neweverymorn

[neweverymorn]

Sin-Eater

See me here

and know me for what I am,

plainly, made naked,

shut up in a dim room—

Know me, my very self:

I am a cannibal

consuming my own flesh.

I tear it from my side, my ribs

stripping them of their cover,

chewing on flesh.

I am starving.

I am starving.

Do you understand me?

I starve myself with true food

within reach, but I reach not, until

the pangs are terrible

and I must gnaw on my bones,

biting into marrow,

leaving indents of my teeth

on pink white femurs.

How foolish am I?

I, who devour myself,

feeling full but becoming unmade

by my own hands,

jaw aching from bites through strung

sinew, and squirming muscle—

How foolish am I?

When I have been told so often

"Take and eat!

This is my body, given for you,"

and instead I eat myself

and say, "See,

how self-sufficient am I!"

Sin-eater. Self cannibal.

My God, save me

from myself

before I am no more.

[neweverymorn]

Belly

I sit on my bed and pinch my belly between three fingers, wishing it wouldn't hurt to punch scissors through. I know exactly where I'd trim.

When I was 17, my mom paused in the kitchen and said, "Honey, you've put on weight. It's noticeable."

It wasn't about health, I know because my sister is a size 0 and she was pouring a bowl of goldfish crackers, her favourite snack, while my mom talked.

I stopped eating crackers at 16.

I hear it, sometimes when I practice the angle to hold my head so my chin is less obvious. I wear sweatpants, sometimes. I feel guilty about it. When your body does you no favours, you have to put in effort.

My sister's still a size 0. She's trying to put on weight.

I don't think I'll attend my high school reunion. I'm afraid to walk in and hear it ripple through the polite conversations:

"She's put on weight. It's noticeable."

Please God, I think don't notice me as I take the back seat in the room.

But my mom meant well. It's important you know. She apologized this year, when I told her and she cried.

My mom's a size 0. My littlest sister wears a bigger size than that. She's 10. She likes crackers.

My mom and I both agree: We don't want her to sit on her bed, pinch her belly between three fingers, and look for where to cut.

[neweverymorn]

Respiration

Some days, I cannot breathe.

Lungs inhale, exhale,

air in, wheeze, rattled out,

and I cannot breathe.

Slow--a breeze flutters the flags

of my heart, small fortress that it is

and the lungs expand, fleshy

space filled and deflated,

full, then hollow, full--

I cannot breathe.

.

The fault lies not

in my lungs, but

the heart.

[neweverymorn]

Untitled

Am I not to know?

Am I never to know?

Never to understand why

some things are cut short

or the program is cancelled

or that pair of lungs will never breathe.

If God

in his mercy

would tell me—

but, perhaps

I could not bear it.

[neweverymorn]

Casualty in Q

It’s an isolated incident when Molly-Anne hits the ground running full speed, not looking at the lights or anything much at all- she’s seen every inch of her house and now she’s mad, mad over it all running and running and still on the living room rug with the same frayed patches and her grandma’s embroidered initials. she hasn’t left in months. she can’t. they say she can’t it’s a case of isolation, say the headlines and she’s got that down- whittled away the wooden bedposts with her fingernails plucked every loose feather from the pillows baked brownie after brownie in all her china mugs and now she hits the ground, running desperate to break through below even to China- anywhere beyond her locked door head first and mouth full of peppermints, so she can talk to anyone she wants without a mask It’s an isolated incident, but when they carry her out she finds the impact is wider than imagined

[neweverymorn]

Narcolepsy

I know what it is to be asleep and I know the moment of waking I am dreamer- I have dreamt and dreamt again as a lover longing for the other, I have dreamt in my bed, in the hall, by the pews and desks and days I have walked through waking in sleep, shuffling past the hours with reddened eyes I have woken, and found it all a dream still a play of shadows upon an emptying stage with the author far and voiceless I am dreamer; I am weeper I dream that I wake but I wake into sleep And how long? How long shall I sleep? How long until the playwright steps upon the stage, and all the actors cease their lines? How long before I wake in full and leave the shades behind? I am dreamer; I am dreamer I am tired of the dreams Let me wake-

[neweverymorn]

Orange

My chest is split in halves, quarters, eighths, divided like an orange- I can break pieces away with my fingers and pass them out one to the nurse, one to my mother one to a boy, and then taken back and the last to the crucifix at the head of my bed. Should I divide it so? I do not know. But it aches when I keep it to my selfish self, and there's a fluttering I cannot calm. 

