take scissors to slate

a hunger for that which i want reborn.

[mothpoem]

My father is not the model Mexican of American dreams. He is not the well-behaved Chicano scholar or the law abiding, VISA-wielding tourist flushed from Mexico’s beating heart in pursuit of sea mouthing sand. He does not cradle my face in his callused palms. Some days I dig my thumbs so far into his silences they bleed back at me. He is the moon-faced Catholic fleeing deportation detention centers, the skid-marked teenager clambering up the border-fence by his bruised fists, the communion wafer condemned to the tongue. He is the witchy, the vexed, el clandestino, the undocumented name-slinger.

bloodbath, published in wildness, by elisa luna-ady (via mothpoem)

[deuxarabesques]

[adoghurtling]

[daedalians]

[medeae]

“Tonight, let my belly swing to & fro. Let the strobe lights long to put their mouths all over it. This body I am told to despair, to secret - tonight let me honor, let me worship at the church of breathlessness, the gloried ache of stomping feet. Let me be the unpenitent dervish making a fool of everyone not making a fool of themselves, & anyway isn’t this what the body was made for? Not to be picked apart or politicized, but sweatied, recklessed, flung into the slobbering mouths of stars? Not wreckage or ruin or aftermath, not god- damn math at all but poetry, poetry, poetry.”

— Tonight’s Cantab feature is actor and Write Bloody author Jeremy Radin! This is from his poem “St. Vincent Live at the Wiltern,” published in Drunk in a Midnight Choir (via bostonpoetryslam)

[lesspreciousmetals]

Danez Smith - “Trees”

[lesspreciousmetals]

who am i but the leftovers of spring. damp earth and rainshower, the immeasurable thing. the holy ghost an advent for warmer nights, bright lights we turn down for sanctity. no wine, no priest — down beers instead. i come alive, forth like jesus entered me anyway. like i never lost lamb, like he still held hand, night makes palm sweaty and i slap mosquitos resurrected with this new heat so old in its own resurrection. late passion this year — i had to make up the difference. hold own vigil on a saturday night that jumps gun seeped into air warm, svelte, like stray cat begging pet. we line up at keg like parishioners, get weekly fix. stars in eyes, scripture-struck, an alternative tongue. remembering judas like renounced brother. judas was a shit, but maybe his fuck up saved us all, i say. i am a little tipsy — with heat, beer. my hand shakes around red solo cup like leper begging for change. equally blessed.

[lesspreciousmetals]

i tack scraps on walls as homage to that which i have no memory of writing. i was second self then. i was tear-mongerer, masochist preying on sad music and rainy days. inky sweaters, silent nights. pulled discomfort around me like shawl, like invisibility cloak. i made home in vanish. hung up decor. built myself a fire. breathed in the smoke. 

pull back the shades. let there be light and i am god of my own movement. let me regenesis and bloom in heartbeats, in own pulse, push-pull of plasma and veins relearning flow. snow in april yet we stave nightfall till eight, sunsets grey but better than void. i don’t trust those who thrive off moonlight. i’d rather gauze of daybreak -- hazed horizon, perhaps redless and blueless but live as blood nonetheless. 

i break surface in gasp. tire of inky sweaters and acoustic crooners hewing home for heartbreak, carving recess in ribs. i'm done excavation. let me bloom. let me pulse, let me ripple. i reach out and expand. mingle mass with a hunger for that which i want reborn. 

4/15/18

[buttonpoetry]

Love is something I know best by watching it wash down the drain.

Anna Binkovitz - “Shaving My Pussy: A Play in Four Acts” (via buttonpoetry)

[lesspreciousmetals]

Lately / I study rain, each drop shaped / like a comet, ten million of them, as if a galaxy / had exploded above us.

Nick Flynn, “Flood”

[buttonpoetry]

I sit on the couch with a wine glass full of milk, cry in ways that make me both gorgeous and fuckable.

FROM THE VAULT! Danez Smith - “Self Portrait as a 90s R&B Video”

Check out Danez’s book! Performing at Button Poetry Live, July 2016. Make Button Poetry grow!

(via buttonpoetry)

[teamcaptains-deactivated2019122]

how many times have girls been compared to wolves?   ‘wolves’ is easy, like depictions of angels as rosy-cheeked white children. tell me what i am stripped bare: no moon, no packs. no hunt, no howl. a gaunt figure haunting the suburbs. skin no god wants to see.

[lesspreciousmetals]

But it's / alright. I don't want to remember floorplans or / thresholds anyway, the light / finding the airspace around my mother's door, / the black air filling her lungs / until all inside her / hangs darkly.

Nick Flynn, “Momento Mori”

[lesspreciousmetals]

My version of hell / is someone ripping open his / shirt and saying, / look what I did for you.

Nick Flynn, “Emptying Town”

[lesspreciousmetals]

A picture book teaches me how to vanish. All the children are monkeys.

Nick Flynn, “1967″

[lesspreciousmetals]

It looks creamy in the winter night, like amber, or a newfound galaxy.

Nick Flynn, “1967″

[lesspreciousmetals]

God is in all houses. / Just balance the huge noun of Him on your tongue.

Patricia Smith, “34″