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.