consumption of the personal

Here is what I’ve done.
There is a ring. There is a sliced-out scream from forearm. There is a love letter. There are many love letters. There is a collection of bodies stained inside my underwear. There is a preference to live out loud on computer screen rather than in imagined silence of mind. There are sexual perversions hidden beneath bed. There is a collection of condoms in bathroom, bedroom, backpack, and back pockets of pants. There is a memorized poem about sofrito, chapstick and razorblades. There is a woman. There are many women. There is a man. There are disposed hairs growing inside knots. There is drug addiction. There is food addiction. There is sex addiction. There is an addiction to addiction. There is some gender stuff. There is an experimental approach to genitals and orgasms. There is a stolen memory, stuffed inside a sock drawer. There is an envelope of money. There is an unclassified stain. There are many stains. There is a revision of memories. There is a pile of notebooks. There are maps of directional patterns on tiny pieces of paper in pockets. There is a tambourine. There is a mix tape. There are many mix tapes. There is a passport. There is a phone number for a man that is no longer alive. There is a Fidgeon. There is an orchestra of padded bras, stockings, and false eyelashes identity. There is a purple vibrator. There is a history of mental illness. There is a pattern of lactose intolerance connected to lovers. There are lovers. There are many lovers. There is a soul mate. There is an un-mated soul. There is a remixed version of childhood. There is a pause. There is a hole. There are many holes. There is this life uprooted from poems and whispered assumptions and how about we workshop the time I lost my mind. Tell me I use too many semi-colons; tell me my imagery is too abstract and distracting; tell me I need to have a beginning middle and end…when I don’t even know how to exist chronologically?

hair today then/gone.

Here is the thing about hair.

When I was younger, it was a slightly different color. Not as red. A bit more…….(gasp) blonde. Some referred to it as dirty blond, but I’d yet to reach the true height of my experimental dirty phase (that has yet to end).

It was long and curly and healthy and luscious and.. and.. and.. pretty.

My grandmother always said:
If you ever cut it, give it to me.

She had thin hair and so does the rest of my family.

Luckily, I also obtained other qualities detached from genetics: dimples, small breasts and my homo-ness.

I’m sure if I searched deeper in my family, I’d find the culprit of my dimples
(actually, I remember my grandmother having a hint of them)

I’d find someone in my clan with small breasts
(thank you to whomever that may be…….though I wish they could be even smaller)

And I know of at least one queer wonder in the family, though I never met him.
(thank you, too)

As I grew, my relationship to my hair got tangled. I kept all my anger inside my curls. The length represented someone who I no longer wanted to be. Each time in my life when things were wrong, I took rusty (sometimes) scissors to hair and would cut.

One inch.
Two inches.
Three inches.

I went from long to extremely short in well under five minutes at the age of seventeen.

My mother called it: boy short.

I called it: freeing.

Then, I bleached it.
Dirty blond shifted to slightly orange.

This began my journey through root experimentation.

Pink. Purple. Blue. Black. Red. Red. Red.

Hello, Red.

I finally realized I was just in the wrong scalp.

I was born a redhead in a dirty blond’s body.

Each month, I must alter this. This becomes my least favorite time of the month, perhaps tied with the days in which my body reminds me of these eggs I’ve got and the babies I could (possibly) be birthing with each stain of my underwear.

Through each haircut, I’ve been the exact same person. Naturally, I have changed just a little: gotten a bit more mature and gained knowledge in areas I was not so aware of.

But I’ve always been a homo.
Funny……how hairstyle can sometimes change that.
Change the type of homo I am.

I’ve got all these knots in my hair.
Dreadlocks and tangles and today I cut two of them out.
Big ones.
Big monstrous ropes of red mixed with other shades of not-so-red.

When I went to work, I felt lighter. There was too much stuck inside those beasts of hair.

Then, I came home. Had a dance party in my bedroom. Grabbed my scissors and began to cut.

Slowly. Deliberately. Like a contemplative meditational chant.

I could use a touch up…..it’s hard to reach some places…..but I feel lighter than I have in over a year.

It’s just hair.
And I’m still just as queer as I was yesterday.
I’d like to keep cutting.
I could use some help.

help………

if i remain too still/ i may forget why i started this

(excerpts)…….

Are scars just an alphabet that can be erased with proper creams and rubber eraser tips?

Is boredom the cause of collapse?

I never understood….

I never understood the logistics
of matching bra
to underwear
when floor wears it
so much longer
than breasts do

winter wind gathers the ghost of her

My orthodontist, who touched my teeth during the ages of ten through thirteen, smelled of rubber and adultery. He called my lips names like small and difficult. He tried to stretch my mouth further than it could possibly open and I left with sores on each side. He pushed wax against my teeth and told me to bite down. Tried to implant my imperfections. I’d lay in the slippery pastel colored chair, which bent backwards for easier access into my miniature pink mouth. As he inspected my braces, gums, timid tongue, I thought about all this metal trying to fix me.

Try to fix me.

What I was and what I am engage in a battle. Now, I am grey like an elephant and wrinkled and heavy. If I were Amadeo Modigliani, I would stretch out these stories over various couches and gouge out the eyes to blind away the endurance of pain.

love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love love

Love grows inside me like a fetus that never moves on that only develops fingernails and eyelids but not lungs or cerebellum that feels guilt for its preference to masturbate over conversate.

