that’s it
that’s all
i don’t want to hear anymore of it,
it ‘s over, she’s gone
don’t bring it up again,
she fucked me over
used me up
and that’s the story.
how could i chase her,
and make love to her
when she was a statue
to be admired and rubbed against
with no feeling?
do you understand what no feeling means?
nada zip cold & hard
she’d sit next to me
and we’d be talking
about two completely different things
and that was what she was,
a thing to be remembered
standing on your lawn
with her arms outstretched & breathing
while you drooled on yourself.
she’d only find it funny
when it was cruel
and i had to feel compressed
like i was under pressure to brighten her
by holding my dick in my hand
so that she could she laugh at it.

The needle was still in her arm where he put it. He said it was because of what had happened one time when I was wired. She dreamt of a very few things, one of which was her father, who had a high brow that she could never reach from his lap. Of course, soon enough, some idiot would bump into him who was all muscle and slicked hair, and he’d want to tear everyone’s heads off. She didn’t even know me and said, “So like, when are we going to fuck?”
The park was closed and the rest started to pitch up their tents. She told me, “It’s not your guilt, it’s her regret, and you don’t have the right to take it away from her.” They got used to a lot of things. I think I did it for her. He wanted to stay looking sick.
She believed that we were our own and only. I once said, “Keep your pussy to yourself, no thank you. I can’t do anything with it, and if I did do something that has never been done before to you it’s not the other night, it’s this: I fucked you over before I had the chance. I changed your life. Now go. Set off a trend.” “You’re not getting any less pregnant,” he said. She considered safe sex as the police horse entered the park. The bar at the corner of 7th and ave A looked exactly the same as the bar on 8th and ave B: same people, same layout, same jukebox, same bouncer asking for the same piece of id in the same way.
He didn’t ask for any of this. The needle was completely symbolic for something else. She had only touched it. I didn’t believe anyone. He remembered nothing of it except that he wasn’t where he started, and his clothes were wet, or missing, might not have been his own clothes, but he’s kept them since then.
Only this far to survive. He said, “everything has a way of resisting its own fracture.” I wanted to read as much as I could but I got bored. She told me that she actually preferred quickies, that it didn’t matter. He would scrape off his scabs because he didn’t want people to stop giving him change. Personally, I think it had to do with my mother sticking her tongue into my mouth when I was six.
He picked a pubic hair from his tongue and said, “I think you’re going bald dear.” They called it prostitution and she shot up in an alleyway. Some things are extremely vivid, but that’s expected. He would stare at her swollen belly as she would smoke one cigarette after another. I didn’t want anyone near me, I didn’t want to remember.
She let the needle stay as she leaned back. It was like walking on water. For days and days he fed upon himself. When I took off her clothes, I had one thing on my mind: “Fuck this bitch the right way for once.” She said that it had something to do with my father and intimacy.
Sometimes it smelled bad, or they would remember to smell it, the smell of it: a breeze would pass by and they know what it first smelled like before they got used to it. He tried to understand the jagged, suspended motions of the bag where he tied the end of it. Perhaps my one shining moment was when she was leaving. All those operations a failure, except the one that had scarred her womb, if I hadn’t been born my mother might have had other children by now. “Do you like it?” she said and that was the last thing on his mind.
“Look at her, man” he said, “she did this. I just helped her out when it got too hard on her own.” “I only wanted to live a little bit longer,” she would say. The suspense of total chaos should not be determined by ‘the thin blue line’. As she came onto him, he had the sudden urge to smash the glass across her mouth. As if I’ve grown sick of it, “I’m going to end up in shit so what’s the fucking point?”
Her mother had dated many men until she found the one that would eventually force her out. He would remember his father, but all he had now was the sensation that it was once hot, what he felt for his father’s abandonment, but it was tired now, and it could not be twisted for anything more. He told her that I write because there was a gun to my head. I was boning some other bitch. He said, “We have much too much time on our hands.”
