Spells Against Dysphoria, Prayers For Getting Fucked
If you go below the skin
near your elbow, you’ll find
yourself buried a secret
scroll, a sealed tunnel near
the primary tunnel. To cope,
it might help to journal your moods
as they swing, to trace sigils
using your freckles as a guide,
to spill yourself onto Twitter,
to count ceiling tiles, to try poppers
and talk about literature, to sleep,
to drink, to deny yourself, or to reply
to the first man on Grindr who can host,
no matter how his cock measures
against a suspiciously full
bottle of mouthwash. In your life
you have been called apocalypse,
your behaviors spooling out
like a tape bearing signs that
your teenage son might be
into satanic and occult rituals.
What was it that Black Sabbath
told you to do, pray to God
or give yourself over
to the Goddess? You’ve never
been much for lyricism
but if you spin this record
backwards you can summon
a feeling, give voice to a dread
that stretches out well beyond
your own. If you do everything
that voice says to do in the night,
it may let you die a woman. In fact,
it might even let you live.
Grief Ritual: Winter
I wish to curse myself,
but tonight I am nothing
and can't speak, sick
with loss under the wide planks
of a covered bridge, where the river
whittles down to a babble. I listen
to a man groaning as he finishes,
see the factory smolder downriver.
My punishment is to hear
his echo, to lie here
like a worshiper in the vestibule,
hungry for sacrament but
too late to relieve my burdens.
In a film, smoke billowing
from the factory’s smokestacks
would reach the top of the frame
and continue in the viewer’s
imagination. Here, I can see
the ash rise until it mingles
with the stars. Here, I can see
the stars descend as ash
or snow; in Michigan
there is no difference.
It is on this blanket
that I spread myself, drained,
dressed like the lamb
on a butcher’s table.
Grief Ritual: Summer
I find myself dreaming
of the grave. I am dead,
but I can feel worms bore
through my person. The dream
goes on though I do not:
I can feel the microchanges
to my molecular structure
as my bones become part
of the soil. After one hundred years
of this dream, a lover plants
a tree. Its roots push through me
and I am satisfied, being
the tree’s anchor. I am having
this dream now, only
I am a doe, and before
the tree or the soil or the worms
there is a road and the fact
that across that road is home.
In my dreams I am always
going home. There is a car,
then nothing. What comes after
nothing? I know because
I’ve had this dream before,
but when I wake up I can’t say.
Spells Against Capitalism, Prayers For Getting Paid
I’m a career adjective: Emotional,
calamitous, much-Yelped-about--
if you don’t like one, swap it out
like a card in a deck of collectable
trading cards. Yes, I’ve read
The Lapsed Anarchist’s Guide
to Starting a Business, but I’m not
lapsed so much as coerced, not sated
so much as diseased. I’ll participate
until I’m ruined, keep this plague
to myself until I can pass it to the CEO.
I’m an asset, a universal donor. I wouldn’t
trade me for free guacamole unless
I could also trade the guacamole.
My last boss said to eat an egg, you must
break the shell. This is America, you fucker.
I’m meant to swallow the egg whole.
If you go below the skin
near your elbow, you’ll find
yourself buried a secret
scroll, a sealed tunnel near
the primary tunnel. To cope,
it might help to journal your moods
as they swing, to trace sigils
using your freckles as a guide,
to spill yourself onto Twitter,
to count ceiling tiles, to try poppers
and talk about literature, to sleep,
to drink, to deny yourself, or to reply
to the first man on Grindr who can host,
no matter how his cock measures
against a suspiciously full
bottle of mouthwash. In your life
you have been called apocalypse,
your behaviors spooling out
like a tape bearing signs that
your teenage son might be
into satanic and occult rituals.
What was it that Black Sabbath
told you to do, pray to God
or give yourself over
to the Goddess? You’ve never
been much for lyricism
but if you spin this record
backwards you can summon
a feeling, give voice to a dread
that stretches out well beyond
your own. If you do everything
that voice says to do in the night,
it may let you die a woman. In fact,
it might even let you live.
Grief Ritual: Winter
I wish to curse myself,
but tonight I am nothing
and can't speak, sick
with loss under the wide planks
of a covered bridge, where the river
whittles down to a babble. I listen
to a man groaning as he finishes,
see the factory smolder downriver.
My punishment is to hear
his echo, to lie here
like a worshiper in the vestibule,
hungry for sacrament but
too late to relieve my burdens.
In a film, smoke billowing
from the factory’s smokestacks
would reach the top of the frame
and continue in the viewer’s
imagination. Here, I can see
the ash rise until it mingles
with the stars. Here, I can see
the stars descend as ash
or snow; in Michigan
there is no difference.
It is on this blanket
that I spread myself, drained,
dressed like the lamb
on a butcher’s table.
Grief Ritual: Summer
I find myself dreaming
of the grave. I am dead,
but I can feel worms bore
through my person. The dream
goes on though I do not:
I can feel the microchanges
to my molecular structure
as my bones become part
of the soil. After one hundred years
of this dream, a lover plants
a tree. Its roots push through me
and I am satisfied, being
the tree’s anchor. I am having
this dream now, only
I am a doe, and before
the tree or the soil or the worms
there is a road and the fact
that across that road is home.
In my dreams I am always
going home. There is a car,
then nothing. What comes after
nothing? I know because
I’ve had this dream before,
but when I wake up I can’t say.
Spells Against Capitalism, Prayers For Getting Paid
I’m a career adjective: Emotional,
calamitous, much-Yelped-about--
if you don’t like one, swap it out
like a card in a deck of collectable
trading cards. Yes, I’ve read
The Lapsed Anarchist’s Guide
to Starting a Business, but I’m not
lapsed so much as coerced, not sated
so much as diseased. I’ll participate
until I’m ruined, keep this plague
to myself until I can pass it to the CEO.
I’m an asset, a universal donor. I wouldn’t
trade me for free guacamole unless
I could also trade the guacamole.
My last boss said to eat an egg, you must
break the shell. This is America, you fucker.
I’m meant to swallow the egg whole.