cushlxmocree

[cushlxmocree]

poem eighteen

i have tried to write seventeen poems today.

each one resisted me,

denying me entrance to my own thoughts.

i have lost sight of my own

distant serenity. i am trapped in battle with my own

brain, and i have not a prayer of success;

i know my own weaknesses, after all.

 i have no idea how to win this war.

i have begun, however,

and that first step was acknowledging that

i am fighting any battle

at all. after all, you can hardly win a war

without even knowing you need a sword.

i shall forge one from my own persistence,

my own red-hot anger at this betrayal,

my own belief that someday this will all be

easier, because.... it must be. it must be.

 i have no idea how to win this war.

but today i have decided to declare myself my own ally,

to stop blaming myself for not winning

all on my own. because who could ever do this all

on their own? not me! not me. but

i am not alone.

 i do not know how to win this war, but

i am writing a poem, and it may not be good,

but i did it. and tomorrow i will do it again,

and again, and the next day again, and the next

again, and again,

until i have won all my battles,

until my sword glitters sharp with my own inky blood, until

i have carved every ounce of self-loathing and self-doubt from

my own aching heart.

 i have no idea how to win this war.

but i wrote this poem.

i will start here.

[cushlxmocree]

i will bloom

like a rose;

one petal at a time, curling 

away from my soft soul,

becoming unbearably

sweet

[cushlxmocree]

i am not a competition

i am not a competition

i am competing to be better than myself

better than the girl i was yesterday

i am not a competition

[cushlxmocree]

“i can read you like a book,”

he said.

he pressed me open until

my spine cracked.

my pages fell out

one

by

one

until his hands had

released entire chapters.

[cushlxmocree]

lord, i have pressed your words

like flowers between the pages 

of my heavy heart.

[cushlxmocree]

my heart is open,

my eyes are shut. 

my hands are reaching.

fill me with splendor, lord. 

find in my soul the cracks

and fill them with gold.

[cushlxmocree]

absolve me of my sins, o lord,

wash me clean of all the blood under my fingernails

that i collected as i carried

the body of your son.

pull the splinters from my hands,

rinse the mud from my feet.

i am trying to grow flowers

in the dirt that has collected 

in the folds of my heart. 

i am trying to blossom.

grant me sunlight, lord.

grant me rain.

[cushlxmocree]

last night i dreamed a conversation with the universe (poem from high school)

In my sleep I asked God why I lived in this body, why I am tied to these bones, why I am trapped in this head, why these hands that shake and tremble and grasp at the wind are mine.

And God looked at me and with a voice like the sun said

I gave you that body that you could see your mother’s face, that you could taste the first strawberries of summer, that you could run into the ocean and grasp the waves and throw them in the air around you. I gave you that body so that you could wrestle your brother and sleep with your lover and jump off a bridge into a river that I once spilled onto the ground. I tied your soul to those bones so that you could sing with every voice you’ve ever heard, so that you could write the words I poured into your head and maybe make some sense of this world that I have unleashed into existence. I created you whole, entire, I gave you everything you need to survive and thrive and find your happiness. You live in your body, in your bones, in your head because I have willed it to be so, because I want it to be so, because I love you and I have made it so. I love you and I have made it so.

And I closed my eyes and cried and I asked God

Why am I so scared? Why is everything so large and why am I so small and why do I shiver in the night and why, God, why am I here?

And God’s voice was silver as the moon and God said

You are small because you see yourself that way. You are small because the world has made itself large and you are afraid to challenge it, because you have fear in your heart where I made space for the light. You are small because you have your eyes closed and cannot see, you are small because you have not yet realized that I made you as large as the universe. I made you in my image and you are as large as the universe.

And I wiped away my tears and I turned my face to God and I said

Thank you, God. I do not know everything but I think I know enough.

