 

to her heart: she runs and

it drips out a running back.

6. Run to the Quay 

and I just told them I

tripped over the safety 

cap and yes glass 2 of Our Dog Blue too.

I had a permanent hangover from

that fall, too.

it’s his brother. some time

;him and catching clasps behind necklaces.

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Do you wait the first time before

he switch-swings, flips into your chin?

Do you wait and then not say that I had

a bad experience with that once that left your

skin freckled after a day at the beach

 but they were scabs left over from that kiss goodnight.

Do they say they do

see the glaze molding over

 your face? For you, I kept dropping 

crumpled bars like change in

slots of silent phone booths.

I thought silver white

shined in Irish moon. There

are intersections between us.

I got here

crossing this one street

retraced all my steps in

the air. I always travel

South from right

here.

The rainbow ends

at a big pot of razor blades and guns.

They’d keep you up at night.

7. Kissing Lilies in the Field,

I was pulled down by hand

on my lips sucked down by 

 wet tongues slurping me until

I melted in to grass then ground

past that the tunnels you

promised a world at my disposal all bodies but none of their blood

I rain my tears on cold rock I watch

 you wipe heaven from our

starry starry night with

 but the smudge of a finger-tip.

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8. after being awakened yet again

Tetanus burns cold clumpsrolling off my neck:

 you’re just carving up the dead.

Oh, okay so this is my awakening. You

say, “It hurts.”

 You say, “breathe.” You say it

doesn’t hurt like I make it sound.

I am trying to channel the pressure

of my back in brick wall my knee

in a locked joint, I’m going nowhere fast.

Dainty slits in my cheeks and the skin

on my upper arm cry. You’ve centered

on shredding my blouse, nipple open

ripped fingered teeth squeeze,

“this is orgasmic shock” you tease.

They all sound like me, sunk like a 

shopping cart, electric green from

the river.

I don’t ask if they closed their eyes. Flip

the television channel on that bleeds

the darkest Technicolor I can find.

The safety’s in my right hand, with the

pill bottle in my left, we rattle, all us

they sound like they really want to fall

down with a glass of water or smarties

in a tiny plastic candy jar. I can’t

unhinge my fingers from this remote control

I keep disappearing in pockets of wormholes

around these apartment walls.

I chose the second one you gave me: fair trade,

a moment of silence for

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a chance to use it when I woke up.

9. an epistle after the suicide

twins feel each other on the inside

of the other one I don’t really think we think about our siblings in the act of acting hot on skin two wet fingers too much steam in my two eyes to see much less you between two legs there was two of everything 

except her and me I guess except maybe you  were there too she saw you slammed shut so hard she’ll have two circles

 bruises inside her knees and thighs

tomorrow 

how could I resist the squirm?I bit throughand she flew open with the switchblade spring 

I probably didn’t have to

have shown you how it’s done when I slide through evaporating 

red smack ground people pulse by   but brother count on we don’t stop every heartbeat

sure they shake in old alleyways but we’d neverget anywhere where we were trying to get so maybe I was thinking of you

a little bit right

 before you

 bled the

two of us dry 

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10. still beside Poseidon

Slick finger slides along my lip black wet like your ocean.

I’m matted waves or floating tangles clogging my liquid lungs.

I’d kill to gnash.

I’m petrified: a statuette, eyes knocking against lids. My 

mouth is metal, sloped and cold: ringing arcs open with a 

craftsman’s curves and you in motion you

minnow-ed through my bloodstream marked my 

heart: thin tin for skin around a blood-soaked

cloud. You win I’m

pinned like a sail to a mast: a yellow candle-flame bounces it

haunts us like a buoy that rocks on its own in the middle of 

the night: I wait for the wind or the pierce of your fingers

combing through now fang-tipped curls.

11. Femme Fatale Falls Again

The metal was cold. So were my hands.

 you shook violent, your hook hugged

my throat.

 You were so nervous. You said it was

 your first time. I wanted to comfort

to say something like: it doesn’t have to take long.

 but you couldn’t look

me in the eyes: your own a sweated

mess of blushing damp curls. I thought

 you really did love me. I’d been killing myself for so long I thought I could teach

 you how to sculpt art from pain

or at least let you smash the statues with

axes or send arrows whirling across the

studio. Watch

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out for hearts like mine. I heard

air flap against blade, a metal sail warped

 by the wind, the distance between us decreasing 

 you plunge on and forward. It did happenfaster than I thought it could. I think I thought

I wanted you to hesitate or

fail one attempt before you just sliced on by.

