April features, and news

This is a few days early, because I'm going up to Bard tomorrow to discuss my lack of an academic future with my professors and people. I've been cleared to go back in September, but there are lots of things needing to be worked out. I've applied to full-time internships in New York City and Chicago, so that's what I'll do instead of Bard if I can get them. Either way I'm going to apply to transfer to a different liberal arts college for next spring, not because I dislike Bard, but because it will be hard for me to stay because of all the things I've lost since I've been there. It's entirely personal, and I know I'll miss the academics and the beautiful Hudson Valley but I think I could get more out of my college experience at a different school. Right now I'm planning to apply to Barnard, Kenyon, Bates and Wellesley and maybe one or two more. If I transfer, I'll probably drop the writing major and major exclusively in classical languages. Anyway, I'm just ranting because this shit makes me so nervous. Stop reading this; here are some really lovely pieces.

On Recursive ThoughtsThis curve of bone no more than
a whitened hive. Inside,
legs, jointed. How these feet catch
and scratch and cling,
a claw in each synapse,
a voice for each and every touch.
A why and why again.
A gauze of wings, held up,
a gauze before my eyes, a misted world,
those stick-dry veins blurred and close.
Somewhere the scent of venom,
the sharpness caught behind my skull.
Each needle-sting a thought and thought again,
a layering up, another string of words,
another cascade of loosened thoughts, a buzz
of voices with their tired whys.
One day I may open this hive-mouth
and watch the exodus go by. 365things are capable of changing
ice to water to smoke
over the course of a year
my heart has unfolded
the way a garden worships
spring
rebuilding itself from multiple
warzones of
a winter that has
gone on far too long
I can’t think where my
demons have gotten to
perhaps swatted dead
like flies while I’ve
slept
somehow
it took
less than twelve months
to finally be able to awaken
feverless
into a dark blue that is
only deepening with
stars The Failed SketchesI draw you in pencil
by listening to your movements beneath fabric.
By peeling open pomegranates
and leaving them lying in different
phases of moon,
I drain your segments over each other
in watercolor.
It's not long before
you are a gathering of toppled crescents,
a sphere breaking into sensations,
a door that is not open, not closed.
I sketch you with pebbles for cells,
umlauts for a voice,
a cursive vowel for each ear.
Days pass for your eyes.
Days pass like letters of the alphabet.
Animals die in all your spans.
An hour is a strand of hair,
a week is a warmth off the side of your neck.
I add color with the pomegranate's wetness.
You strike different poses
by telling me how you wish you could live,
by telling me how you are actually living.
I give you my tenth, hundredth, and thousandth drafts
and feel no closer to finishing than the first:
a fawn in colored pencil
on an island of grass,
the word
EARTHLING
floating over its head
in block letters.
In distress I scribble a leafless tre
:thumb364171256: ElsewhereNights like these I stay awake watching glass shards
shine in heaven-light, and my mother says that I should go, Elsewhere.
Rain doesn't stop for the little losts—underwater at one o'clock;
still the streetlights blaze like midnight suns, and whale song drifts
past parked cars.
Nights like these I am waterlogged, wandering, and I don't find
Atlantis just a sofa downtown where the whale lovesongs are raindrop-borne,
slipping through the window and dripping onto hands. I remind myself I am
only alone, though missing—the weight of my cat on my feet and my
sister's soft sleeping.
in Asphodelwe met under the stairs,
under the stars made of bone.
you brought a book, there was
coffee in my hair, we shared
a drink. there were children who ran
together in a blur. the moon
was a face i had seen
before. the grandmother's house poemsi.
my first idol was gene kelly
i wanted to tip my hat to frilly women
creases in my trousers so sharp
they could be used as weapons
i would smell like cedar
shaving cream
cigarette smoke
dank alleyways where bruises are bestowed
and everyone has a second
stomach-down on an orange shag carpet
chin in hands
til my elbows were rubbed raw
watching a gender i could never perform
pressed into the seams of a slate-blue suit
ii.
my grandmother equates food and love
but won't try anything green
or tomatoes
or bell peppers
or brown bread
or breakfast
but grandma, the waffles
the frozen cinnamon ones
you had to wait long excruciating moments for
drenched in syrup, not even the real stuff
and cookies after lunch
and ice cream for dessert
and white bread
with a wink, a "shh don't tell"
to this day i cannot eat
without feeling guilty
iii.
there is a house
rising out of the backyard of my grandparent's house
it is one story taller
and fifty years newer
it stands on my grandmother's rose bushes
it st lightspillingin dusk, the light greets the night.
the day spills into darkness,
a sublime fusing of fierce
contrast, shadowed lace
laid across the land
in delicate balance,
ink fingers stretching
to embrace the last, fading
incandescence
of the sun.
i thought we might be like that.
a brilliant blend
of obverse elements.
but
it was more like
smoke swallowing the flame.
BeliefBelief
She tells him the child is not his.
The old women mutter and cluck
as they slap wet cloth against river stones.
He wraps his arms around his chest as though he fears
he will also sprout with child. "A dove,"
he quietly asks? She points to a blood spot
on her cheek. "He pecked me here." It still hurts
when she touches it. It always hurts.
He loves the child, the cuckold's hatchling. He loves his lying wife.
But he knows she lies. When the old men stumble
into the stable, beards matted, coarse as grain,
he simply mutters, "Drunks," bad wine, betrayal.
One afternoon as he saws cedar planks, sawdust thick as pollen,
an angel catches his hatchling as he falls from a branch.
"I shaped the angel out of air," he thinks, so desperate
to believe that a dove pecked his wife, and she swelled with child. SteadfastIf you break your heart at me
I will catch the pieces, thread them,
spend them, melt-down coinage.
This is the spectre-fade, downgraded,
kissed and caressed in confidence -
rolls of fat, orchestrated,
bent along a slackening crest.
You are consumption, the hack
smothered with lavender. You are
the click of my back
when I stretch, and sleep in water.