And God’s voice whispered like the stars, saying

I know you know enough, because I made you. I made you in my image and I have loved you from the start and I know you, I know every molecule of your being, and I know. You see far enough. You hear clear enough. You know enough. You are enough. You always have been. I made you and I know. You are enough.

And God kissed my face and I could feel myself blooming like a flower kissed by the sun and I clasped my hands and I said

I think I am ready now.

And God’s voice was a wind in my heart and it said

Yes.

[cushlxmocree]

model

her name is sleek exotic and

unpronounceable

and she is sleek exotic and

unknowable she

totters down runways on high

heels and her legs are

slender saplings bending

in the breeze of

your regard.

she had eight green grapes

and some cheddar

for lunch.

the fabric drapes over

her left arm just

so,

just as the designer dreamed

in his stick-figure

imagination; she is

perfect. she has

eighty-four thousand

six hundred and seventeen

followers on instagram.

her hair is thin. a stylist tells her

eat more leafy greens.

she adds more kale to

her morning

breakfast

shake.

she slicks on lipgloss, mascara,

contorts herself in her

mirror, determined

to find the angles that will

make her

seem the

slimmest.

her bedroom is sleek

white minimalist

modern, angular,

shining

she is also

[cushlxmocree]

boston boy, born and bred

he has paper fingers, ink-stained palms, his ribs

are wrought-iron poetry. the subways sing in his

bloodstream. he opens his eyes like sunrise, his heart beating

to the pulse of the streetlight flicker,

he has moonshadow open-mouth kisses

and liquor in his smile. he knows the pathways,

the back-alley handshakes, his veins mapping

the shortcut from point a to

groping, grasping, buy me a drink

take me home tonight

stumbling home in the early light

in too-tall heels and too-short hemlines

he knows his way around.

if you can find the way to his heart

in its bars, in its beats,

you will find ghosts whispering lines

from poems you’ve never heard of, you’ll slip

in the shots he drank last weekend,

the puddles of waiting, wanting,

of heartbreak and dreamscape and

you will know him by the sound of his

sighs. he is perfect, his head turning like

he can feel the burn of the spotlight

on the back of his neck, he is a

sepia-tone movie waiting to slip through

into glory.

he is fractured fairytale,

heartbreak hotel,

he has a jawline that makes older women

want to take him home and make him

breakfast.

[cushlxmocree]

an open letter to male writers who really don’t understand how to write women

dear sirs:

sit down and shut up. step one on how to become a better writer of women

is to listen to women.

a Fun Fact for you:

when you have a female character

who you have decided is Strong and Kick-Ass

and you have her insult men by calling them “ladies” or “pussies”

I can feel my soul physically leave my body

and ascend onto another plane of existence

where I don’t have to listen to your fuckery.

step two on this journey we’re taking together: learn that

men are not necessary when deciding a woman’s motivation.

to do anything. ever.

she does not need to have had her heart broken, her body violated,

her lover kidnapped, her father abusive, her child snatched, her husband killed

to have reasons to further your plot.

she, too, could be motivated by

her country invaded, her pride challenged, her alcoholism, her rage,

her hope, her magical quest, her forgotten past,

her anything but rape and heartbreak

step three:

STOP. KILLING. WOMEN. TO FURTHER. YOUR FUCKING PLOT.

women are not plot points! they are people!

stop kidnapping daughters, stop seducing wives away, stop killing mothers,

stop using women’s pain to create your male character’s motivation.

women are not fucking props, their broken bodies not scenery for your

male characters to gaze at and wonder.

step four: pay attention to women when they criticize your characters.

women are the experts on being women,

and I cannot believe that i live in a day and age and society

in which that sentence actually had to come out of my actual mouth.

is this not obvious? my lived experience as a woman

trumps your idea of what it’s like to live as a woman.

every time. every goddamn time.

so when a woman says that that’s not how things work,

don’t cover your ears and go “but but but”

this goes back to step one:

LISTEN TO SOME WOMEN.

and this brings me to five:

my first instinct was to end this letter by thanking you, male writers, for your time.

