Excerpts from the poetry manuscript that almost got published but didn't. : (

Since I just got a new computer I had to go through my poetry files again to put them on this computer. Technically you are not supposed to post poems on your blog if you want a chance to get published in a lit mag but all the poems I will be posting have already been published in lit mags two or more years ago. It is nice to take them out once awhile like some dress I never wear stuffed into the back of my closet. If I ever manage to get back to writing poetry and publishing again I will just put the link of the lit mag on my blog. 

A list of my favorite poems
written by me
when I still cared to write poems

 published in Anti-Heroin chic magazine

Bound
they cling to each other/in a one room apartment/his belongings in trash bags surround the bed/ he holds her while she cries/it isn’t enough for either of them/it never was/his addiction a shadow in the room/it still holds him/clouds his memory of the pain he has caused/her body is scarred/each slash/ something cruel that was done to her/ he tells her the scars are healing/traces them with his finger/her body stiffens at his touch/you are still beautiful he says/she says nothing/she doesn’t want to be beautiful/it has only caused her pain/she remembers how quick he can change/ how his sweet tongue/can turn to acid/ now he is sleepy and hollow/he holds her/but she is really holding him/ his new apartment/reminds her of his old one/reminds her of how they began in darkness/how things never change/and illusions die/truth is a skeleton/a loss this big/ will swallow her whole/to believe in him/to keep losing something that can not be grasped/she has lost herself/she has a history of loving ghosts/how he looks at her now/the longing in his eyes/in the beginning/he showed her to not be afraid of her darkness/now she just wants light/this pain/this love/is suffocating her/she knows nothing of herself/what it means to be by yourself/to take care of yourself/he tells her how he wants to hold her like this all night/she imagines falling asleep and never waking/ frozen in time on this bedspread the color of ashes and dirt/how hard it is to rise


the other night/she dreamt this/ his cheeks drawn so thin/ a sketch of himself/ laying on this dingy bed together/ tracing each others scars/hers healing/ his deep red gashes that bleed on the sheets/they held on to one another/facing each other/she tried to stop the bleeding/her hands covered in his blood/ he gently holds her hands over her own scars/ the dream shifts/she is young again/ a teenager babysitting with another boy/ playing house/as they scramble to watch six kids/ the baby is so small/crawling away/wandering through the house/they try to find  the baby/ look everywhere/in closets/the basement /a cupboard/while they search/they hear a crash outside/sirens and screams/the parents come home/thank her for babysitting/seemingly unaware of the chaos/ she looks out the window/a tractor trailer truck has crashed in to the bedroom of he little boy who lives across the street/the mother is crying/he is dead/ he is dead/but the parents inside this home/cannot see/cannot hear/they thank me again/I try to tell them I lost their baby/but the mother is holding her safe in her arms


Published in Rat's Ass Review
Nominated for best new poet

girl 1983


she is wearing a red dress with little yellow flowers embroidered on the collar /he has her foot in one hand/a pair of white tights in the other/they look at each other/he looks away/when he touches her/it is too rough/the girl looks at a cobweb in the corner of the bathroom ceiling/he pulls the tights up to her thighs /his hands rest/ where the tights haven’t touched yet/are goose bumps /he slides his hands to her knees/then to her waist/ lifts her up off the dryer/sets her down/she yanks and pulls at the tights/ until they reach beyond her belly button/at the bus stop/he holds her hand in his/tells her that later when she gets off the bus /he will be waiting/the girl looks down at her ankles/where the tights are beginning to pool and wrinkle like loose skin/she imagines his hands peeling her/ like a banana/like a scab


Published in The Inflectionist Review

muscles like fists

the body remembers/what the mind tries to forget/here with you/opening/you are him/you are them/I am closing/I go back/my body follows/muscles like fists/loud music drowns memories/I push/they keep coming/on the bed/I watch myself crawl away/he who is all of them/ yanks her back by the hair/muscles like fists/I remember/ she is me/between her legs is a wound/when you hold me in your arms/ you don’t know they are here with us/you ask me if I am okay/I say yes/she looks at me/ I don’t want to be there/I want to be here/ I don’t want to be her/muscles like fists/wounds turned to scars/she remembers thinking/when her face is in the pillow/he doesn’t have to see her eyes/she is her own ghost/her body a house haunted/ her mouth a graveyard of unsaid things

Published in Rat's Ass Review
Nominated for a Pushcart prize

boys who call themselves men

gentle with your garden
you check on it several times a day
as if it were a newborn baby
or more accurately
that girl from work
you text at night 


you avoid me


 and when I use my voice 
to express my hurt
you step on the gas pedal
and threaten to drive us both
to our death


tired of tiptoeing
around boys 
who call themselves men


I loathe myself
for being a cliché 
“don’t upset your father”
“just leave him be until he calms down”


I heard it from my mother
I said it to my daughter
I said it to myself
I am invisible


but your rage is seen
saved
you are squirrel 
hoarding your nuts


my pain is your nourishment
your self worth an intricately tied sailors knot
that can only be undone by my tears


I am a trash can for your sperm
 it was better for you then masturbating into a sock
a sock I would have had to wash
so maybe it was better for me?


