Starch my dress
to stone
I am so tired
of looking so
worn in my skin

Content

White noise—
Static heavy
between my pupil
and my iris expanding
to meet our open space.
Touch, one between
another and never
together; I want
to be closer rather
than farther.
The steadfast
unicellular molecular
structure of ourselves
eats up daylight
in glass—
Our artificiality
creates, not yet—
bright red and soft
slender tensions—
reality. Relief.

Not many changes, but draft two.

Belgard

bluebells at our hairlines,
silver almost in daylight.
I would take your hand
to be still again
while the world pulsates
around us and our hay-
wire sifting glances.
they brought the blood
pouring to my cheeks
to urge my tongue
to make a word,
metallic serum to heal
our wounded knuckles.
but I couldn't. the silver
pooled against my eyelids
and welled into the breeze,
cold and comforting,
tangled among the bluebells
and the purple roots
of cherry blossoms
five blinks from oasis.

Content (first)

White noise heavy
in our light hearts.
Static between my pupil
and my iris expanding
to meet our open space.
Touch, one between
another and never
together; I want
to be closer rather
than farther.
Unicellular molecular
structure of ourselves
eating up daylight
in glass—
our artificiality
creates not yet—
our reality,
bright red and soft
intangible tensions—
reality. Relief.


I'd definitely like to do a different draft of this, so this is an initial draft!

Decant

Red cracks—
paintings in a smoker's house.
Four AM craves her
in gray lust, brown
letters tangled
in her curls.
She's beautiful.
Through those cracks—
we'd never seen someone
so decorous in black and white.
Fingers curl into bister
on paper;
eyes spread
across the sofa bed,
half-and-half on canvas.
Decay never hugged her knees
the way it held her heart.

I close my eyes against
the darkness when I try to sleep.
Blurred and heavy
hands against my eyes
push out the tears until I can't
force my lungs to eruption
any more.
You are lost in the dark,
I can't feel your arms
or your hope in
any part of what I was.
My teeth become me,
clenched and salted,
bitten cheeks
ground out to open
cavities to swallow the dark.

            I would fall upon 236 gravestones before I found a name to suit the loneliness of the air. Wet and clinging to my brow, gray drapes across the windowed sky. I can't keep words like this, one across another, running into stolen pages.
            Now, I am only fascinated by shoes. Covered in mud after late night walks in the hopes of meeting oneself on the empty street. For always. For you, we walk into dusk and drown in drifted skies. The air manages to be so heavy in our chests. Our chests full to the brim with granite hearts. 

Interpreter

If I could knit
the stars in your eyes
into confusion,
thick and thought-
out, songs would drip
down the half-open
window like glass
shrieking upon glass.
The concrete puddled
in borderline peace,
dry and forgiving.
There's never been
a way to fall
without opening
a space behind you.
Catch electrons between
atomic measurement,
stand hand-in-hand-in-
half-drawn words. 

I leave my shoes upon your doorstep and cradle your sleep in my arms.

an early instance
of repeat—
beloved Rachel.

shorter than
the prophet of
naturally expressed


movement in six—



bars

only one
without
title

yet it contains some.

(blackout from The Pianoforte Sonata)

they dim together in a sigh

Every star we see is a drop of milk.

I want time

Fingers pressed
hard against your navel.
You used to be so soft,
so strong,
muscles beneath me that
actually knew
where they were going,
who they were part of.
Today you fall beneath me.
Today I press my fingers
through your skin
into your abdomen.
You're dry inside.
You're dry.
I rip you open,
seams up and down,
dry and dry and dry.
White water
and reflections of trees,
black with the ravens
and night.
Gasping stars
and loose braids.
Give me stealth
and stability
on my own legs,
so cold and cold.
Give me the time
to walk through red
into pure light again.
I only want
to sit alone for a while.
Plaid and peregrine,
orange and dulling
with the moments
the dirt pulls up
by the root.
Your hair catches the light—
did you know?
I never noticed
the halo around you,
how beautiful your ears are.
I want to touch you.
I want to lean
the wood against my elbows
and kiss your forehead.
How have I touched
anything like you?
Cup my eyes
and tell me
you love me.
Tell me you—
you're tired
and let me put you
to sleep.
Sit back,
restrained,
pink ribbons on my wrists—
you walk away.
Red poppies out the window,
white frames and
chipped glass.
Their heads fall
and lift
faster than my eyelids.
Can't I keep my eyes
from closing?
I thought I had that power,
or am I weaker
than my knees?
Tags and twine,
burlap.  Waste-pile.


