maybe it’s because
mercury’s in retrograde
& my intuition’s all
feminine moon,
low and slicked up
like fine-tune
g-strings
but like,
R U fucking with me
or do you wanna fuck me?
we are air,
washing and beating
over river rocks, impassive,
gentle ides,
impassioned slides, distant
tides. or
that’s pisces.
i don’t know.
i don’t know
who i am—
i think i and my
marchborn scientist sister
were switched at birth like
some greek potter myth.
some mirth, some ilk,
whoever laps up
pages of celestial bodies
instead of mother’s milk.
water-bearer,
aquiline—fair,
crooked jaw,
moonbeam hair,
sli
(this is not about a boy) by hipsterfaust, literature
Literature
(this is not about a boy)
my skin is shook with fever sighs
my ribs frame-hung, lung-homed
a river roils in me
a cacophony of coughs
i cannot rid myself of my stuck bones
i press gooseflesh back
like it’ll give like bubble wrap
my deep tar-feathered, my teeth black
the worry pinks up wrists
& blisters purple fingertips
my voice is brittle bric-a-brac
i call you little heart attack
you sound how iced tea looks in light
all arid arizona earth tones
all stars, all mote
all honey mint throat
i taste like lint and ash and smoke
cotton swab the softness of my cheek
and find blood coppered there
all stoppered there
i am apothecary, i am apathy caring
we’re all gonna write Our Fathers
to our fathers, we’re gonna rhyme
‘Cain’ with ‘slain’ (if we are Abel),
hail mary, hallelujah-hanged,
so I’ll go first.
DEAR MY DARLING GOD,
It’s me, agnostic
a fox among the sheepdogs
knocking knackered knucklebones
against honey-polished wood.
But not really:
I am not clever nor lean, no
bone-cleaved grin o’ rictus,
no outwitter of ravens, no
invictus, a mongrel of sweet fruits
from wood-shivered, splintered limbs.
They say communion wine is sour.
I say communion wine is sour
like spoilt breath.
In 1845 one-third of Irish Catholics
went to Mass
i. worries
i hope my words are read
before they say “enough about the body”
because, lord
i pen pennies for a single pound of flesh
and ink so many ribs and lips and bones
for a husk-voiced girl who’s never been touched
ii. warmer
i’m now a woman kissed.
he thumbed my mouth, soft fingertips, worried
lips with his
i did not feel as though i laid my grave
my ring-stud fingers scraped his nape of neck
as though i am a girl-born natural
we’re all gonna write about our fathers
who aren’t in heaven, so
let’s just hail mary full of grace and
get this the hell started.
i’ll go first:
my darling god,
it’s me, agnostic
knocking at your wooden box
(I had a problem with object permanence
between counting the lights on the chapel ceiling,
all I asked the priests was
‘where do flames go when they’re snuffed out’ and
‘is Jesus’ actual body in this bread? because I’m a vegetarian’)
it’s been seven thousand-seven-hundred-and-seventy
days since my last confession.
(look made up? it’s not.
I Googled &
My mother calls me in
to eat fish sticks and tartar,
limp little spears of fried pickles and zucchini
coated in eggy crumbs, plain olives,
beer-battered chicken
and our trip to Sicily: breaded ravioli.
“Come get your whore-derves,” she says,
wiping her raw-meat steak knife on her apron,
“Before they get cold and picked over.”
I am outside, feet deep in the loam
of our yard’s rich soil,
staring at a den of foxes
who stare right back
with their eyes pinprick yellow, all
Oregon wheat.
They wish for a roost of crows
to swoop in and make a roast of me,
and the vixen would tell her babes
“Come and pick him clean
i. my fish bites his own fins. at first i was horrified. when i got him he was beautiful, but his fins are just so long, too long for his little bowl. i mean, i guess it's like a haircut. i guess if i was the pet of a girl that i couldn't talk to and all she could see was my ragged, picked-at nails, white where the keratin was growing in healthy but mostly just soft stubs at the end of ruined fingers, she'd be horrified too. there is white where the fins grow back, but sometimes they do not. it makes me anxious, empathetic, as i sit here and pick at my own skin and scratch at my scabs and try to press the welts in my arms back into the smooth
long list of lovelessness by hipsterfaust, literature
Literature
long list of lovelessness
the day after i /broke up/ with my first /boy/
my mother told me, "you don't need love, honey,
to get along in this world."
that week struck my mind. stuck in it. long.
just honey-sick droplets of days, leaking
in race rivulets down glass, that
rainy, lazy, sweet-mildew smell of a
suburban windowscreen.
the day after my first crush gone bad,
i cried so hard tears tracked cracks
down my cheeks.
black-tar mascara scars.
pinprick pimples.
my mother told me, "you don't own him.
he doesn't owe you anything."
(usually, it's the other way round.)
the day after i wanted to start wearing makeup,
my mother, brushing dutiful the clumps of my
sis
you're skipping, i'm slipping by hipsterfaust, literature
Literature
you're skipping, i'm slipping
a poem is my little drops of blood
pricked spindle from my fingertip
& you have the nerve to tell me
'i read fast'.
well, i write fast and i read fast too
now, i read slow.
i cannot paint a picture.
i cannot write a song or sing or
act a scene or pluck a string, or
do a play or build a set or draw a face you won't forget so
all i have are words. all i have left of me is words. all i have left
of you is words.
so many men
have passed through the sliding flick of doors
of my eyes, blinking, since i've seen you last and
i don't remember where the chap on your lip is or whether
it's your grin that's crook or just your teeth
do you remembe