Fire-signaled, we come out like moles, our black pad-claws raised to our faces to protect the tiny buddings of our eyes we hesitate, just slightly, and for only one moment (just to make sure) and then run, arms out, to make the first trail.

She has a horse-face, you know, and she is very bad at faking nice. She thinks she is good at it, but I am a consummate actress, and it is obvious that she is not. But nevertheless, you think she’s one of those Good People, and when she whinnies, there you run, with a bucket [...]

Maybe you think if you sit always inside it, zipped up so the nylon scratches your chin, then you will sweat out your nightmares, and your whole mass will evaporate, squeezed and pushed out through tightly-robed pores. Or maybe you think if you are never without it, (even when heat makes it slick where it [...]

You sit, clean and tall, orange on red, covered in maple leaves, bold against the blue. I carve you from the inside out, pull out the seeds and toast them. I cut a smile (no toothy grin), I make your eyes wide and suspicious. She trails sheets, blue sneakers peek, his hair’s both black and [...]

I think the words were “thrilling” and “beautiful”— which, come to think of it, are not even such impressive gifts: you cannot preen your beaver-fur with oils squeezed from “beautiful,” and thrilling, leather-padded, is not so soft or warm to touch. Maybe what stung more was that beacon light “epistle” flashing, nude and stark, against [...]

it was too much today, that neophyte din, that spitting of 'sickness' from naive, shrewish lips. their words gnarled and twisted, spider-creeping the room, rings and things forcing forward, walls profaned. glassless picture frames jeering at me, scenes of servile sterility-- escape! my head crushed against the bathroom wall, the silver ring i couldn't understand-- [...]

i want to fall into myself, to wrap my arms around me, and build a wall of bones. i want to shrink my skin, shrinkwrap my spine, i want to be texture, ridges, thorns. my core burns clear, contracting in, it hones my spikes against the world. i am sharp edges, protruding lines, i am [...]

Lightning hail, pour through my bones, Silver blood strike now— transmute this ash of sleeping eyes so I, now purged, may grow.

Spider’s limbs; today I wear teardrops, the spilling of sorrow, as I stand, Skeleton Woman, fighting the wind; I am bone-strong and bare, pumpkin-silks pulled from my limbs; my leaves, lost and littered, are gone; only the last folds of taffeta, worn and clinging, strain at my veins; though they twirl, pirouette, this is no [...]