It's been a while since I did a sleepy word-vomit thing.  I feel like I'm just running in the rut.  Stick with me? 

Draft

I get scared about being scared.
Thirty after midnight, a quiet day
broken into tweets and worries
laced up with undercurrent blue.
I don't want forever snapping
my eyes to the sky before day.
Next week, next year,
August and September together
between my ribs and my spine.
Feels like drying into bonedust
waiting for eternity to shed
its water upon me, mix me to mud.
White and wet.

Bristlecone

Face against the morning dew
risen to figure evening clouds.
Hands on our hips, closer
than we've ever been to sky.
Infinite in soft drifted boughs,
closer.  Closer to miracles
holding us together, hand
to heartbeat.  This could be
all we ever know.  

Love this song.  And this song.  The best songs turn me into a romantic.

All of a sudden, heard a knock at the door—

I am in a staring match
with a dead

man.
Air bears
the ground I stand on,
three hundred years—
(Make it in, make it in.
An expert at poking
small holes
in aluminum cans.)
The sky shines more
blue in the eastern sun—

closed—
oxygen and nitrogen
tighter in the atmosphere.
The exhale of his eyes
to the clouds behind him.

I call this outfit "My Best Friend Wants to Die".

Atterere

Sleep comes easily,
pressed with Rose of Sharon
between lauded pages.
I imagine white light
collecting in my palms,
resting its head against my words.
Wrapped around my legs
to keep me still, hearken
to water drops and softened breaths.
For a moment, I believe in ghosts.

Number Unwarranted Loneliness

I made a wish on the time-stamp,
11:11—the back of my throat.
Kept the key at the window.
Gave infinite guesses you'd pick
at my skeletons most.  Rusty
nails on the driveway
and horoscope freeways,
to drift off the night to goodbyes.
I sleep in the sunlight, a beam
through the curtains—on yellow
and red specks of dust.

L’appel du vide

I like you.
I like the dip
of your eyes,
brown and small,
but all I can see

in quiet seconds.
I like the smile lines
around your eyes,
emerging
when you wake

from our kisses.
I like dissolving
my fingers
through your hair
like spring rain—

We are the drops
that shake loose
from morning leaves.
Opalescence
rushes with you,

through you—
I am terrified
of falling in the sun.
Falling in the night
would keep the ground

ever at the next
moment—
But your eyes
steady the air
that leaves me

breathless.
I like that we are
sighs.

Morning Elsewhere

Inconsistencies
in the pronunciation
of a name—
baseline of the heartbeat—
Shadows turned
hand over hand.

Blessings

Don't miss me.
I'm already nestled
into the stardust
hiding behind shadows.

Literacy

I can't separate myself
from you in writing
or in mind.
I smudge black ink
into calligraphic,
unrecognizable marks
on your skin—
dragon tattoos in red
and silver ballpoint pen.
Give me lessons
to write between
X and O, context.
Give yourself some
reasoning between
here and the next
pull-off gas station—
I fall asleep
with my shirt sliding
off my shoulders,
wrinkled into those
marks on your hands.
Gentle and failing
to smell like anyone else.
It's all hypothetical,
but your searching eyes
give me belief
that they are us,
and the children
I name when
I write lullabies,
the same.
But I can live
with hypothetical—
Late passing headlights.
Flares in the dusty
rolled windows.
The clear-stained
"life is too short"
rests lightly in our
palms.