{a whisper}
My belly lies against red cotton sheets with limited thread count. I am crying. My fingers smell like my insides. A salt and vinegar soak. I am desperate for an orgasm, instead, my brain channels memories inappropriate for fucking.

{a reveal}
Andy Flemming throws a three-piece dissected bee at me in science class. I am twelve. He calls me a screen door and I watch the severed insect slide down my paved chest. My three best friends have elevated breasts, regular periods and body hair. They prefer tampons to pads and waxing to razors. There are no bras in my wardrobe. I wear undershirts. If it weren’t for my nipples, I’d have no idea where my tits are.

*
How do bruises fail our bodies?

Do you REALLY want to know how these DENTS got here?
Are you ASKING me why my cupboards are filled with condoms and
do you WANT to know how many times I’ve climbed walls shaped as humans shaped as beds shaped as paychecks?

Strap magnifying lenses against each pupil and stare into the abyss of nearsightedness

{a message}
If you loved me, you would revel as my pubic hairs flossed between your teeth.
When you go down on me, prepare for choke and swallow of curls.
Let my cunt be your dentist.

*
{label}
Call me a gentle recluse
Or mismatched experimentalist

I will remember the days when nothing occurred and you can tell me I’m wrong

excerpts from a window peering through a life

*
In what year did they begin fire drills? Heads and knees tucked to chest to prep for bombs. I am not united in this front of skin and veins. I think back to those years where we were forced out of class due to called-in bomb threat or preparation for an inferno of flames to melt away the school. Why don’t families have drills like this? Or bodies? Before the cancer or depression or heart attack or mini-stroke, how about a drill?

*
Andy Flemming throws a three-piece dissected bee at me in science class. I am twelve. He calls me a screen door and I watch the severed insect slide down my paved chest. My three best friends at the time have elevated breasts, regular periods and body hair. They prefer tampons to pads and waxing to razors. Two out of three have already been menstruating for two years. There are no bras in my wardrobe; I wear undershirts. If it weren’t for my nipples, I’d have no idea where my breasts are.

*
My belly lies against red cotton sheets with limited thread count. I am crying. My fingers smell like my insides. A salt and vinegar soak. I am desperate for an orgasm, instead, my brain channels memories inappropriate for masturbation. How sad to be inside a body that can never be clean enough.

photo by June Liu

the inside of the earth is filled with jam. discuss

Does it matter? Do apple cores or cucumber seeds or coils in mattresses matter? The inside is never investigated. The inside is hidden. Stuffed into smaller sizes to reduce the swelling of life. The inside of the earth is filled with jam and I am filled with solace. Discuss.

Virginia Woolf dug out the emptiness of her pockets and filled them with death. Sometimes I want to alphabetize her exclamations, shelve her alongside Anne Sexton and Plath even though their names are so far apart.

It begins with a room. A room large enough to house a typewriter and cotton. Those voices. The overweight entity of sadness. A room where ovens and rivers and pills have no invitation. A room only for words.

My room is 10×12. It is white with smudges of previous tenants on the walls. It is only my own if I pay my rent installment. At this moment, I am too big to fit here. I cannot leave the pills and scars on the other side of off-white door. I am too distracted by woman in black with scarved neck and historical rhythm. She advises me to write my way out.

Write. My. Way. Out.

In a room full of student loans and academic breathing patterns, I am told that I am too feminine. My character is too feminine. For a body to think IT is in the wrong place, it’s clothing should be more gender specific.

Gender. Specific.

I walk my way out of my uterus. My blood stains. My throbbing reminder of baby hips and procreation and genitals. I try to walk my way out of IT.

“Unless men and women can be androgynous in mind, literature itself will be permanently flawed.” Virginia speaks of the need to remove clarity. Circumcised language. I dress up my sentences in ties and skirts. I braid its hair and then remove its larynx to alter its voice. My poems play with dolls and trucks.

Write my way out.

If I had a room that was my own. Where I could pierce the walls with grotesque poetry and musical instrumentation. Where I could behead language and intention. And consistency. Where might that room be?

New Jersey. Colorado. Massachusetts. Standing on that bridge in Northampton. Hiding by that creek in Boulder. Dancing beneath the rain in Vancouver.

I cannot write in one place because I cannot breathe for too long when stillness is my option. I fear being known. Was Virginia learned? What she interpreted? Was she broken apart by symbols and expectations?

I am trembling from lack of moisture to my lips and lack of holding to my hands. This room is lying to me. Brooklyn is shaking me, stealing my rest. Did you take naps, Virginia? Did you hide out on benches to run from the wind of rushed commuters?

I am afraid to sit down for fear of the bed bugs, Virginia. They are everywhere.

I/I/I………….“’I’ is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being.” Did you feel that, Virginia? Were you lost inside yourself, digging your way out with words?

What is my own? How can a room be my own—something impermanent and borrowed—when I can’t even call this body my own?

I am afraid to sit down for fear of these bed bugs. They will survive far longer than any of us. I am jealous of their persistence.