 You don’t speak to me in dreams: I was the first

head mounted, and it too was a silver platter.

12. a morning after Perseus

 Alone again I peel the scabs from my eyelids

taped shut with mascara and other adhesives

that might seal my eyes and

the salt: I’m learning to not let it fall

from my eyes. No one would know why 

I cry when a heart implodes, there’s no debris.

No accident happened if you’re still standing, so

no one asks you to speak your heart until its

 warm and dry. I say: You shook her head so

hard at that awful sky - I saw the rage that

creeped so easy from your blade. Up you slammedit through her neck, black spit hocked from

heart. The follicles hanging from manic

fingers looked like strings dripping plaster on

to cast. If I wear another color, will you see

I’m not the image reflecting from your eyes?

That bitch is dead, and you’re a necrophiliac.

Dim her eyes, bioluminescent moons wane into New 

 back to full again, and you’ve already forgotten

soft skin curves of my cheekbone, my lips dipped

into flesh in the dark. You forget tickling my neck with pilgrim’s fingers and hot breath to

administer touch before you even see it’s my face

 you just wet with kisses, or my blood. I feel

detached from you.

Tomorrow that’ll have been the story I read

aloud to you. I’ll say: her heart fractured

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the fractures spread, feather to forked wings. Bruised

 with callouses with hooves and horseshoes

it’s now another July 4th. We drink Miller

Lite; we grill out; I fling myself with every 

horseshoe into toss. It kept clawing at her ribcage with

teeth that shutter sternum, shatter ribs. Charcoallooks like a head on or just a head of fire

like rotten lettuce or meteors

slung back into the sky: a Phoenix rises

again from firework ashes: burning the American

flag into night sky - it’s the only time you

need to fire up.

13. Ciris

I peer at war: a fight between you and

corpses braiding battlefields through

rosy opera glasses. Arms in hands

hold your swords tight as you pass into

the heart with a sword - punch that

smile sail it through the airway until

it lands in my hands like a boomerang.

I’m a thief waiting in your night: my soul

now looks like strands of your hair that

I snatched with shiny blades, love fingers.

14. So I’m a Ghost

I haven’t smiled in over or almost a year. My eyes hang heavy 

upside down dehydrated from the filmy dam of tears

 you try to never cry, but you never do. I think you think you

might recall seeing me as though I’d just smiled at you

first. You caught the flash of teeth, just bone: I was

see-through and purple-lipped. Like you I’m a fireworksdisplay of shooting up fire in sky holographically bending 

on but it’s my nape. Your eyes hovered silent

paralyzed. Your finger in my mouth like a nipple

on a barren mom.

 You’re announcement ripples the wind - rattles bones

I’m a virgin bride left unprotected by even her sacred blood.

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The rusty tips of metal jagged through my throat:

slices my heart into pinafores and finger foods at

the last dinner party. Both vocal cords and screams

are doubled into useless tubes that end sooner now. I

don’t need them for such a little death: I swallow or spit blood from the hole now on top of my throat.

The sobbing you wished to go away now still haunts

 you in the night’s middle, and you can’t remember if 

that’s my voice it swept back out

side with the trash in the morning.

Deep-fried grease sprays metal so hot it’s cold as the

saw bears down on the cord of spine bones. My heart

isn’t ever anything more than a muscle mostly its

carnage. I bore my breast and neck as one to become

two. This is the only way men like you know how toreproduce, or procreate the integers to calculate

 which death I should of picked.

Hot and soft skin rises like bread, falling, floating 

up there as I breathe bile out on an altar that only 

listens to Achilles’ prayers. After the math, I’m tracked

as footprints on someone else’s floor: they forgot

to wipe me from their boots before treading corridors.

15. Colliding Moons

I shed moons like tears from my eyes

 because there’s nothing better to do. They 

are moons from other places. They are

concealed within a salty membrane. They 

fall like change out of ripped pockets down

clanking against an empty street. They 

crash into impact and shatter across

pavement. I’m crying moons like dotted

lines that mark the street out of an open car window. Jupiter and Saturn

are dimming by the minute as I lift the

reflection of light from a rock from the spotty 

sky to fall unraveled at my feet

colliding with each other, piled deep.

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they were filled with Thermochromic Spirit.

Bound in spandicized cloth they 

collected and soldered the dismembered

limbs of Christie Turlington into another

collage with paste and plastic wand.