Shoot

Drop your breath
and we'll watch it
pour into pearls
of glass. I can't
fall past your hands,
your shoulders,
your eyes in half-
lighted doorways.
Don't slip into
themes, like I do.

Yawning

Plunge into those gaping
warm afternoons.
Wade in the thrust
of your hips; evenings
balanced on later selves.

Aliyah

Just take me somewhere new
where the fires burn more
black than blue
and stars are fallen
onto your freckled arms.
Just keep me under
the night
and hold your breath
in our cupped hands.
Just stay with me
where the hills meet
our smiles
and where I stop wondering
where we lost it all.

Palms against calluses.
The weight of drowning
behind a touch.

Flare

Yesterday I was wearing this,
broken silver chains around
my fists, mercury dripping
from my collarbone
onto the satin of my screaming—
Ringed with quiet.

unbroken mist
to kiss her fingers
a rosy cold
pushing yellows through
stained glass
gasps
in the rafters

Polaroid

Warm as winter
     leaking.
Two cars on the sidewalk,
snowfall purple
in corrupted emulsion
     and our curled hands
stained blue.
Red, the color of sighs
on the bedroom floor
after three hours
of staring.
     Four hours in wet
shoes, stuck between
freezing and scraping
away the heat of our
blood-oaths.
     Sunsets lost
to kaleidoscope eyes—
        Tell me how to spill
        over words you'll understand.

Wanting

She never took her hand
for granted.
Gold and silver
balanced on her toes—
she left her lovers
charcoal in the pit.

Because

In desperation,
I leave words carved
into IHOP napkins
and left on nightstands.
I would carve into the western
cedar, but my pen
is dull.  I leave
with words dripping
down the hall in carbon-
dioxide crystallized
in blue-green,
hard-hit carpet and stains.
I will never come here again.
We should be ashamed
of the beauty we committed,
heavy and humid at 4 A.M.
The oxygen will find us
each again.

Sleep Texts

Where the earth
meets the fire
and bubbles from
the wet soil in
gaslight orbs.
Send songs of
hope to keep me
occupied. My
breath UNSENT
a blinking mind.
My blue fingers
and your sweet
lips. What send
you now that we
have occupied
this space twice
in a night?
Devotion. You
say. To always
read your texts.  

Endings

            Tonight was the CHASMS launch party!  It was awesome, with epic live music and epic poets.  The Salt City Poetry Slam team evoked insane laughter and chills.  It was wonderful to hear the talent that is in and around this magazine.  I am proud!
            I was met by a person who is either naturally super-enthusiastic or was fangirling over me... which is completely flattering and shocking, either way.  I've had a few people tell me they like my work in the magazine, and it means a lot to me.  It means the magazine is actually being read!  Readership, FTW!!
            I do cry at endings, but I've been surprisingly devoid of tears at the ending of high school, and all the things that includes... I expect it will come eventually.  Literary magazine has truly been my favorite class.  Ever.  If I could have only attended that class, I actually would have.  The people are so funny and, as someone else said, like a (very weird sort of) family.  I will miss my classmates.  I will miss the writing and uncontrollable laughter. 
            Peace and love to all, beginnings and endings and beginnings.

Mortuary Stagelights

My lungs empty
dormant respiration—
the deep hum
of the bass drum
creeps up beneath
my ribcage,
trapping itself in
my bones.
Don't you want to feel
my bones
on your bones?*
My eyes drift
behind my teeth
into the green and red
darkness.
My marrow pinned
against the wall
and taken.


*"Bones" by The Killers

    Composed of circus-
cars composed of rust
A melancholy drive
         locked and loved
    praising and cursing with
  sun-blistered lips
and severed teeth, priest-
blessed by blue.
I search in neon,
signing off
          of loss
The bear growls
in copper rain


A Semi-Exquisite Corpse we composed in my literary magazine class.  I wrote the last line of this one and each person took turns writing lines from the end to the beginning.  We got some really cool results from everyone!   It really brings it all back home — that soon we'll all be graduated and it's unlikely we'll see each other again.  That's been my favorite class of all time, with some of the greatest people of all time.  So to anyone from that class... thanks for not forgetting to be awesome.

