She tells me she bloomed
late. I wonder if she’d let
me smell her flowers.
Posts tagged writing.
Me trying to date other men has made me realize
what a fool I am for you.
They’re all the same in that
they’re not you.
I’d let you treat me anyway you wanted.
That’s not love,
it’s something darker.
The way you say my name is like a spell.
The way I say yours is a prayer.
Possible titles for my book of poetry about how we can’t stay away from each other.
1. Elegies for someone who hasn’t died yet.
2. I get tired thinking about your eyes when it rains.
3. My heart beat is a whisper: leave leave leave leave.
4. I want to protect you from things that have already happened.
5. In my dreams, you need my help so desperately.
6. I can’t not love you; I’ve seen one of your bones.
7. All you ever look at is skinny girls and I hate how it makes me feel.
8. I am a dog who can’t forget about the moon.
9. My scars, my tattoos, my freckles all need you.
10. My body is a book beside your bed that you’ve been meaning to read but haven’t yet.
11. You told me once the sunset sounded like every song in the world, all playing at once.
If you should love an artist.
He will chew paintbrushes at all hours of the day,
Smoothing the fur, the bristles, the hair over his lips like his kiss is a spell.
He will write poems on your naked back with your favorite red lipstick:
Are we the thing or is the thing us?
He’ll collect your hair to tie a dead bird to the top of his wooden box.
He will blow sweet, cool air gently across your ears.
He will consume you like fire and death and desire.
His lust is a rusty knife in your palm.
That ache in your stomach?
It’s the collision of ‘I want this’ and ‘I am afraid’
Yes, it’s true, I have been afraid.
Afraid of his paint stained fingers brushing up my thighs.
My shivers are fruits:
orange, purple, yellow, green.
I have seen his drooping eyes,
studying me as if I am a painting
that we both stand in front of at the museum downtown
And yes, I was afraid.
Afraid of the mornings, the evenings, the afternoons.
His soft breath on my hard insides.
I have laid awake at night,
Pressing fingers into eyes.
And yes, and yes.
I am the bug he pierces with a needle
to mount beneath the glass.
He is precision and focus,
all eyebrows and cigarette smoke.
I huddle under the bed hugging my knees,
When he enters,
He doesn’t need to ask what is wrong.
I am a box you construct with the nails between your teeth while you hammer.
I am a paper bird you glued into the inside.
I am a ball with holes through it.
Write me poems and letters like my art fucking means anything,
like I am the girls you paint,
half naked, thin, drugged with love and sex.
Who are these girls you paint?
Plant me in the garden as if I have enough energy to grow.
No, I am not drunk.
No, I am not alone.
No, I am not naked in my bed.
No, this is not me being desperate.
If you want to see me desperate,
creep up behind me in the middle of the night while I am painting your face over and over again, one on top of the other.
Your eyes are becoming lighter.
Your mouth is full of light.
Your name is a dirty word that I’ve carved into my skin before.
I promised you I wouldn’t laugh the night you sang me songs on the hardwood floors,
so I cried instead.
I am a collage
of all the bad things people
have said about me.
In the event that you should know me.
1. Don’t call me baby. My dad calls me baby.
2. I watch nature documentaries like some people read the bible. I pray to mountains, snowflakes, and bats. I worship waterfalls.
3. Antarctica was covered in towering forests 100 million years ago. Me, too.
4. Handle my fossils delicately. Read my bones. Piece me back together, fill in the gaps with plaster, but do not display me.
5. I am a beetle. I am a cloud formation. I am a stalactite. Do not contradict me.
6. I will always listen to my mother.
7. I was a dog once. It felt lonely, and I was fascinated by the moon.
8. If I wanted to give in to my desire to be miserable, my whole body would be off limits.
9. My poetry is not a gift. I will never scrawl one in your birthday card. My poetry is a ghost of me at 8 years old, crying, with her head under the covers.
10. Kiss my neck when presented with the opportunity.
11. If we meet a grizzly bear, I will not be running away.
12. Hold my arm while we walk down the street, not my hand. Remove your hat when you bow to me. Kiss my knuckles. Ask permission for an embrace.
13. I am a lady, you had better act like a gentleman.
14. If you’re wondering what I want, it’s a plane ticket to Peru or 12 crystals in different shades of pink or a still hand over my chaotic heart.
15. Animals are often soft beneath their shells.
16. My life is a suicide note with the length not yet determined.
17. When it rains, I want you to touch me.
18. Crocodiles often drown their prey before they eat it.
19. I am a mother to silence.
20. If I am painting, do not speak.
21. If I am crying over the beauty of a color I mixed on my palette, do not laugh.
22. If I am crying, do not laugh.
23. If I am crying, do not laugh.
by Amanda La Valley
I wrote this poem in my sleep.
I dreamt of moths
with creamy, pale wings.
I wiped the jam from the corner of your mouth
with the same thumbs I have pressed into you.
I know your body like it is my body.
The thinness of your bones is the poems I’ve been writing.
I like it when you call me “girl.”
I like it when the shadows stop,
the darkness of the stars.
I am a poet.
When you read me, you consume me.
Touch me here, the sign says.
Touch me like this.
The bottom of my spine,
my left knee,
my knuckles.
I carve the words I am already supposed to know
onto the hill of my stomach
and how am I supposed to feel?
I don’t want my skin anymore.
I am taking it back.
His eyes are gem stones
that have been burning under the earth
for millions of years.
I strike them together to make a spark.
I blow gently, to catch the flame.
I whisper and cry
I am so, so sorry.
His fingers are matches that stroke down my spine.
He lights me on fire.
See the strength inside me burning?
His lips are wood ashes,
the forests are all gone here.
There is no word for what you are to me.
peach, n.
Nobody told me how goddamn tired I would get,
with the afternoons dripping, melting into evenings
into nights, nights without sleep or music.
Nights like glossy blackberries in my brother’s palm.
I’m sick of looking at diagrams of bones
and rearranging the flowers in my mother’s room
so they can sing her the right song,
the one to get her out of bed.
My mother’s sadness is a mirror that I am always looking into.
My mother’s sadness is a tangerine that I peel on the front porch.
The doctors ask her, “where does it hurt?”
and she looks at them through eyes like plums:
everywhere.
She drops her coat onto the floor.
I am tired, only tired,
shuffles to her bed
where underneath the sheets,
there is something small and beating
and I don’t have the courage to dig it up,
to bury it in the backyard,
to carve a headstone,
to say a prayer.
Bukowski said
‘where does the living go when it stops?’
and I have found it.
by Amanda La Valley
