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When God Sleeps.I. So it comes to this: pangea tearing itself raw
from our throats to pour into squares of newly open sky
where the stars grew aches and darkened lakewater
once bloomed into bruised winters. Somewhere
beyond the thick of snow, prayers are strung
on moon-rattled winds
and birds' teeth tear apart the poetry
of our hands. They will raise something beautiful
from these ruined words.

Continents shift slowly. They are
dirt-bound titans, these beasts;
rootless giants that mold themselves
to fit the vision we hold inside our heads. Oceans sigh
and their tides crawl ever upward.

II. Our shadows become umbilical
in certain light. Unknown children cas
The Post*
The blue mail-satchel bumps and sways, brings them in,
rigid with the weight of promise;

envelopes, dessert-colored, a delicacy,
the brittle folds filled with scent,
a creme transfer over time, to me.

I open each with the reverence
of seashells and oceanic loves.

I cut apart the shore that separates us
with a letter-opener, the sound of water.

You have arrived
before your body.

I settle into my pulse
and the resounding ambiance of my privacy
while your words touch my lips.
*

I.
We stand in our reamed maze of consent--
faces, throats thrumming
on parallel shoulders;

a doorway, at dusk;
a barefoot dance sung over by bird
fatefatalism stalks me.
its chalky finger-bones
scrabble at my windows,
greedy to pry panes
and rend gaps—
mouth agape
to vent its algid breath.

conjured,
like a voodoo zombie
of the bayou,
by pious disciples
to the temple of matter.

they strain to evade
the burden of their choices,
worrying at the knots of destiny
and scattering dust
to fill in our footprints.

in a sly reversal of legerdemain,
they entice hands from rudders,
with their relentless mantra:
"free will is illusion!"

but illusion is smoke,
and stars still burn in my chest.
not nebulae, but hard points and brilliant.
I pass through them,
burning the fog
AlterAllow me just this:
your hand
my hand
separate.

1.
I fell into a deep forest. My femur
put forth roots. I did not say: oh Lord,
take me from here
like Rebekah, this is another
barrenness.

My mouth remained resolutely
closed. The moss
grew over me,
in me.

Oh Lord, I am scared.

2.
Mother is reading, brows
at half mast. In the kitchen,
Father organizes sardines
on crackers. Home means
this soft quietude.

Five thousand six hundred
miles away, I am watching a donkey.
It stumbles on three legs; the fourth
is loosely curled, like a child's fist.

There are wild dogs in the fields beyond,
waiting. I am a dog, waiting.

3.
memories, making glorious mudhis memories are making a glorious mud

i.

it is a lumberjack's wife whose veins are budding twigs,
arms feeble as every dried branch to soak a shining star.

it is her who bares such troubled wrists for oven mitts,
so ardently delivers her hoggish assembly some hulking bird
whose body cavity is crammed tight to the sphincter
with a spiced bread. instinctively, she goes for the knife.
there is some raucous applause as she serrates

its oiled, peppered and flightless skin and on
into its succulent chest meat as every spectator
dreams of flying. her blade burrows farther in
and under enough to dredge up a pinkish marrow,

where
SpringtimeIt is winter on my breastbone,
Across my nose,
Down my arms,
Snowbanks of pale skin
At my shoulders, elbows, knees.

But a sudden spring emerges on my hipbone,
A rioting vibrant mass
Of blue-black-purple-green.
Brought on not by the warming of the weather,
Or a gentle rain,
But by a forceful collision with a table.

