Welcome to my creative closet of drawings and poems. If you are on your phone, please tilt the screen sideways in order to not reformat the poems.
A Home in Some Body
Can’t be found in any body.
I saw it in a dream.
My teacher through a crack
in the door. Carving into his body
with the tip of a fountain pen,
searching for my poems.
Can’t be found in any body.
He came home covered in birds and
vines. To a house that bleeds
where shadows live inside.
I went home to a house of becoming.
I came home like rising bread. The
whole time shadows danced inside.
All my shadows dance inside of a shape,
whipped into space. Bugs bite it.
Men call to it from cars moving really fast.
And I want it to be free like that-
Big air, rushing wind, really fast.
I’m going home to the house of belonging.
I’m walking with bare feet on rocks.
I’m standing on the chair of experiencing moonlight with all my curves exposed-
translucent contours
that shelter and show.
Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana
Setraline 100 MG
Standing in the rain a while is the closest I came to crying.
All wet, sweating hands is the closest I came to crying.
Spilling water on thirsty sand is the closest I came to crying.
Too full to move; filled with your absence is the closest I came to dying.
Death by not crying.
My wildest fantasies is the closest I came to crying.
Slippery Streets Cause Automobile Death is the closest I came to crying.
I stood in the rain a long time.
Tangles in my psyche. Harsh chemicals in my eye. Dripping freon.
Windy Willow Trees that are sobbing.
These is the closest I came to crying.
Soaked sock hanging up is the closest I came to crying.
Watching you choke up is the closest I came to crying.
That old man that couldn’t afford car insurance in front of me at USAgencies
that reminded me of you, always down on your luck
even when you’re trying is the closest I came to crying.
Little winces here and there is the closest I came to crying.
Hanging yourself on your ceiling fan
because your parents are cruel is the closest I came to crying.
Pulling nails out of coffins is somewhere near crying.
I wish I could cry eyes circles out of sky erupting to renewal.
Our e ve er ex pa n d in g b l u e k i n s h i p.
Setraline 100 mg
Detailed closeups:
In Order to See
In order to see
I turn myself on.
Every pore is a tiny lamp.
All my hair is
erect, illuminated,
beautiful.
She told me
there is nothing in here
i can’t handle so
i wade up to my lungs
in liquid. It is black ink
warm like a bath.
Inside my nail bits
are darting around in the liquid.
Flashlights looking for food.
And my lungs are just
hanging there
like hardened fruit
dipped in the dark.
I wonder about wearing one
as a mask
and carving the other
into a pirogue.
I’m looking for a way back home.
Feeling around with my toes, what kind of
thing is a home if
it makes me feel like
I have to go
backwards to go forward?
I don’t know what I
want a home to be so
I keep floating backwards
to decide what its always been.
I thought I found it in my hands
drawing squares topped with triangles
Over and Over
Rectangle chimney, Curly smoke
Someone is home.
I found it in my breath more like a wish
Than not.
It is in my throat like a lid.
I’m frustrated by what
I can only touch and overwhelmed
With the serious possibility that
My memory is going blind.
————————————————————————————————————————————————-Here’s a link to a video of the poem performed through movement and spoken word. Camera work done by Ben Rukavina.
Call it Just a Crush
I believe in auras because
when you get too close to me
your freckles start to cut
and I believe in two kinds of love
one you need like shelter
the other like death
like everyone needs to die some day
i need to be undone
which is you looking at me through hazel discs
and me suffocating somewhere behind
desperate teeth– it’s the edge I sit
wanting to tell you things.
i want to tell you about the time I
walked out into the ocean
and gave birth. each contraction
was a new life lived, and how sometimes
with salted palms i send prayers to
windmills– they are melancholy giants
always mourning impermanence of the land,
slowly turning to process grief and
love of rolling hills, sound of air.
these words aren’t for you
they’re for fields around your hazel discs.
these words aren’t for you
but I wish they were.
these words are a spell I borrowed from
windmills to feel nothing.
Long Lost Brother (found poem)
A glaring strange significance is
the mirror so full of purple.
While a quietly hissing
hourglass near my ankles
is playing for keeps.
I dream I am a lunatic
tangled up like queer spaghetti
And my cries for help drift
through grief-stricken willow trees
whispering difficult secrets to the wheat.
Anxious well-wishers do nothing.
All my exes are unmiraculous.
The rosary is unsafe.
There is unseen contrast on the sundeck
Your suspicious mouth is my pillow
I despise local oxygen
All Yr Quirks
You left two days ago, and I’m starting to unreel.
My body makes a tired line slumped out poolside,
as my eyes (never tired) wander the scene.
Lots of bees.
Love is so cliche. I look at this bee and I think about you.
You eat more honey than anyone I know.
I think about how bees are such try-hards.
And what do they know about love?
Their wings and hearts beat solely for their Queen
Except for brief epiphanies
When they throw each other against the honeycomb
and run their antennae slowly through that fuzz on their abdomens.
In those moments the queen is a far-away concept and the
Sticking of feet as they work their way
Up and down exoskeleton is the only thing thats real.
Unreeling still.
Exhausted limbs splayed incidentally in whatever directions.
Like pipelines made of fabric.
Like a new dance.
An unending supply of thread is still extending through my channels out into day dreams.
Dewey beads catch memories and I read them like crystal balls
Strung out on brilliant lines.
I see
and crave all yr quirks.
Like how you place such a priority on breakfast
And that your hair can only be parted one way in order to lay flat on your head.
I feel like the master magician
Showing myself things that aren’t really here:
You making lists of the events in a day.
Drawing all over the walls. A primal need.
I can’t figure out how I’m doing it, nor will I ever reveal my tricks.
The Confrontation
Hell is lined with white and grey speckled linoleum tile.
I know this.
And towering plastic plants don’t block out Hell’s fluorescent sun
but they are blocking every doorway.
The only thing I hate more than this fake tree
is imagining it in a landfill mocking the sad dirt.
It would sit at the very top of the unnatural heap
like the finishing touch on a rotting temple for the damned.
Then I can’t help but laugh as I imagine his hands feeling their way up your sweater poncho.
Because these are what the jokes are like in Hell and don’t you know he thinks
outlandish fashion is stupid?
Last night over dinner Jas told me everyone suffers silently.
But I still couldn’t get it strait. I’m supposed to deal with this? Keep on going?
Yep. And stop talking to him indefinitely.
Then why don’t we learn about this in school?
I’d do my heartbreak homework right after arithmetic and before Western Civ.
If this is actually a thing, why don’t responsible parents sit you down
about birds and bees and soul-sucking pain
that is the closest we ever get to death
but lasts longer.
Everyone suffers silently, she said.
I remember he told me, “Don’t say anything you’re going to regret.”
He could make his eyes say it loudest. But I pushed passed him and his eyes.
I dumped water on your head and started screaming
YOUR STUPID SUNSHINE HAIR. IM GOING TO DYE IT GREEN LIKE SOUR STOMACHS….
HE’D HATE THAT.
And did you know that Hell is lined with gray linoleum tile? It really is! I’m going to lay ten speckled squares over that fucking smirk
for the young demons to play hopscotch on forever!
In silence, there is a lot.
I can hear activity in the walls.
I can hear my ears working.
Jaclyn Rawls 