talkofsouls

[talkofsouls]

you got hips like a wide tooth comb you got a mouth like a wide tooth comb you turned cold and missed some events (that you really didn’t want to attend) you gotta go about this quicker you need to make your grits thicker you have to go and find the light, nigga you gotta pray tonight you need to say alright.                                                        alright? you to need to protect your hair at night you need fresh coconut and days away and a new take on ecology you need to keep your fucking plants alive you’ve gotta go get some gas first you took three whole days to birth

to do, March 23, 2018

#poem #poetry

[talkofsouls]

there's a name                on top of my name there's a cloud in my head                                 on my head there's a heart there's a heart               on top of my heart

status update, March 23, 2018

#poetry #poem

[talkofsouls]

I am carved down deep with forgetting, sewn through with unletting, and I once looked too intently at the lines on your palm and satin, singing strings pulled me into the next dimension, eyes glassy from the escape In the meantime I rest in the lunar shadow, where hearts don’t mingle, and eyes move without history, I hold my own hands absently without wondering what that means, fingertips insensate, momentarily discarded with the rest of infinitesimal felicity Forgetting, like condensed milk in the sky, splits the planet from the heavens and cements her feet–the forgetter–to the ground, I grind her coffee in the morning and we smile with unknowing And when we have traveled too carelessly into my peace of mind I stand close to the ocean, because she’s too old for this shit and she knows the soul is made up of eschewed circuits, lost memories, and unfinished tubes of chapstick And because she remembers you When I forget

forgetting, August 19, 2015 (via talkofsouls)

#poetry

[talkofsouls]

So whose woman is this? Whose heartstring got fractured and kissed back together who brought aching breasts to mornings in exchange for a day that didn’t whisper questions and place shaking hands on the frays days are days, until they are named now we’ve got to look in eyes and hold hands gently reprieve the small deaths of our plans all things due, and none true So whose woman is this? Shook through with the ubiquity of the amiss This woman with the queer twitch in her thigh and the melodrama of an era in her with the gap tooth and the snare in her catching no flies with no honey no honey, I couldn’t possible stay no honey, no, not today oh honey, there’s peace in the away So whose woman is this? Who places wishes on the most breakable bones, heavy wishes The ones too heavy to throw stones She was a child once and double-dutched and learned the choreography to her favorite music videos she sang along and played gargoyles in her grandma’s front yard A small wishful thing who dreamt of sundresses and bought acrylic nails from Sweet Cakes’ ice cream truck Sweet Cakes, who knew the sound of a girl at the end of her yoyo string, she knew the dance and how it went and how the lights only come on when the sun is spent That the music only slows when it’s hell bent That love only grows when it’s God meant I am a woman from a woman’s breast My mother said things about Being together in the head, being whole and free She said some people fall in love to be kept Some people fall in love to be seen

whose woman is this?, January 29, 2014 (via talkofsouls)

#poetry

[talkofsouls]

I leave my heart at home sage hangs from the rear view your color has deepened since […] loose ends, like lovers, require grace and spit to stick some recompense and a blue light in the basement this we agree […] over baklava and tea we seem without being take forms with no meaning

form, September 2, 2017

#poetry

[talkofsouls]

Before I speak with you I must first carry our would-be love in my womb. Miscarry,  bury, exhume. Then ask you for your name.

preface, July 22, 2017

#poetry

[talkofsouls]

Can't you see that everything has stretched to fit you? Your mother's birth canal,  your skin, the warm mouths of your lovers. Can't you too stretch to fit you?

mantra, July 7, 2017

[talkofsouls]

I love you, in a way. In between the stillness and the phantom of sleep, when the membrane of all that mystifies me coats my bedroom walls. When I'm drunk, full of faith, and happen to notice the feeling of the floor against my feet. When I shuttle my mind towards oblivion with thoughts of our nervous entanglements, held tender and motionless in amber, in the ancient and mimetic way, as promised as darkness. Dispensations (love). The kind that my mother would not have hoped for me.  In my dream you danced for me. Plucked out your eyes and left them elsewhere. Traded your hands for prescience so that you might pilot your desire through the immaterial. For this illusion, I love you (in a way).  My father could have never known the ancestral effluvia that would arise in me. Just as he will never know the smirk I have drawn upon his effigy. At times I commit that this is all there is of me. Residue. I do ritual for animus, mind my own affairs, and go to rest wanting, waning, glowing in retreat before casting my naked wish in the name of the always impending crescent moon. Levitating in my bedroom with my solemn hosts, all the unfinished men like pressed flowers between my legs. Lungs full of my little ghosts. Forgetting to breath fully, then, softer and sweeter than before, remembering and loving you in a way.