but then i realized that i’m the one doing you a favor,

not the other way around. I’m the one dropping truth right now and all you did

was listen. hopefully. i mean, if you’re a male writer who needs help writing women,

you probably aren’t very good at listening to women in the first place.

so no guarantees. (there’s a reason it was step one.)

but. step five is to not expect women to thank you for trying harder.

scrub that expectation from your mind right now.

because it’s not like you’re bestowing a favor upon us by

trying to write women well. you’re literally just doing your job

as a writer by becoming a better writer.

so this poem doesn’t end with a thank you.

it ends with you’re fucking welcome.

[cushlxmocree]

the tarot card reader 

she lays out the cards with gentle exactitude,

like persephone lining up her five pomegranate seeds

before swallowing the endless summer.

she, too, has winter in her bones.

she offers you a glimpse of the spiraling universe,

tucked between the paper and the ink, and gestures to you

to flip a card. her eyes are calm and she taps your card three times.

you count the swords, and she whispers to you

what the fates have told her. her smile is the same as

the empress’ smile, all-knowing and somehow distant,

as if she has already begun her pilgrimage

back to her pomegranate trees.

there are eight stars, and a naked woman pouring water

endlessly from her jars, and the tarot card reader

has long hair and a laugh that sounds as though

she does not love her husband. she rises to leave,

though one card is yet to be turned over.

as she disappears into the distance,

the card is revealed- death.

and somehow, you know without being told

that she is not that armored rider,

nor the ones begging for mercy.

she demands nothing. she simply is. she simply reveals.

she is the sun, setting in the distance-

or is she rising? the wheel will turn.

someday she will return,

certain as the springtime, replete with pomegranate seeds

and tired of the winter living in her bones.

she will allow you to flip another card,

and she will, perhaps, allow you to know what the fates

have in store for you.

the tarot card reader does not ask for much. a smile, a kiss,

the freedom to walk in the sun.

so go ahead. flip a card.

you will end up in her kingdom

someday.

[cushlxmocree]

polyamory - a love poem in seven parts 

one: a man with fingers that itch for bass guitar strings

even as they tap at a calculator. he has floppy black hair

and soft brown eyes and he makes me laugh, oh, he makes

me laugh. he climbs mountains with me and he watches movies

he knows he won’t like simply because i want to. i call him

boyfriend.

two: a woman with long, curly pink hair that’s been pink since we were 12,

she and i weathered tumultuous adolescence together and somehow

remained in each other’s pockets. we once fought for two days over

an eraser. she is soft in all the ways the world does not appreciate,

and she tells stories with the delicacy of golden filigree. i call her

bestie.

three: a lanky man with typewriter fingers and a brawling heart.

he was one of the first friends i made in college, he once gave me

a coat, army green, that hangs long over my fingers, i’ve worn it for

years. we have spent nights snug, two inverted commas, and i know

he will never want to kiss me and i love him for it. when he graduated

i gave him a keychain, so he will know that he is the other half of my wings.

i cannot fly without him. i call him

copilot.

four: a woman with laughing brown eyes and a smile as wide as the sea.

she and i are sometimes mistaken for sisters, or cousins, though our

families come from worlds apart. she is sunshine on my cloudiest days and

the other side of my coin. we look forward to crying at each other’s weddings.

she and i once shaved our heads together i call her

roommate.

five: a woman with winter in her bones and a laughter like springtime.

she lays out her tarot spreads with the same care she uses for her

daily pills. she has love for a world that fights her tooth and nail.

she and i have an easy rhythm, and her hard-won optimism

rubs all my hard edges smooth. she is my favorite sandpaper i call her

soothsayer.

six: a boy with hair like an ocean wave and a wrinkle that lives between

his eyebrows. he has a nuclear heart and an unexpected turn of phrase, he lives

somewhere between now and someday. he has a smile that makes me want to

press him back into the couch and teach his hesitation how to take a hit

and come back fighting. he is an iceberg in my darkened ocean i call him

daydream.

seven: my heart, endlessly overflowing, saying,

yes. take of me. i will break my heart like communion, place each piece gentle

onto someone’s tongue. a woman with fists like diamonds, a man with a heart

as soft as a bruise, a girl with volcano veins. every person i meet has a heart

beating with a rhythm that is uniquely theirs. every person has mannerisms

i want to learn, has a turn of phrase i will end up borrowing, every person has

something about them that is worthy of love. so i love them all. i call this

polyamory.