Gelled and flattening on a page frayed

from paper tears, Christie’s wounds

 were pressed scares that scalding glare

of magazine masked. These are the sources

of spells or prayers the preteens recited,

gazing into mirrors at glassy reflections

to produce thicker eyelashes, more black

and replace with silk thread for hair. Every 

time a young girl learned to read

magazine headlines, Cristie resurrected in

spirit. She laid foundation to

set the number to 100 brushes ran through

hair. Exorcizing nightly cakes of product residue

that paralyze fairytale ringlets through time.

The preteen disciples to show faith

disciplined themselves through sit-ups

and ritualized leglifting meditationsslowly savored pre-counted chews

then generated lines, waiting to fan

their hands across cool porcelain rim

of a white toilet seat: purging their souls

along with breakfast in the fasting season.

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18. I could have missed that morning.

I was startled from dream at 5am

to black (eyes) eclipsing face. If I’d looked

a bit different, I could have seen you from a different angle:

 your color on my pinhole eyes, but purple/orange

only burns a few 

minutes that way after 5. After

that it’s gone again. But I don’t

remember that it was quite that way. My 

eyes glazed over drinks we split the night before. I

nearly missed thinking you were beautiful, lying 

 just that way in bed. I nearly missed me

lying on the other side of you. If it hadn’t

 been such a bright morning, I’d have known your

pupils dilate from the suns you see in dreams.

19. Always After the Rain

 We wade through underwater rockbeds

after every next hurricane hightide

diminishes, waves collapse back

toward the brownsugar horizon where at

5:41am it was 63 degrees of sun

slips silent silent as the adhesive behind

a bicycle reflector tacked in streaks to the sky.

 We don’t wake up

that early on the family annual vacations,

though. Instead we’re twinned insweatsuits and black and white checkered

slip on shoes. Keds riding up with damp rings

around the ankles. We’re twins, squatting 

on patches of the moss slick that snap back

and forth under the surf’s topskin. We avoid

the curdled pockets of foam, fuzzing across

the well-oiled surface.

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How didn’t we know we’d end up like this?

that we’d always find us mining the debris -

 you were sifting for sand-dollars or sets of 

car-keys while I kept a lookout for sharks

teeth and shooting stars. We skipped broken shells, and you taught me to snap

my wrist, but I’d rather just watch

the shells tear up Atlantic’s thick

mud-colored froth.

Fossils and homes, even their teeth drop and pop into more

pieces and bubbles as they fall jagged

to the bottoms found only in deeper tide-pools.

20. the composition was a nightmare

i. the end:

I can’t ever remember if I fell in love with a woman or man that night.

 We were all over each other, and we’d been watching ballerinas in the sheer

dark. The sex was memorable, but I think it was his lines

or the porno boiling across the room. I felt a bit too flushed to make

sense of it all. I think I admired the simplicity of his art:

he said it just worked better for both of us with me on top. It was the art

alone working on my heart.

Then it was intermission, or maybe we were just between paintings.

Did we even drink the wine? I have a ripped label from a wine bottle

shredded in the midst of frustration. I do have the red stain bleeding 

off my skirt, and it’s a bit purple under my chin, too. It could’ve been

paint. Either way, I saw that fucking ballerina move. There’s blood

on the napkin when I dab my chin. It sure doesn’t taste like paint!

ii. the other end:

 We may agree it’s best to disagree, and we say to each other, we’re justmaking an art that’s all each our own. Then he hit me with a flick of paint

on my tongue. Oil rings low around my lips. Okay fine.

I guess it is always going to be just the are that we’re after. I guess someone

 just had to remind me it’s a mimic stroking along the canvas. But sometimes,

it just looks so real! Besides we all like to hang things on that empty wall:

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 ballerinas lining mine - screwed in like lightning bugs behind their silver

screens. He calls it the wall. I call it a stage.

iii. i can’t find a beginning 

I don’t have to see the props listed in that program to believe here when

she does really aim the gun. He screams next to me.

It’s only a pirouette.

Look.

That’s her finger pressing through the air.

That’s you. You scream next to me - it’s not my scream. I am no longer scared.

There, she licks and bites hard down on lip as she finds the hammer. She’ll die

if she doesn’t let go of the trigger. She ricochets out in clouds of bullets.

or balloons of paint splatter the wall.

Happily ever, Degas captures his subject before she collapses. Then heplays with his portrait after she relapses. At the end or in the beginning 

he doesn’t know she learned to take that fall.