[neweverymorn]

Marmalade

I had marmalade for breakfast Mom gave me a spoon and I spread it across my toast in smooth palette lines Wiping away the edges, the excess Laying a new foundation atop of the old It tasted sweet, the marmalade- Like holding a sugar cube and orange on your tongue

[neweverymorn]

milk

sometimes the words pour out

like milk in a cold jug, spilled on the dirt

spilled that the thirsty soil might suck and drag it all away

tucked into the roots, stored up, only- no. it’s no good

they need water. plants need water.

and all you’ve got is a pitcher of cold milk

[neweverymorn]

Disparity

The son of man has no place to lay his head, and I have three- he, with the bench beneath his head and I with my two pillows and a dozen comforters on the bed waiting for my arrival -what a mystery it is, that God himself should be homeless, and I have far too much.

[neweverymorn]

Janus

the two-headed god said to me: “pick a door” and I looked, and there were several doors and none of them with handles, and no windows by their sides each from the same stained wood- and all with rusted iron hinges how could I pick when each was the same unknown? I stood afraid, eyes spun between ears and lobes my intestines knotted and kinked in their coils my feet in concrete shoes at the bottom of the lake “I cannot pick,” I said. “My God, I cannot pick.” And then, by God, I had.

[neweverymorn]

good friday

heaven reels beneath the weight of lumber long-grown trees ripped from soil, sawn and bound by rope pressed into the flesh of their creator by the great crush of human need- heaven staggers down the rocks of Jerusalem with indignity, spit and foaming hatred drying in his hair flung between hands like a fleck of sand in the furious grip of a tyrant- heaven is mangled across earth’s barren lap mounted on wood as a war prize for Death to gaze upon in vain splendour, reining back its mount riding proud beneath the last gasps of its vindictive conquest- the oceans recoil; mountains shrink back to their tombs insects flee the touch of the soil as all shakes and is shaken torn open and cast like dice across the sodden dirt and even Death, on its knees, begins to weep for heaven is a broken creature bent too low beneath the weight of the universe-

by the hours, the world sits hollow-eyed on her stoop the morning remains unlit, the embers listless at its hearth while Death paces restlessly the confines of the battlefield- victory’s glow is like dust to its tongue, binding down till it lies ashy in the mouth and Death cannot even cry out when darkness is thrown screaming into the void- heaven flings up, with wounded hands, the very hinges of the doors of hell carried away between wristbones and flesh, in all their frailty as the instruments of triumph- oh! heaven! heaven rises up! heaven breaks over the earth with long-begged dawn no longer restrained by the stretch of Death’s gaping chasm for the cross is bolted fast to the very foundations of existence and heaven crouches down by all his children taking them back, by mercy and blood into the vow of his risen arms-

[neweverymorn]

beans

sometimes one forgets how ordinary the world's ending may be: a single step into racing metal a cough, misplaced, in the cup of a hand a forgotten burner in the midnight kitchen or an ounce too deep of cold air we forget, so often, in the panic that the world has ended many times before begins, and ends, and begins and ends again a thousand times each day, as endless always as the ritualistic lungs- and it will continue so in every other moment comes Apocalypse- poor dreaded rider, lurching on its dragging mount through grocery aisles and well-stocked homes into pantry shelves, garages, beds along, Apocalypse- comes, and goes takes one there, and there, and passes another by fills the cart and ends the entire world as easily as picking a can of beans from the shelf

[neweverymorn]

Monolith

In death met Cassandra her monolith bare-legged, stood on bloody stairs her words no more ignored while proof arrives in woman’s sword, naked, cruel, and grim vengeance upon the tiles. At last, at last she is justified- but her final warning comes heeded only by the slain. not all prophets share her fate. some eyes glow clear, undimmed by black mist not brushed low by such great heavyness as riot, as rape, and all the more bitter trappings of war. some see green hills, the silk curls on infant heads laughter across the kitchen floors and the sun in the arms of the moon. some, but not many- no. for there are many Cassandras in the world and few of her luckier sisters.

[neweverymorn]

[You do not love me]

You do not love me

so I do not grow more lovely

in your sight, fading eye on the crooked sail

My lips drift away as pressed petals, 

rose, pink, red, and withered

for love is fresh and full at the waist

but you do not love me.

[neweverymorn]

Hemorrhaging Woman

If you are kind - as they say you are

do not leave me hemorrhaging 

in the dust, where the world is passing 

with each step further out

where rats and the lice burrow in

where I am desolate

Rocked by elbows, bent knees and shoes

fingers stretch out, shaking, into open space

exposed, and then caught in the red tassels

red, like Rahab's window, red like salvation

and the owner turns back-

"Who touched me?" sharply- but I see

the eyes are kind, as they said

[neweverymorn]

The Fox & the Field Mouse

“there are ribbons in your hair” said the tired little fox “there are shadows in your stare” said the field mouse from her box “there are things you shouldn’t trust” warned the fox as in he stepped “there are things that cannot rust” soothed the field mouse till he slept and he slept until the veils fled the confines of his eyes and she smoothed his tangled tail till the wind blew clearer skies