She didn’t suck his cock, she pecked at it. I wouldn’t do it: I had yet a long way to go. She was falling apart, handing out pieces of herself in exchange for emptiness. “One more year”, he says, when deep inside his mind he feels that he will be doing this forever. She asked him to.

“And just what did you mean?”
She took a long time to answer, it was something she often asked herself. Unlike herself, the older woman wanted an answer right now.
“Well? Spit it out.”
“I didn’t mean the way I said it.”
“Oh no,” the older woman shook her head, “You meant it just the way you said it. Don’t bullshit me.”
The younger woman felt backed into a corner. Why did it always have to be like this? Why did she feel like a rat on the rails when the train comes in? She looked away from her fingers and stared at the older woman, “You don’t understand.”
“What is there to understand? Tell me. I’m asking you now to explain it all for me.” The older placed her hands on the younger woman’s face, holding it. Cold blue eyes piercing young brown ones. “I want to understand.”
On the spot and she couldn’t say a thing. It was right there, on the tip of her tongue, but the oncoming train in her head was barreling towards her and she flinched away. “No. Stop it, stop this.”
The older woman grabbed the younger’s chin and twisted it up. “No. You stop this. You cut this out right now.”
The younger woman slapped the older woman without thinking. Her mouth dropped open, the older woman’s face glowed red, four faint red leeches on her cheek. Cold blue eyes glistened as the older woman turned back towards her.
“I’m sorry… oh, I’m so sorry..”, the younger woman whispered, tears swelling out of her eyes and she hated them. She hated this, the position she was in. A part of her was screaming: ‘Fuck that bitch! She had no right to lay a hand on you. Who does she think she is, your mother?’
“I raised you. When they wanted you to leave, I held onto you, brought you into my home. Made you one of my own.” The older woman’s mouth was a tight line that cut her face into even halves, both pale and bony. Her chin jutted out as far as her nose. “Up until you met that boy, you called me momma.”
“Mom, I’m so sorry…” Through her mouth like spittle, full blown crying.
“Don’t you dare now.” The older woman closed her eyes, opened them, resolved, “You reminded me that I’m not, so don’t you twist it back around. It’s gone and I guess for you it never really was there.”
She could hear the brakes squealing, her heart loud in her chest, the younger woman was finding it hard to breathe. Everything that she had to say was caught somewhere between her throat and teeth, ready to burst out, but she couldn’t. The words always came out stupid and wobbly, stilted. All she wanted to do was hug the older woman, to set things right. She didn’t want what was happening now. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this.
“So go. You go and do whatever you think is right for you. I won’t have anymore say in it.” The older woman turned her back and walked away, shutting off the light in the hall.
“No.” The younger woman was shaking. There was some finality to all this that terrified her. A knowing that if she didn’t somehow rectify all this, she would always be as she was now: in the dark with only a vague memory of where everything should be, being in between things, rooms, she couldn’t see. But it was too late, she could hear the older woman close the door to her bedroom, the gentle turn of the lock.
As much as she wanted to run to that door and bang on it, as much as she wanted to lean against the wall and slide down its surface, curling into a question mark of flesh and tears, another part of her dried her eyes, stiffened. It filled her with a silence that was solid and real and sturdy. ‘Forget it, it’s done, you’re on your own’. She turned towards her room, the echoes of the conversation lingering in the walls, haunting her as well as strengthening her every step. In her room, she didn’t turn on the light. She sat on the corner on the bed, wringing her hands, shuddering and catching herself. ‘Forget it.’
She lied down, staring into the dark. Rolling over she picked up the phone and dialed his beeper. She left her number and tacked on a 9-1-1. She hung up and waited. The phone rang a minute later.
“Hey, what happened?”
She couldn’t bring it right out, still sniffling. “Nothing. Had a huge fight with my mom.”
“About me again?”
“No, not really.” She tried to make light of it, “It’s not always about you.”
Static on the line, car horns close, swish of tires in the rain, him just listening, waiting.
She asked, “Where are you anyway?”
“I’m on..,” paused, probably looking about for a street sign, “Thirty seventh and sixth.”