a way, July 7, 2017

#poetry

[talkofsouls]

I knew you at a glance The way I know a moving body from a shuttering tree in the darkness And the way I’ve known holes from shadows That’s the way I know this footless dance It’s the way I know your smile when it is melting across my palm you are my psalm my wounded lamb You are muddled and empty like these cursory clouds So I don’t dare to name you for fear of mispronunciation The way I’ve taken you for a love instead of a friend in our many miscommunications Where is there residence for my trembling hand in one so shapeless? Though I can’t help but note your likeness in all of these paintings They lend to you the blush of the corporeal And to me a gallery of fears A keen reminder that I’m too young now to know what to make of all these years This halo of limerence will most surely dissolve into halved impressions and I will one day say a prayer over these needless amputations molt and shed the words you said to me (as I have already), hush these retrograde affections, lay silly violets on these sweet and slurred memories, then I will forget you and perhaps I will remember me But for now You are the deepest blue A proxy for the hidden moon And so I am drawn into you And so I am drawn into you

a gallery of fears, April 27, 2017

#poetry #poem

[talkofsouls]

what can we do when our thoughts become bodies and with independent will walk away from us into other spaces?

unknown date

[talkofsouls]

i’ve been told i look like a woman but no one has told me which one got skin like your mother’s skin like you’ve been chasing the sun more like i’ve been racing the sun i dance toward its mouth  let these worries slide off my hips the beautiful one saving poems and bank statements with spit on her raised thumb due, like winds on the plains due, like porch lights at dusk dew, her pliable shape due, to be touched like something sacred disks of light cut my eyes and I am made the ‘woman’ distant midnight tightens when her face is called to mind and honey forms in the crease of mouths when this woman shares here naked mind as I pass I can’t help but to notice her figure burning against the light I can’t help but feel she’s up too high they’re asking 'who are you?’ and she’s asking 'who am i?’

woman, October 2, 2016

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[talkofsouls]

the poetics of revolution, September 30, 2016

#poetry

[talkofsouls]

I open up to you and I am not blue / but blue begotten and I am not from woman / but from Women and I am none of the faces of Eve / but refracted light redacted twice do you see me? / can you tell? it still unsettles me to be beheld

be held, September 1, 2016

#poetry

[talkofsouls]

Your mother told you about this once She said your heart would feel quiet Every time you left a new place Your hands trembling with wrong goodbyes

leaving, May 1, 2013

[talkofsouls]

There is a home in my body for you. Its good earth I’ve tilled for you. Its a good soul I’ve got for you. But you’ve got clouds to follow. I know because you left your bags on my bare feet. I still wonder if you felt me when you moved through me. On Wednesday I saw your smile, and I dreamt about losing my teeth. Truthfully, I only know you in pieces. Arranged just so by my wistful disposition. You, an opaline, gossamer flicker in my eye. You, a moveable mosaic. Your halting desire comes to me in muffled recitations. Distant and prosaic.

prosaic, March 23, 2016

#poetry

[talkofsouls]

To be seen deeply, to be felt deeply, incites. We follow the moon, an implication of light.

the finger of god, February 27, 2016

#poetry

[talkofsouls]

I know when we kiss it tastes like lemon juice and rind. Too sharp to be romanticized. Too rough to be touched lightly. I disclose my history to you, in earth, and in mire. You are the heart of love and I am the knees. You are here and I am a memory. You’re the high and I am the dreams. I am neptune. I cannot be seen, but only felt all at once. I am a fiction of trees, the tingling membrane of your conscious mind: my shaking leaves. You are a kind one. A newer, more gentle sun. You want to feel what you could never possibly see. You want the real and the imagined me.

ecology, January 8, 2016

#poetry