This bloom will wither soon,
Just like the real daffodils and irises.
The colors will fade,
And my skin will return to the tundra.
snowbonesholding my hands over the kettle
the skin on my fingertips peels back,
like dated wallpaper,
like flowers blooming.

they're burning from the inside out,
nails turning to varnish, turning to steam,
bones click-clacking their way out;
spreading like wildfire.

the whistling stops, and
blink
and my fingers are just fingers,
ink stained, bitten nails.

sunlight streams across the kitchen,
my fingers warm and
slightly damp, i trace patterns on
steamed-up windows.
Own SkinI bought myself a Moleskine
to emulate Picasso, Hemingway
was never seen without his
in canal-side cafes, Spanish bull rings.
My fingers grease its ebon spine
over and over in tactile search
for some hidden leak of creative essence

I found Dante's house
down an old narrow street
alongside a crowd of German tourists
I did not enter only stared
at his stones, the exterior.

The hotel room is filled
with the buzz of the alleyway below,
restaurant kitchens' backdoors opening
for cooks, waitstaff, rubbish bags and oaths,
effusive shoppers admiring new pashmina
scarves haggled from vendors
in the adjacent market square.

I close t
PicaI'd had a dream.  You know the way dreams
shake you up sometimes?  Got up in the dark
and under the fridge's strip-lit yawn
I fiddled the rind off the cheese, thinking of nothing.
Shredded it slowly -- a squeak in my teeth --
and swallowed, felt an eerie kind of calm.

It went on from there.  I worried I was pregnant,
craving brick-dust in the cold back yard, dabbing spats of talc
on my yellowing tongue. But it wasn't my womb
that turned and swelled like bread with its sickmaking ordinaryness.
I spurned that stuff first: potatoes and meat
like gobs of sand in my gut.

I did do my best to stick to f
FloodThe sun came out this week
after a full year of rain,
my lips puckered,
fingers pruned like
the skin around old-woman
ankles.

I wrung my hair of salt
and old sea lions,
until it was dry and limp,
let water spill out my ears
until the floor was wet.

You came in with the mop
and limped about a mess
of ocean
the water-weak floor groaning,
cleaned up a life of liquid.

In your yellow bucket
the year looked miniature
and muddy,
not nearly half as deep
as it had fell.
Ocean's SongForgive my weakness, woman,
and my albatross-hands that roam
from island to island, in search of rest.

Forgive me also
for my fish-school eyes, they dart from side to side
in search of something that glitters - prey
or the great white Kraken, or both:
"I have wrecked too many ships, and seen
them scream, I have held them like a lover;
come, my children," it tempts, and lies
softly at the bottom of the sea, singing.

Forgive my oceanic absence,
and the lapping and the lapses of my tongue;
it writhes in my mouth like the Kraken -
a treacherous, twisted creature
is love, and I do, make no mistake.
your aura and my libido.with all of our mistakes dangling in the tree branches
it's a wonder, isn't it, that we are still here. i'll listen
as you describe to me the rough sex you had with
whoknows but don't let that make you think i'll
remember. i hope you listen when i tell you i am
showing up at your house tomorrow wearing blood
on my lips and an obscene little red riding hood outfit.

did i ever tell you? in the modern version of the tale,
little red riding hood is brought to womanhood abusively
fast, so fast that it makes her fingertips bleed from
scratching at the sides of the doorjamb. she is broken,
dear, just broken.

eat all of your haikus, dear
je ne sais quoiagainst my chest you make a soft semi-colon as my hips
     press into yours and you yield like damp paper

and against my chest the pulse of us
     a filament-hum in a sixty-watt bulb

and my chin against your neck, an impromptu bookstop

and your cheek runs against
     my stubble and it is an embossed leather cover

and our noses meet

beads of sweat on my brow roll against yours and we are
     a printing press

until our dilated eyes meet like magnifying glasses
     and our lips touch like the curves of an
Him and HerThey walk ahead of me
almost holding hands,
a puffy red heart almost suspended
above them in a conjoined dream cloud,
and I almost stab it with my cigarette,
send it sputtering and whining into the night.

Tomorrow while I'm taking out the trash
I imagine each of them will be dictating
love letters to a friend, each planning their ascent
and subsequent colonization of the other:

she'll teach him to wear deodorant more often,
take off his socks before they go to bed,
while he'll convince her Hemingway is a saint
and Emily Dickinson is Martha Stewart.

While I'm rinsing off a spoon, running the garbage disposal,
they'll be on th
ZipperIt happened again, so
  like a zipper, I put myself back together.
I was cold, sleeveless.
  The sky was sliding off my back,
  like a heavy down coat.

My sleeves came off again.
Leaves slipped off the arms of trees
like Band-Aids that had lost their stick.

-

Snow churned its hair in the wind.
Snow perched
in my hair, stretching its wings.
Then a cloud of snow was leaving my chimney.

Winter it was ice all over.

-

It happened again, so I put myself back together.

The moon nearly shattered my window, wind was so strong.
The moon a photograph.
The moon a falling leaf.
The moon curled up in snow.

We zip it up, and turn
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More from ~MaggiexMalarkey

Fertility goddesses.I know this:
exhaustion.
You look so tired,
your neck is heavy
with the child of thinking.
Your clothes slide loose along your legs
and, beside you,
his eyes are guilty
he has not touched you
in weeks.
Your stomach is
full of ache and destiny
you go on long walks with the dog
and
you watch the leaves fall.
When no one is looking
you try to suffocate yourself because
there are want ads in the paper
and at night you plead with them

want this,
take this,
it belongs to god or humanity
or the united states government
but not to me

and you have fallen out of love
with everything.
Meaningless.Esoteric
and abstracted
the dreams, plucked
clinically
from their context,
are only hinted scents of silver snowfall,
thick orange air,
adventure.
Obfuscated,
warm:
your mouth,
your name
in my mouth.
There are spies in the walls,
metaphors for honest
mother-love are
weighing down my tongue and
I am void
of
new
tears.
I am conflict,
the bark on my back will redeem me.
I wear my burdens
as if I am a woman of beauty
and keep the secrets of miracle workers
and will myself into existence.
I nurse the future at white breasts,
I glorify the way
I am an
everyday
girl in want.
Saints and revolutionaries.We are at an impasse.
You are disinclined
to sunrises,
which will get you nowhere
in this hot, gory world
run on blood
and fluidity.
There is a target audience for this:
I am martyred and I keep on crying in my closet,
I am a pretty woman with scars and stains,
I am a girl grey-faced with resignation,
I cannot get up this morning.
I am supposed to look beautiful,
the way I have not washed my hair in days,
but there is a limit to desperation and it
pays to look seemly
sometimes
and I have pocket-sized friends
that approve of this.
I can assimilate,
there is no problem there,
but things are going to my head
and when you en
Tangerine night life.The rainy trees sighed and murmured endearments,
there was no longer the manic energy of the
born-to-organize
in the wind
anymore.
Streetlights
danced in their reflections
and looked like golden strangers
emerging from the mist and
the stars would appear briefly
and at random
through the low clouds
and sing canticles
for each unexpected, inconvenient baby
thrown at the hands of
rough women with no souls.
Rovers and wanderers clutched religiously their
dark, ambiguous umbrellas as if to make sure they
were still substantial enough
to remain with their feet on the ground
or possibly as if they did not want to be left behind
Brood.The subtle contaminations go unreferenced
for a while,
a wormy moon casts only shadows on us
crouched hiding from the night
in the basement
where the windows barely show
or are grasped at,
callous electricity
slowly blinding the eyes of god
and the hum of the refrigerator relentless in
the next room.
As if worth were quantitative we
do sums frantic and purposefully,
we make lists
and number things
and count days;
there is no end to waiting,
there is no end to being the wrong size
for the cupboard of delicate acquaintances.
The loud silences
belie hidden children
who will race off to tell
their mothers and fathers who the
Cynic's star-gazing.I live in the box
outside your local grocer's;
I can delight in being so
subtly
grand.
I christen myself king of the universe
in the fountain where the children
wish away their
souls,
(because
queens are ultimately
failed by
love
and all the things that make
a woman lovable).
I march against the perfect reflection
of the starred, glorious sky
and accuse it of
witchcraft
for enthralling my daughters
because, being an old
whore,
I am sure
that all of it amounts to broken promises
and
false hope recalled from dreaming,
that what you see (the
heart-strong giants of heaven)
is only memory,
that there are no men who wil