“Are you going home tonight?”
“No, I don’t think so.” He sounded shaky, uncomfortable. Not the kind of thing he wanted to get into. “Did you tell her?”
Immediately she wanted to hang up. “We didn’t even get to it.”
“Are going you to at any time in the near future?”
“You still haven’t told me if you want me to have it or not.”
“It’s not my body.”
“It’s our baby.” She felt like screaming it. Not just into the phone, but to the world. Felt like running through the hall, into the streets, right back to the Group Home for Girls, stand at the top of the steps and shout: ‘I’m a fuck up just like the rest of you..’
“What do you want me to say? That I can’t handle it? Or that I can’t wait, that I’ll make everything okay?”
She yelled, “Yes! That’s exactly what I want you to say! I want you to tell me that everything is going to be okay and that you’ll take care of it!” She was crying again and didn’t try to stop it. “I want you to tell me ‘Fuck you bitch, it ain’t mine’, or, or, ‘Pregnant? Best kill that shit’! Just something!” She felt as if she was choking, stopped herself. She then whispered, “Something so I’d know what to do…”
Engines purred, probably at a red light, the sound of him feeding coins into the pay phone, a car door opening, him not talking, just listening.
She sighed. “I’m sorry..” Stared up at where her ceiling would be. “I’m out to just turn everybody off today..”
She heard cars taking off, the light changed, him at the corner, imagined hundreds of cabs passing a few feet away from him. Sniffled, laughed, maybe he walked away from the phone. Imagined the receiver dangling by a wire as he went and hailed a cab, or grabbed a hot dog. “Are you there?”
Long silence, maybe a part of him did leave and she would never see it again, the rest of him now wondering what to say.
“I’m here,” he said and added slowly, the only thing he could say and mean, “I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”
“I didn’t mean-” and she stopped, remembered the older woman turning off the light in the hallway.
“Don’t.” He said. “Don’t ever take anything back. You can’t. Don’t live in that. You’d be lying to yourself.”
Rubbing her palm against her forehead, eyes closed, held onto some of the words before they left her. “It comes out all fucked up..”
“It’s okay,” repeated it in a whisper with the cars somewhere behind him, “…s’okay.”
She opened her eyes, looked at the doorway. Everything that had warmed up in her, chilled and wanted to crawl. Cold blue eyes, head leaning on the door frame, listening.
The younger woman shot up, sitting straight. “I have to go.”
“Did I say something-”
“No.” Careful, her eyes pinned on the older woman, “My mom just walked into the room.”
“Shit..” Car horn blaring behind him. “Did she catch anything?”
“I don’t know.” She replied.
“I know,” the older woman’s lower lip trembled, she looked at the floor, hand to her chin. Looked back up and sighed. “…I know.”
“She knows.”
“Talk to her. No matter what happened before, she’s your mother. Talk to her.”
“I will.” she said, afraid, looking down, whispered good-bye and hung up. Slowly, looking up at the older woman again, cold blue eyes softer now, wet. The younger woman’s hands went first to her stomach, felt awkward, shifted them onto her lap.
Her back straight, steps sure, but slow and soft, the older woman came into the room. She didn’t want to scare her daughter away. Not now more than ever.

there is only trespass that matters (as if you can,
could step
hold
of one moment, untangle it from the rest, as if you could ever remember
where you had drawn the line, as if you
could ever distinguish yourself from this
and that, from this
for
that, to chisel out yourself of this
from everything in
between
in between you and I
lies
a handful of grenades held by tin cans and bleeding
gums. Here could never have been
there
but we longed the distance between us
like a twine around glass stems, gentle gentle but for the pull (or was that when you had said
“tension holds my knees apart for you”
there drinking
drinking from the wire seat and
the craw bloody in circumflection, body raw on the insides
and something
in the firmament, something in the way
your lips stretched and warped in your smile (all a smile is really a rubbing,
an ache across bones, look at it, nothing there but fat being pulled over a grill.
the matters,
the weeping matters,
the matter of the task at hand,
the matter of your hands in mine,
“is something the matter?”