21. date night

I.

a rush of emerald air glitters with glass

falls - curtained they’re studs: cubes of car window 

eyelids up-flap back into the shower down - they’re teethedlashes.

I look down from thigh - a pink triangle installs

from the driver’s side window - the rest is

the other side of the door.

I’m not looking for my head on the flip side of a television

screen - I don’t know any mirror tricks. This is a steering 

 wheel stamped on my sternum. Unlike you

think, my forehead isn’t purple with colored pens or purple ink. It’s blood underthe skin, bleeding down behind your face, like a water falls in your heart

II.

I lull off into sleep with a pen in hand watching Saturday night

movie specials. The tip drops

on a white cotton t-shirt. I wake up with breasts rouged by an unknown hand.

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III.

In my dreams, he sits down, ends the couch I drape

across, legs nudged delicate apart with rough slick fingers

no gloves shoved

 between my thighs. Thumbs ride me hard, fast: I’m a control

tower for you, nippled

 with uncountable buttons.

But you memorize

the steps inside

 your fingers with speculums, power drills.

He’s wearing photocopies of the same ski mask

all over his now shingled head, memorable evening wear yes, but average eyes,

 black or hazel. It’s hard to tell, he says, unless I take these: just

pieces detached with an unsanitary blade. a tiny samples rain from

drill bit. The sparks blind, the teeth deafen. A fetus falls like Adam

down to floor - aimed straight for the grave.

In dirt my breath thins, covers more ground but in tubes and ticking 

spoonfuls of morphine to make the medicine go down.

22. mother’s day: a sonnet

I used to be somewhat of a ballerina:

suspended in flight, always adolescent,

I was defying gravity for a couple of seconds.

My mother decided when I was 4 that I needed

grace and discipline in a wooden studio,

the floor was a splintered and waxed trampoline.

By middle school, I’d started to understand my body 

to be a winged mirage for the rebel scientists, who were

secretly adding and subtracting integers underground.

I tour jete-ed my body into a midflight twirl,knotting tendon string and cartilage

into a weapon aimed straight at inertia.

Suspended on ankles at 21, I grande battement-ed en cloche.

I echappe saute-ed from a Math student’s embrace.

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23. morning ritual observations

I. The county children started Catholic school this year: they tumble

down in sheets, tugging awkward at the ends of their uniforms.

These are the scavengers, retrieving tokens from between cobblestonesin the street. They even lift up the loose rocks, temporary tombs for lost

change. In anticipation, they reach inside the vaults

of what 53 Euro-cents can buy in candy they’ll suck and smack through class,

until reprimanded by a trash can and a ruler. On this cue, an orb of chorus

 begins and ends with multicolors shattering between weak teeth.

II. I do remember spilling, depositing into stony slots that stole my balance

in the street last night. Between the down and black-green pebbles molding 

in moist pockets, stitched right into the road. Wet with sweat and

 blood, the money from the

places you’ve been, rescued by 

kids in the morning hunt.

24. Holographic Porno

“I’m telling you stories. Trust me.” -Henri

That night before Thanksgiving, you transformed the entire

grid of city streets into our own private porn studio. I never pass upthe opportunity to tell people how it was the hottest night of sex I ever had.

Cameras lined every block just to catch your everybest angle. I’ve always

liked it dirty, swimming across those streets that used to be canals  before the city bled them dry. Didn’t we make love through asphalt caked by stale beer, urine deposits. Slash my  face with  bare palm slap me again with

sharp knife edge  you know  everybody  needs a good spanking and spanking just isn’t quite enough. I was a foreigner

on your street, lonely:

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 you’d like for me to

never feel like I have to feel that lonely again.

I added fruit, apple cider, salt and mint

to a 1 1/2 quart saucepan this morning,following the recipe my fiance used

he said I added too much salt

 but I don’t remember asking him

for his opinion.

I watched his clumsy fingers

loosen turkey breast, gently as

far back as possible, without

tearing skin. I spread fruitmixed over breast

meat he covered it up with skin.

He made sure the meat thermometer

 wasn’t touching bone. I wrapped

it sort of tight in aluminum foil.

He baked that Thanksgiving Feast for

1 hour 55 minutes or until

the thermometer read 170, and

the juice isn’t any longer pink

 when he cuts down through flesh.

I don’t pretend to know or care

 what I’m doing in a kitchen. But I was

still smiling about you last night. I’ll

think of you every year on this day,

and the hottest night of sex I ever had.

