Sfogliatelle

More than anything, I’ve wanted to intrigue.

My mother still treats me like a virgin.

She does not know how disgusting I am.

How I lie. Hypnotherapy for protracted

childhood abuse. Six visits to the psych ward.

More than anything, I’ve wanted to intrigue.

I let people lean down for their whiff of my sickness,

only for them to see society abiding. At any party,

I am the dumbest girl in the room. And every tete-a-tete

turned with lies into the River Euphrates.

More than anything, I’ve wanted to intrigue.

I compensate in the weakest way for the

self that has become, through penance, corporeal.

I’m a slutty pastry in the form of a student. My crown

of butter opening, like hands of worth attached to worth.

More than anything, I’ve wanted to intrigue.

To speak in language as God would. A distance

that can only be overcome through subterfuge.

The girl is smart but not really. She says sfogliatelle like a lie.

Myself purged of myself, and to whom a debt of sickness is owed.

Untitled

The park birds 

Minisculely

and perfectly 

like a stand

Their bodies filled 

with poison, never 

seeing the partiality 

of the sun, like 

cracked margarine 

So the adage goes 

about female hunger

It’s a constant itch

The morning 

raucousness 

dies down

That park without 

is on my bedside

like a gun 

And I am the 

respite of a limb I 

wouldn’t give up

Establish craving

A good park 

will court you

A good courting should 

coat a spoon

self-sufficiently 

The dread I feel

A brick of clarity 

from a still point, 

when I look at 

you for release

Establish steel nerves

Establish gaze Then 

remove the other’s eyes 

Two geese for every 

two fish, sealed inside 

but prevailing 

The grass 

of two henges

And wine like 

any other boundary

Empty, empty This 

is the important part 

Water breaks 

across a dish

The thaw snaps, 

and warmth comes

down from the sky

like a welt on skin

A time-slowed picnic

You lay out the 

provisions 

We eat hard bread 

And for a park so suicidal, 

seeming communal to you