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October 12, 2010
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Letter to an Amateur Anthropologist

:iconmaggiexmalarkey:

Do not only
take photographs
of beautiful women.
This is your impulse,
the eyes naturally gravitate
to the sweet milk skins,
the awkward and elegant curve of bone.

Take photographs
of everything,
you are not an artist
but a historian:

remember this,
the way the hair emerges from
a leg,
infinitesimal,
the way flesh
accumulates against your hands.

Study
delicate black pores,
gasping and gentle,
dark windows into the
body's mechanisms.
The mouth flushed and curving, teeth
sturdy like a horse's,
something to love.

This is important,
the diet, the habits,
the peculiar dialects invented or assumed.
At what frequency was language spoken,
sung, whispered.
What was worshiped, what gods were prayed to,
what rituals.
What dreams.

Take photographs. The way the bleary eye is
asleep still, the sunlight across the bed,
the weird, warped flesh.
Round hands, smooth jugular.
In action: making breakfast,
converted to
still life.

The myths, the history,
each delicate and convoluted story
with meaning
or no meaning.
Write everything down,
each colloquial phrase, document
the coughs and hiccups,
messy excretions, blood, tears.
This is after all
a science,

with primary sources:
x-rays, so
intimate,
bones sloping gently inward,
the heart palpitating
slightly too fast.
The colorful brain is
alight,
is ablaze,
unable to save itself from itself
or from diagrams of anatomy,
numbers, facts.

I admit you are a specialist, devoted
but nearly irrelevant:
this is important, the way we
held hands by the reservoir,
when I am gone
there will have to be
someone to tell everyone
exactly how I was,
someone to remember
beyond remembering.
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Daily Deviation

Given 2010-11-17
Letter by ~MaggiexMalarkey "contains a powerful mix of imagery and surprising simile that creates a picture of a 'real' woman." ( Suggested by =DailyLitDeviations and Featured by `nycterent )
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:iconhelldalgo:
~Helldalgo Apr 17, 2013  Hobbyist General Artist
I was brought here by a feature, and I absolutely adore your gallery.
Reply
:iconmaggiexmalarkey:
~MaggiexMalarkey Apr 18, 2013
Thank you!
Reply
:icondoodelay:
~Doodelay Jan 9, 2013  Student Writer
gasp
Reply
:iconliliwrites:
`LiliWrites Mar 28, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
It is a true pleasure to read through this once again. :) Still one of the best poems on this site!
Reply
:iconmaggiexmalarkey:
~MaggiexMalarkey Apr 18, 2012
Thank you! So many notifications since last I checked in here! Bizarre but nice to know I'm remembered!
Reply
:icongypsyfoxdancer:
~gypsyfoxdancer Oct 8, 2011
Very good! That is exactly what an artist should be. Capturing the simple sample taste of a life being lived. Well stated. :)
Reply
:iconyvning:
*Yvning Jul 9, 2011
This had DD written all over it before I even realised that it already had a DD...HaHa. Gorgeous work. Unexpected and thorough. It's just a fine piece of writing.
Reply
:iconmaggiexmalarkey:
~MaggiexMalarkey Jul 30, 2011
Thank you!
Reply
:iconsafia3:
~safia3 Jul 9, 2011
I was about to say this was extraordinary, and then I scroll down and see it's already been showered with love and a dd....but I guess it does no harm to give it a bit more love, right? :) A lovely letter!
Reply
:iconmaggiexmalarkey:
~MaggiexMalarkey Jul 30, 2011
Thank you!
Reply
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