anglosexual:

misandryinhaiku:

“women are weaklings!”

i’m strong enough to carry

your corpse to the woods

this haiku is my favorite haiku

we were not

oceans, vast and strong and full of secrets—

but yes, I remember

your words, bitter as a thousand miles of salt and too many fish

myself, spread out too thin and yet never clear.

water clings to itself if given the chance

sticky chemical bonds gluing like to like;

people are too complex for that.

I don’t want this to be the last thing I say to you.

oh-you-better-run:

Like A Grapefruit: What Lot’s Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn’t A Pillar of Salt) / Karen Finneyfrock

delicatetbone:

librarianpirate:

librariesandlemonade:

Do you remember when we met
in Gomorrah? When you were still beardless,
and I would oil my hair in the lamp light before seeing
you, when we were young, and blushed with youth
like bruised fruit. Did we care then
what our neighbors did
in the dark?

When our first daughter was born
on the River Jordan, when our second
cracked her pink head from my body
like a promise, did we worry
what our friends might be
doing with their tongues?

What new crevices they found
to lick love into or strange flesh
to push pleasure from, when we
called them Sodomites then,
all we meant by it
was neighbor.

When the angels told us to run
from the city, I went with you,
but even the angels knew
that women always look back.
Let me describe for you, Lot,
what your city looked like burning
since you never turned around to see it.

Sulfur ran its sticky fingers over the skin
of our countrymen. It smelled like burning hair
and rancid eggs. I watched as our friends pulled
chunks of brimstone from their faces. Is any form
of loving this indecent?

Cover your eyes tight,
husband, until you see stars, convince
yourself you are looking at Heaven.

Because any man weak enough to hide his eyes while his neighbors
are punished for the way they love deserves a vengeful god.

I would say these things to you now, Lot,
but an ocean has dried itself on my tongue.
So instead I will stand here, while my body blows itself
grain by grain back over the Land of Canaan.
I will stand here
and I will watch you
run.

ninasafiri:

dead to me now, all dead to me
dying again and again with each telling
you agony kings
you you you false martyrs
who ran for the door
just before the check came.

damn the timing
and bless it too
america loves her sons who die
before their turn to cash in
stay dead, you’re beautiful there
(that’s where we love you best).

there is some gory ballet in the way
we tell the details of the crash
the car, the party, the necklace.
there is some physical release 
at the punchline:
only half a mile from home.
just signed the record deal.
body so far gone he was identified
only by the padlock around his neck.
we take something from the site
every time we speak of it. some shell
some piece of twisted metal to slip in
our pocket, some clue that might be
crucial to the police yet we take it anyway
(like vultures, like rats).
this private grief hung in hung in public
as if it proves something about us
how much we knew of his life
how close we must have been to him
(closer than you, motherfucker, closer than you).

Read More

colporteur:

by Marty McConnell

what god stole your hunger? who demands this reduction
to vertebrae? it’s a specific treason, a case worth losing,
nobody can hear you with fingers or sticks between your lips,
nobody loves you in the bathroom, everyone’s in the kitchen
again, this is my body, broken for you, take and eat

the appearance of bones is not a miracle of the flesh
(take and eat) what do your visions say? who
marries you in the dream, Christ slipping a ring
on my thin second finger, my shorn hair all over
the floor, gold for gold, I was six when he first
came for me, who insists on this full-body stigmata,

how long have you been paying this penance? are you ready
to die for this? martyrdom’s a pretty notion until you’re nose
to nose with it and nothing to be done, the body rejecting water,
salt, fish, when you realize the devil’s the one who wants
you small, who told you the pus of a cancer was wine, said

sip, swallow, this is my blood, transubstantiation in three
degrees, when you have given your good body to a lie
Mary, when your bones turn to whispers they will bury you
under a stone that did not ask to be a stone, we do not ask
to be but we are and to live, Mary, to swear
on everything holy that these bodies are not vessels

but gifts, that’s the trick, to be an altar and not
another sacrifice, for what are you atoning? who is your
eucharist? I made men believe. brought a condemned man
to faith and caught his severed head in my hands, beguine
or not you have hands, a throat, the world doesn’t need

another dead-thin girl, your suffering is not special, offered up
to magazine covers and lip gloss endorsements, thousands
flocked to confession after I preached in public squares, what
are you winning? my mistake was believing the body
meant nothing, yours the opposite – Mary meaning bitter,
Katherine meaning pure, Christ and I died at 33, anvils

for the world’s beatings, vessels of the world’s sins, glue
your brittled bones into the face of a god who bids you
eat, our bodies broken into bread at your feet, chicory,
water lily, do this for you, rosemary, asphodel, do this
in remembrance of me.