jewish joan of arc

20 | ✡︎ lover AND fighter

[lucyintheskeye]

I’ve never been a fan of new years resolutions because i can never resolve myself to be a new me, but i’m pleading, i’ve had affirmations in the mirror for the past month which is a new low, meaning i’ve been struck by new blows, meaning i still have not learned how to say no. i want to have a 2019 slim thicc body to grow my ego and to play one chess game a week to grow my mind. I am all tits and all brain too! I need to read more books, eat more green things, eat less sweet stuff, stuff my fist in my mouth before my foot makes it up to my chin, stop saying such mean things about such sweet people. I need to drink more water, fix my posture, proposition myself to take good care of my reflection, bribe from left thigh to the right, same legs, i am paying myself to brush my own teeth. I need to brush my teeth even if there’s a boy over. I need there to be boys over. I need there to be boys. But mostly i am chanting “2019 slim thicc body” into the mirror in preparation for my 2026 resolutions. 

[lucyintheskeye]

the bathroom door is open and i am waiting for you to walk out of it like you always have. the light spills into the hallway the same way i crashed against the shore for you, the same way I melted into your salty back, the same way thesameway thesamewayyouswamaway

[lucyintheskeye]

I always feel five years old, fearful and a finger up my nose, but I'm playing with the small glittering gem in my nostril instead of aimlessly poking around. Glittering gem, I giggled when I got it, disappointed my dad, disregarding the slight deflate in my molars when he turned up his lip.

Always been trashy, always a finger up my nose, what is the oldest socially acceptable age to still pick your nose? Do we get a pass if we pass it off as passing metal through cartilage, veiled readjustment, hiding my violent revert back into poreless cheeks?

I've been feeling antsy, bloated, gassy, angry. I am a disappointment to myself and others. I've used this line before. I am unimaginative and imagine the last time I could imagine something that wasn't unimaginative, but my brain is so fuzzy from the drugs and no sleep and whatever fucking nutrients I am lacking that I cannot and I come to the conclusion that I have never been imaginative and I have become unable to make myself come.

I imagine myself with a finger up my nose and then I park in front of the mirror and shove my pointer into my nose until my nail scratches at the inside and I sneeze out blood and it goes nicely with the clear glittering gem in my nose.

[bobemajses]

Jews dancing a traditional wedding hora in Daugavpils, southeastern Latvia, 1914

[lucyintheskeye]

you pinch

a salty stem off of a sweeping pine i pinch

it between my teeth roll the salt across my tounge i want to tounge the salt away from your pinched

brow, swallow the salty shards, the burning cut reminding me of your pinching

eye, peeking past my chest, pinch

my heart in your eye i weep salty tears because i miss you and my heart pinches

painfully and i reach out to you the same way the branches stretch hopefully

[lucyintheskeye]

Pucker up, Puckerman, I know you wanna kiss these little kids lips through these cold cell bars, cell block 

tango. 

Santana, don't you know, you won't stay afloat for much longer now, and 

Tina's trying to stutter out a desperate warning, too slow and quiet under Kurt's shrill warbling, this delicate human pyramid is quickly toppling, Quinn's swollen belly is being rolled off the field, away from Finn, hiding under the bleachers, hiding from the teachers, hiding the needles he's sticking in his arms, 

and you would think this is cause for alarm but Shue and Sue are busy screaming through the walls, Rachel's flooding the halls with water wells of cherry flavored ego, 

Marley thinks she's let herself go, kneeling over the toilet, retching prayer to make the fucking skirt fit 

Kitty snickers, everyone's a bitch, we're all backstabbers, sopranos, skanky whores and deadbeat let-downs, 

but please, waltz into the asbestos-fuzzy choir room, 

open your stitched up mouth, wail your sorrows to the gay cheerleaders, the gay football players, the gay prep schoolers, everyone's gay and 

their smiles are so wide and white, the blinding glare makes you forget if they meant homosexual or just really fucking happy.

[lucyintheskeye]

I’m stomping through the streets, my snout is snarling and snapping and if you look at me for a second too long I’ll spit in your

face, facing the facts, the fact is, I’m mean and ugly and cruel, and you want to patch me up so bad, you insist on being the glue, glob my shattered wrists back onto my elbows, you’ve done it

Mr. