Day 7 of #the100dayproject

ingesting the fragments of creatures

I eat flies everyday,
milk and black, their wings
a textured cereal, their legs
the bran, whole wheat.
From my tongue, I can tell
where they lay their young,
where they fly from one
rat infested gutter
to the garbage heaped
outside the front gate.
I guard my mouth
as I guard my body,
but thousands of legs
and wings ingested,
a war field of body parts
shimmering in bags
of rice and flour,
the many eye balls
of sweltering insects.
No matter how hard
I try, I eat the world
and the debris
of its creatures;
I lick my lips, wash
their brine and death
down with wine.

Day 6 of #the100dayproject

 

Day 5 of #the100dayproject

 

Day 4 of #the100dayproject

To Debate a Memory

I was in the field, then I wasn’t in the field
I was in the moss, under the cedar, but
It wasn’t a cedar, but a redwood and
I wasn’t wearing mary-janes, but always
In my mind, I’m wearing mary-janes.
I probably was barefoot, but I cannot
Say for sure. I was there, my skin pale
Against the wet green of the trees,
I was there, but maybe I wasn’t.
Maybe it was a dream, multifaceted.
Reoccurring, maybe I walked there, but
I was naked and it was not daylight
Maybe there was the moon silvering
The dew on the grass blades.
I know I was me, I know I had a body
But I do not know my age, I look back
And my body is like water, flowing
Changing, I am never the same,
And the me that was in the field,
Or in the moss, was that me or
Was that another version of me?
Maybe all this time I am someone
But not myself, only in the present
I am me, but in the past, the person
That was me is not me, only pieces
Of a body and a mind that if put together
Might look like me, but isn’t really me.

Day 3 of #the100dayproject

Rose City

All those years of awe for the city, my city.

Walking down the park blocks,

I watched protesters setting camp in the grass

under the cedars heavy with rain.

Occupy Wallstreet in the Pacific Northwest.

I would take the tram into the Pearl to find

abandoned warehouses turned into shoppes

and five-star bars and restaurants.

The bookstore on Burnside 

still rough on the outside, but inside

color and gloss to appeal to Raleigh Hill clientele.

I was a college girl who stopped at the smoke shop 

and leafed through the lit mags smelling of tobacco. 

I could never afford to buy any of them.

Now that I’m back, the store smells more like e-cigarettes 

than cigars, its windows broken by the riots,

boarded up by rain-soaked plywood.

I used to think anything was possible.

I used to find inspiration in the rain 

and in the graffiti on the brick buildings.

But now I realize ‘possible’ is anywhere I am; possible is in me.

When I left those years ago, I found what I was capable of.

I found myself to worship, day after day I built myself from the ground up. 

Nothing in life is easy, but when I visit an old place 

I look back at who I was and who I am,

and I’ve found that I’m always the sum of both parts.

Day 2 of the #the100dayproject

The Riff

Here I lay in my bed

Heart beating out of my chest,

Pulsing outward so deep

That I friction the air

The rain stops,

The clouds part

And a stripe of blue lays

Across the sky like a scarf

Rippling in the wind.

I am not of the kind

To change. I would dig

My heels into the ground

Fight with bloody knuckles

And skinned knees. But every

Raw hurt is a wound to heel

And new skin to grow

Over the old. No matter 

How much I fight, 

My body always finds

A way to fill in all this blank space.

Day 1 of the #the100dayproject