"...pollinating deep Narcissius's
spread wings..." 

Never write
          the truth.

An Entity

Catching people talking
through cardboard-slab walls
collapses into overheard
humming to herself. 
The empty spaces the disconnect
between synapses and fingering
cotton lace and oyster-shell
buttons down his chest.
Warm and earthly, molding
itself into the breeze
of the late-night cricket air,
she breathes in
and out.

woven synapses and jute
stain frostbite and heatstroke
reflect me in the foothill penstemon
saffron star-spots trickle into the dirt
I'm not sure I'd be able to sleep with the ghosts
but I turn the tinge to my mouth
with a thoughtful kiss
momentary panic and splinters
static in your hair
sigh with the ceiling
we give no fault to the sand
a quiet God
in the small of her back
long lungs
in our fast of extraterrestrial embraces
let our hair be cold in the sunrise
and let the petrichor be thick
as the mountains beneath the snow


They were never meant to be together, but I like them.  My favorite lines of a few pieces, arranged as I encountered them. 

It’s a white truth we like to tell ourselves, that there is room in this world for the Unconventional Beauty. And red ink makes you younger
“Anyone can be pretty if they try”, if they rip out their teeth, root by bitter root, and plant them down along the plod, again.
A giant "fuck you" to your teeth. I have a toothbrush and a hand stretched out on a puddle of paint.

Sometimes, I just can't work on something.  I was frustrated and anonymous, as one is when all her writing alludes to "you" alone.  And I want to go back and make my words better—concise and "beautiful"—but the words lay there and do what I want while crumbling under other people's obscurity—like with these words.  Frustration.  I thought that writers controlled words, but sometimes I feel pushed into a mosh pit of moving words, grinding because they grind.  Leaving the bright lights with bruises and not-quite-right hearing.  Stumbling and crawling on the war-torn pavement until I open my eyes again and forget how I bled home.
My clothes are still white.  My eyes are still dry. 
Tell me the blood is still there.

Asleep in summer's clothing

Drift

Someday we'll have
a little space
that smells like pine
and lavender—
Warm embraces
of musk and might
in the silences
of dusk and night—
Wake up to fingers
aching through
the stained windows
to relief—
caresses and clutching
to the last fragments
of sleep—
Sleepy eyes and round
cheeks glittered
by the sunlight
and drops of green tea
on a soft wood table.

Eyes on fire—
pupils winter
into a star-torn
nebula, brown—
dust and hiatus—
The gaps between
galaxies and the life
force of chances
broken into asteroidal
rain—
They were never
the gaps between
the edges
of your eyes—
Eyes on fire—

Let's Talk About Sex

            Today in literary magazine, we got in a discussion about self-censorship.
            The disputed poem, in my opinion, could be taken as purely innocent or purely sexual*.  It has a sexual connotation, true, but no sexual denotation except "bare".  "Pure", "fill me", "weight upon me"... if the title had been "Water" then there would be no fuss.
            The offended were uncomfortable with the image.  True, it was the most sexual—suggesting a body pressed on the speaker's own.  However, when we've let violence and drug use into our magazine, a ten-line poem about purity and (presumably) sex seems to get unjust attention and criticism.  But it's not like this is anything new.  I wrote about basically the same thing when this happened last year.
            I just... why is our culture so screwed up?  Somehow we're fine with anything dripping with blood, but implied sexual content?—No, can't have that! 
            It ended up with a disagreement of how it fits in with school policy.  The policy of Jordan School District is abstinence-only sex ed.  However, the policy of schools nation-wide is also that we can't have knives or guns or drugs, but we've accepted related work.  The policy of the United States is the separation of church and state, but we have plenty of poems about God.
            We're a high school publication.  Students take things from their lives to apply to their art.  I promise, not all high schoolers are virgins, or pacifists, or atheists.
            I don't know how sex is worse than anything else.  "We need to protect the innocent!"  Anyone who knows anything about Chasms should know it's traditionally not an "innocent" magazine.  This is actually the most innocent issue I have ever seen.  We're all in high school.  It's obviously not a picture book to read to 5-year-olds before bed.  Know when we actually sold copies of the magazine?  When it was "banned".  For being offensive.  And still, we are absolutely nowhere near that. 
            I'm sorry I don't see why we should be so wary of implied sexual content.
            I'm sorry, please excuse me while I flip a table.
            Write about sex, for heaven's sake.  Have sex, if you want.  Sex can be safe.  You know what isn't, though?  Cutting yourself.  Chopping off feet.  Murder.  I've read all of that, this year.  Why the hell are we so offended by sex?  Our desensitization to violence and our hyper-sensitivity to anything sexual breeds ignorance and a powerful affinity to creating a cold distance of self from reality.
            Hello, America. 

*We have such a hyper-sexualization of virginity in our culture. I don't believe that "innocence" is the same thing as "virginity", but culture dictates that anyone not a virgin is a mother or a slut.  Double-standard alert: being "innocent" is also "sexy". 

After Alternating Current,
the stairs fell rough and blank.

West

The night settles on her back,
tamed into a braid,
waved into a proper assortment
of morning dew
that clings to the strands of stars.

The air will weigh
down the subway tunnels
until you weigh
waiting for passion.
Stones skip
on water
all the time.
Rails ringing
of her
running on the tracks
Away, away,
echoed close again.
Red. Hooded flames,
long lungs.
Wait.


If anyone ever reads this stuff... thanks for sticking with me and my almost non-edited work. I just know I have to do something, or nothing would be done!

And Love(sic)

Two seconds.
And my heartbeat
flutters like butterflies
crystallizing in my hot
blood and dissolving
in my cold veins.
A stop-and-go motion
of quick-blinking
succession.
Blink too fast
and I've missed it.
My heartbeat is falling
and these lungs
rub against my soft ribs,
aching a smile out of me.

Candle-light breath
on your shoulders
and in my hair.

"What a treacherous thing
to believe
that a person is more
than a person."*

*John Green, Paper Towns 

The photosynthesis of this moment fills me up with sugar.

Beatitudes

I 

Prophet of the Tulips,

you never spoke,

but they still grew.

II 

And her hands on her arms—

crumbling bricks

pool around her thighs

Take up arms

create a visage

in cool waves of fires

and the bright spots they leave

forever in her eyes

III

Into the water.

IV—16:78

Abraham sighed,

sparing air to whistle

away the ice.

I've fallen on the mountaintops,

gardens rising around my eyes

and closing my pupils to sin for me.  

My knees in permanent crease 

and motif because the dirt 

is weaker than blades.  

Round and bitter, 

birthed of flesh.

Never solid, 

gray and pale in daylight.  

Freaks of nature and pupils 

ringed in orange; the death 

of leaves before they fall.

You have no action.

I breathe in! 

My mouth hangs open

and rushes to nowhere. 

 V

Give me water in many words.

Force them

DOWN MY

THROAT

Just bitter off the well-wood,

in gritty stones.

My teeth pop 

and KEEP

my eyes from

SHIVERING 

MY sickness

I'm one of 

those

VI

I hope you live a lie 

you're proud of.

Carve it in the smoke

and let it slither in 

the spaces between 

your teeth

and gasp with pleasure. 

VII 

She snarls on the counter-tops and hopes

for something better; yellow linoleum

and snowflakes stuck to the patio door.

Orange wallpaper, not peeling.

Fall in love with me
over 30 year-old songs
on the radio
Static and clinging
to vinyl and plastic
Sometimes I think
the past would come
through like
a busted vacuum-tube
T.V. set
But static and clinging
to my eyelashes


I'm really having '80s nostalgia, and I didn't even live in the '80s.  I want to time-travel back and see concerts.  And go to dances and walk in circles to old love songs and synthesizers.  Synthesize with me.

Backbiting

Listen again to the grabbing
recordings that claw
at the dry air around my throat—
My teeth are south of my brain,
called the Cliffs of Manhattan
on the maps,
and in the folded valleys
of my mind the words fit
ups and downs, gray like concrete.
But they fall out on the cliffs
and bleed with "ch-ch-changes",
"shadows" of "children"
all tangled up in love.
The waves are spazzing out
against my molars
and I force myself to read
because I wrote with my name,
R-A-C-AYCH-E-L,
and I won't cry in public.
I believed in a power that,
when read aloud,
could give life
to the barren, curly-cue locks
of Wendys without their Peters,
but my hair goes straight
when the other girls scream
at the rain.
Acidic, rotten,
sweet and gagging me.
Captured again on my own.

Tripping Over

"Sweet, sweet
mercy."
The words roll
off her tongue
with the dew-
drops falling
from the tangerine
leaves.
Blades of Northern
Air slide their
dull ends
across her arms
and leave a shine,
the reflection
of coins and dirt.
Bitter copper
in her cheeks,
nickle rubbings
on her feet.
The sun rises
and she stuffs
her pockets
with fruit.

Quandary

Today I dressed in all
                                  pink
because I made the mistake
of leaning in close
             to the mirror.
I SAW my enlarged
extremities,
and the forced eruption
of my genetic impurities,
shouting
      of my ILL health
  and bad habits
          of hating myself.
So I muffled them
with sticky
                   lipstick
         and concealer,
but they just made
  their voices deeper
   and CONCAVE,
taking in my gags
and hanging them
       from my skin
because
                    that's mine.
And I put on a bow
to hide my forehead,
   wishing that I was Muslim
so that I could wear a hijab
       and have people
wonder if I was really
beautiful under there.
I would cover it all
if people wouldn't wonder,
       first,
    if I was a terrorist.
But I AM.
     And the terrors
of my self-restraint
make me preach
                           COURAGE
and tell people
     they can be happy
even when they want to cry.
The pink.
       To draw attention
away from my self-
                           centered
     jealous admiration.
But I felt like a child
and my young self
was ashamed
            to align to my side,
so I left the pink in
     a crumpled HEAP
  and borrowed black
to match the grease.

Here's the Weirdest Part:

On your way to happiness,
stop by.
Focus the sunlight
into a single point
in the starstruck,
fallen ashes
on the tar.
Singe a spot
that I can smile at
when I look down.

Enkindled

High on destitution—
Soft, grant me nothing.
Only the forth-coming
seas of silver-topped flowers
give fear in this veneration.
The ground is rich tonight
and sinks in finger-pressed
rosy garlands.
Knuckle-pressed violets—
palm-pressed tulips—
crushing, filling sugar
and dusk's bloom
in the darkness—
Often off-beat,
one after the other.

Benefits of Honey

Catch your breath
in the polyester-
cotton blend
of my shoulder.
Carbon dioxide
nooks itself up
on incoherent
rayon.
Is this lust?
The mingling
exchange of gases—
or is it just
an impolite
mannerism
cheated into
conversation—

Dim Perplexity

The windows ring
with thunder
plundered on the treetops.
Water droplets shake
a nervous path
across the glass
and meet the water-
hoarders
at the crossroads.
A prayer of vivid light.
        I don't seek a lover;
        I need an escape artist.

You simmer on the edge
of reason
A string to lift
your neck into a living position
A hook hook hook
to crush your back
into a spine
A rope brushes pincers
into your wrists
A clean rope
Your clean wrists

Sometimes I write stuff that seems violent without my meaning it to....

He's a keeper

He's a keeper.
But then again,
he is not.
He is not
stretched out on a wooden boat,
looking down between the slats
thinking,
"boy, I wish I could touch
those stars,"
as he brushes his fingers
across the diamonds in the water.