Smoky Lullaby

The birds are getting stoned and it’s all my fault.
I can’t help wanting to unwind with some creature nearby, who maybe just once feels the same
way I do
And the feeling buoys my troubled heart upward
makes me want to consume all of every thing.
After a day of soaking up the people, the places, the thoughts and feelings,
after a day of being the devoured, I want to be the one who devours
Desire desire desire
I am you, you are me
So long as I am coaxed into my dreams and not stranded with my nightmares
So long as the birds who agree to stay in the yard, and the bunny who always inches toward me
to bum a smoke of my green, smoke-filled lullaby


The Female Skin Trap

The woman’s desire to be small is so much more than being sexually attractive.
We want to take up as little space as possible,
We want to shrink into ourselves
We want to be swallowed by the clothes we wear
I say,
Fantasizing of the skeleton utopia,
Oh to drown in the oversized cottons and silks
Not strangled by the linens that somehow feel like myself, my thick skin smothering anything
that dares to contain it
I am tired of bursting at the seams
Of feeling every inch of myself and more
Squeezed, tightly packed, suffocating in my own skin
My layers double, then triple, then rip me to shreds
We want to be microscopic, thin and tall as a blade of grass
Free from the shackles and perceived in surface area just a few inches less-
Until nothing can contain us but ourselves


Earthly Appetite
The earth is a stomach- no, a womb-
Digesting and spitting up and mixing and separating and protecting and defending its creatures
When it's done absorbing and disbanding me, it hesitates to regurgitate anything I’ve said or not
said
The earth is a womb.
Every morning I am born again, and the world spins like a coin
Neither mother nor father to its creatures
And the sky rumbles and growls when it is hungry for more
Swallow me whole, I beg of the sky, who may decide to tell the whole Earth
Who are you but the sum of your parts?
Sometimes, Earth, you make me wonder whether you are tasting us, savoring and delighting, or
merely eating us for the nutrients required to survive..
Land of enchantment, or Badlands?
We’re drawn to places that promise to change us
The elements are different, the water and air a different taste
The homes sculpted of clay, its conception still visible to the passersby
Below the watchful Half crescent eye, neither waxing nor waning
The flavors of an ancient and eclectic landscape blending seamlessly-
Green chili, red chili, lavender, prickly pear
Back to the land we go
Places we’ve never inhabited feel like our roots, and how?


HUNGER
What do you do when you’re starving, and nothing tastes good enough?
What do you do when you’re ravished, and everything is unappetizing?
What do you do when your mouth waters for something that doesn’t exist?
Taste whatever it is that you crave so badly, spit it out, swoosh it around,
Draw some conclusion-
Leave no crumbs, sop it up with a hearty bread and make sure to lick your fingers
Then throw it up