And I could not
shake
myself right out from under myself,
I could not put myself
aside
for a moment (for a moment
or two you can leave
yourself behind, you can be
behind if you liked, you can be yourself,
and not this, you can be that,
I promise you,
sign on the dotted line.
how much would you pay for this (do you know how much I paid for this?
the ring’s gone down the drain and I want to make a fight about it, say wonderful things like
you stupid forgetful bitch, you couldn’t wait to forget this could you? But instead
I wonder where I am
going when I look in the mirror and see myself
leaving.
I wonder where I run to in the light
of day and come back terrified in my bed (i had shot up and said fuck to make it go away
knowing
that it doesn’t just go away like that
it never goes away
like that’s just for show, that’s just rattling
the cage a bit, to introduce something new to it,
like a martini: stirring out of bed her hand on my shoulder
“what? What is it?”
nothing
nothing (but old fears dying hard of growing old and dying. I can see it,
this is how it will be: the night sky and it all shuts down, not goes out, but
shuts
down,
age old having traveled
millions of years now knowing that
they’re dead so far away
you can’t help but be terrified of the inevitability:
the stars have gone away and
you’re so far away getting further
and there’s not a thing you can do
with your hands,
there’s absolutely no
touching about it.
there’s no distinction from when
and what. Only a trespass
that comes before the hands, these hands,
none
from this or that. Gold metal, even my name is in question.

“Writing…” she had said just as she had begun to enjoy him
fumbling with the buttons of her shirt, “you should be writing this all down”
and so it was all that he had imagined, if that were indeed possible, his imagining
the image stuck in his mind: he HAD imagined most of it, a nag at his ear: “you did,
you did it, didn’t you?”
she had told him in his sleeping that it wasn’t quite fair for him to have her
and he had told her, “shut up, shut up, don’t ruin this”
but she kept talking as he was kissing her, turning her head away,
saying how decent it was of him to not take her clothes off
as he was rutting against her thigh.
he thought of the safest way to prevent her and then, in dreaming, he remembered
the twisting slow motion of the knife tip as he stuck it into Arthur’s ribs,
and being terrified of it: the terrifying notion that he had been enjoying this
but Arthur suddenly respected him and that was what mattered.
“And what do you know about it?” he asked, biting into it. he wanted to tear himself
into her, to tear everything that had kept them, to remake her into something that tore
his clothes off and raked his skin and he would do anything to feel that again,
that velocity, that angle.
but he kept remembering and the remembering brought it centermost
and he was watching himself twist her arm when it had been Arthur’s and snapping it,
feeling so sad for himself and all the things he couldn’t tell anymore.
but that would bring up a whole host of complications.
“So much bullshit”, she said, “for a two minute event”
he knew he could satisfy some precaution of etiquette, just as soon as he could see
himself standing in the lobby, where she didn’t know who she was or why he had to drive her home.
it was later, at work, that the cook had told him
that she was now considering to be a lesbian.
he wanted to call her and patch things up, because of course now she was absolutely safe
and maybe that was what the dream was about: nothing to do with her
but about how he went out of his mind to murder someone he barely knew.

your fingers across her back and you thought of this one time being a wall you held your hand to in this way across her back was it this or even had there ever been a place stapled
in your memory of her back your hand resting ever so
for once
the fingers uncurled curling at not moving you a rhythm of her didn’t you feel so your hand
there was no other than this one you can not remember as ever repeating even though
you can see each on your fingertips her back facing the fingers of your hand resting your body
at her back turned on you her turning across the distance of you leaving the fingers etched in
themselves the grain of her turning away
and you had been remembering where you had made it to your hand as a glance of her turning away to face your own but it had then to be leaving the traces of your fingers to her way
back to you
so that you could touch not her offering her back as if it had been to drench you across
curling uncurling bodies a rhythm of her away from your fingers to be farthest away from
where she was blocking you stopping your fingers from ever reaching the wall past
through her spine where you knew her fingers safely
nestled into the walls of your own