[cushlxmocree]

i am constantly, consistently amazed by the way

his eyes crinkle in the corners when he smiles at me, tender and laughing

and i know that in twenty years those lines will always be there

whether he’s smiling or not

and all i want is to be the reason for them

i want to tuck his laughter

into my pockets and i want to take the way he kisses my cheek

and press it between the pages of my favorite book

and the way his hand reaches for mine, fingertips just brushing,

makes me feel as though someone plugged in christmas lights 

beneath my skin

[cushlxmocree]

fear not the sun, nor the moon

nor the fire not sea

for in all creation there is a song

[cushlxmocree]

when i laugh he makes me want to laugh forever,

and when i smile at him i can see eternity

in his eyes.  he holds my hand like a promise,

slipping like quicksand from my grasp or twining

his fingers around mine as if we were roses growing from

the same earth, thorns tucked in to each other’s hollows.

he kisses me like christmas morning, though he is jewish;

i kiss him back like ice cream sundaes, despite my lactose intolerance.

we sit through each other’s movies, grinning and bearing

because the gentle push and pull of our hearts dictates

that we take turns, we dig holes for each other to trip in to,

we ourselves polish the knives we will hand to each other,

with the expectancy that they will someday find their homes in our own ribs,

up to the hilt, but trusting that somehow we will be safe.

i want to tuck myself into the corners of his smile, and the way his eyes crinkle

when he laughs is my favorite piece of art. if i saw it in a gallery i would ask,

how much? and i would take it off the wall before the question was answered.

but instead

i kiss his knuckles, one by one, with an open mouth, and he looks at me

and looks at me and we drown in each other’s silences.

he is crisp corners and i am lazy curves, and between the two of us

we create enough poetry to fill a book of nursery rhymes, maybe two.

i am his earth, he is my sky, and somehow we found enough lightning and

rainbows to tie us together.

[cushlxmocree]

when i was seven years old, i had an emotional meltdown because the small green bouncy ball my cousins and i were playing with 

bounced out into the road

and it bounced down the hill of the street i lived on, and out of sight

and it was gone.

i have never dealt well with loss. 

when i was sixteen years old, i was writing what i hoped would be a novel

when my mother came home and told me that my grandmother had died.

we knew she had cancer, but it was diagnosed late. we didn't know for long.

my father was flying to see her and say goodbye, and he didn't make it in time. he got off the plane to the news that she was gone

and they had waited to start the funeral rites until he was there.

he was gone from before thanksgiving until after christmas.

that year, my junior year of high school, i nearly failed all my classes. i didn’t know

how to deal with what i was feeling, i didnt even know what i was feeling was grief.

i didnt deal with anything. i simply let it all happen to me, and i hid it so well

that it took months for anyone to really notice anything was wrong.

i came out ok. my support system was strong. but i have never

dealt well with loss.

recently, an earthquake shook nepal. thousands died. monuments hundreds of years old were leveled.

there was so much loss, and nothing i could do. my family was alive, and i was grateful. my friends asked me about my family, and outpouring of love and care

that startled me. i hadnt realized how many people knew i was nepali.

still, i don’t deal well with loss, on that scale, so much lost.

i didnt write a final paper for one of my classes. i simply couldnt bring myself to care about a paper about a victorian governess

when the death count just kept rising. 

i am learning to deal with loss.