25. a cathedral lit with candles

I light prayer candles at ever cathedral in Galway, I snap pictures

to show to my mother, proof that I did set foot inside of a church. I do

say a prayer for my grandmother, but I doubt it counts if you’re not

even Catholic. I’m mostly waiting for wax to dissolve from liquid form

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into the ancient air. I chew on wax and incense in my mouth, it’s hard

to pray when I don’t feel like it right this second. Guinness T-shirts stomping 

across the annex floor, on top of the saints’ graves, buried further underground.

I listen to my own steps echo on mausoleum walls, I watch my prayer candle and

think if it’s left on all night, or extinguished by the socially awkward altar boys when they leave to go do their homework. I think of that extra Euro

now donated to a greater cause, and I wonder if lighter fluid would help me

get my money’s worth out of a purchased prayer.

I wonder what happens to the pennies, wished upon, then cast into baptismal

fount, distilled with holy water and copper.

26. The Mona Lisa is Held Up

I went to Paris and I went crazy when I went to

the Louvre. We walked hours and miles

of paintings and statues, and I kinda felt like

an asshole, because they all looked the same

to me. I almost cried, sorta like some Sunday mornings

 when you’re at church and Jesus hops skips

and jumps right on in your heart. There were

tears shed that afternoon in the Louvre,

 but they were for the sad canvas cornered behind an

ultraviolet shield: it was the Mona Lisa gunned down.

27. for invocations

The evolution of a heart beat inside a cavity of bones

and blood feels like revolutions of motion in which

it all centers around a shared axis: parallel paths that will never depart from two separate suns

as long as the stargazer watches her steps

more closely than the walker gazes at stars. My 

thoughts retard into a natural line drawn in and if 

at the end I do arrive at the point where I began,

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it’s a center like any other

in my heart. It’s only when the only motion in the room is stark silence

lamp-yellowed around the walls, and a heart cracks in two.

It’s to easy to forget that this is not how the muscle falls.

28. a purple heart is made

These aren’t camcorder-ed stories, shelved inside a home entertainment

center, cassette spines pressing each other, secure in their own

storage space. These are not anticipated,

no one points out the red light mounted against the sky.

No one mentions the camera already aimed with a mute dot

at my head. These are almost photographs of an emptied

street: almost snapshots of me, the lucky 

one, rescued by a peripheral feed.

The camera continues to capture ghosts rounding identical minutes

like me, so the cycle only looks as though it’s beginning to end

again.

Moments broken down into the first

 war, where I’d kill to have shed blood

instead of tears. I wonder

if you can see in those sad sisters’eyes the things that used to cross

their minds. I don’t recall what this artillery was before I welded

hearts into weapons, what I did with my hands before they 

fired guns. I don’t remember not winning every war before it’d

started, or, calculating the launch of exploded shrapnel,

steady aimed with a sniper’s eye.

29. blink. Blink, bang!

Matt A. pinned my wrists together on the small of my back with one hand.

Mashed together, the bones grinded against each other, and I could only wince. I

think he might’ve said he’d rip out my arm from its socket if I didn’t shut up.

Chris R. was there, too, so close I could see his freckles swarming all over his

scrunched-up face. Chris circled me slow like a scavenger hawk, I’m gawna 

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eeetchoo. Ain’t nuthin you can doooo. Now comes his fatal error: sucking in and

 blowing a large, yellow chunk of snot right on to the skirt of my new, sky blue

sundress.

He laughed to hard he couldn’t help but blink. Blink, bang! My foot swung up

like nails to a horseshoe magnet and landed entirely on his crotch. I think that was the first time anybody’d actually called me a bitch, like they meant it at least.

I pitched a handful of gravel into his eyes. He looked like he was thinking about

retaliation, but he’d been operating this whole time under the mistaken

assumption that the only reason people don’t hit girls is because they cannot hit

 back. This was just another day on my 3rd grade playground.

30. apocalypse missed

I think she missed an apocalypse she thinks I missed an apocalypse we both think it was there because something did make the bright

sky white she blinked because it was there or there was

a white sky made bright probably by something 

I blinked and suddenly it glittered down glittered down and out

she blinked and it glittered down and out I blinked glitter shattered

everywhere she blinked and it shattered I blinked and she glittered

all over me the bright glittered down and out like ashes over the Atlantic

I shattered or blinked and I glittered like a time-bomb white cloud hiding 

out blinking behind a bright sky shattered and I blinked out at the flarethat glittered down like ashes out over the Atlantic

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