I wash myself instead
pretend I do not see my dignity
go down the drain


I am a rag doll
all my good parts
torn at the seam


incompetent with needle and thread
you find a new model
someone more naïve
someone who can’t say no


she will paint her face for you
coo at how you blessed her pussy
with just one stroke of your sword


you won’t be happy though
even with pills
and empty headed silent girls

you will never be a man


​Published in Typehouse Literary magazine


Dismantling Walls


On these nights 
I drift from past to present
I do not tell you my walls are falling down
that bedrooms in old houses remind me of him


I listen to your soft snore
watch the headlights from a passing car
I am neither here nor there
a place in the middle where reality is blurred


I don’t know what you think of me
this woman that turns into a girl
with the slip of a touch 


You live in this old house
that reveals itself daily
a leak on the porch with no origin
walls that groan cold in the wind
patchwork layers peeling back years


 your childhood home sits in your backyard
walls gutted to the beginning
a window halfway open like a sleepy eye


I think maybe
this is why you love me
that I am part of your collection of things to restore 


I touch the bed, my cheek, one of my thighs 
before curling up like a cat
I fall asleep with your hand on my back


In the dark of my dream
I read poems I have not yet written
on walls as thin and delicate as tracing paper


When I wake 
I do not remember the poems
just that the words were my walls
and I was the light illuminating them

Published in Haunted Waters Press

The Getty


you were a sorceress 
a storyteller
a traveler


we sat on top of our bunk beds
our floor painted red
looking out the window


you pointed to the red Getty sign
glowing in the distance
“Shelly, I’m gonna take you there one day”
you said


“The Getty is a magical place where
there are lollipops as big as your head” 
you said tapping your knuckle on the 
top of my head


I was in awe of how much you knew
“Inside it is lit up with Christmas lights all…year…long”
“No one yells at anyone
children are treated like royalty”


the look on your face made me a believer
as you stared off into the distance
your eyes wide
your hands painting this picture in my mind,
dancing wide arcs and hushed symbols


It might’ve been a month later or a day
that you were gone
for the weekend


when my mother packed me into our
maroon Ford Escort
It was so new the ashtray was still empty
and pulled up in front of The Getty


I held my breath
her enormous beige purse
hid my view
until we were at the door


she pushed it open 
and I heard it jangle
like Santa’s sleigh bell


squinting into the harsh fluorescent light,
the smell of gasoline assaulting my nose,
my mother at the counter buying cigarettes
from a man with blackened fingertips,


tree air fresheners wrapped in cellophane
 hanging behind the counter,
 along with shelves and shelves of motor oil.


I can't remember where this was published
it was so long ago

Eyes like the sky


I was six jumping on the couch
pulled my shirt over my head
“you can take your clothes off”
said my step-dad smiling


I ran around the house barefoot
and naked smacking my belly like a drum
you encourage me to dance


“Wouldn’t it be fun to wear your mother’s make-up?”
I nodded, ran to catch up while you rummaged
under the bathroom sink


I longed to wear her blue eye shadow
our eyes to look like skies,
you picked me up, held me on the sink
cold on my bare bottom and I giggled,
and you with the eye shadow and a black tube
“sit still,” lifting up my chin,
my eyes closing, the circling my lids
with pallet of blue, them
the mascara wand to the tips of my lashes,
the warmth of your hand lifting my chin.


“Am I ready?” “Yes,” turning the mirror,
look at how pretty, in a hushed voice,
like mommy.


When mommy came home
She yelled at me for getting into her makeup
and taking off my clothes.



This has never been published.
I forgot I ever wrote it until loading it on the new computer.

That girl with the daddy issues

On Father’s day I get drunk. I get drunk with men like him. 
A week ago an aunt I don’t know found me on Facebook to tell me that my father was homeless and dying on the streets. Out of prison addicted to something or other. He was never a father to me, just a man with my eyes.


 I get drunk. I give all my dollar bills to the homeless people that line the streets at night. They are drunk like me, drunk like him. I wonder where he is on Father’s Day, probably not remembering he has a daughter, a needle in his arm, passed out in his own piss. 


I am not remembering him and it takes work, it takes gulps instead of sips. I don’t forget to forget the man I actually called Daddy. My stepdad, my abuser, the one who raised me in contempt while the man with my eyes sat in prison. He is swallowed down too. He is a part of the forgetting.


The forgetting stops and I remember them both now. I step back into the nightmare hole of my past. My current boyfriend starts to yell at his friend and breaks all the empty glasses on the table in a rage that seems to come out of nowhere.  Just as last night ended in his anger, for what I forget, so good at forgetting, this night will too. I am reminded of the man with my eyes what he said to me when he got out of prison and I asked him if he had been afraid, “I am the one everyone was afraid of.” I am reminded of my stepfather choking me against a wall because I stood up to him, once. 


Once, just once I wish I was tough. If it meant not feeling so helpless all the time, so scared and sad. I have a panic attack right there in front of my boyfriend and his friend. I have panic attack remembering these things I don’t want. I feel like I am choking on year’s worth of fear. I am overwhelmed with the sadness that I will never feel safe. 


I go home with the boyfriend who scares me. I find a backbone somewhere down in my deranged guts and tell him how he was wrong and I don’t remember if he argues or what he says until the next day because I fall asleep crying. He holds me and promises me he won’t do this again, like he did last night and the night before. Like they all have before.


My life so far is a list of promises unmet, promises to myself, promises from others. My ex husband used to give me flowers after his outbursts, my stepdad toys or books, the man with my eyes just gave up and abandoned me completely but not before he beat the shit out of my teenage mother, not before he broke her spirit for life.  


I wish I didn’t have to be nice all the time, this song and dance of being a woman, constantly catering to others, massaging their egos so they don’t erupt. I am a walking apology, a bunch of hushed okays. I am a whisper when I want to be a scream. All this because I want to be loved. I am terrified of abandonment. I am that girl with the daddy issues. I get drunk to drown my anger to push it deep down inside. 


Outside, I am nice and I am smiling and I am always apologizing. I am always crying.  I am a woman who soothes the tempers of men while my gut is seething like acid. I am tired of anger. I am tired of men. I am tired of being me. 

















​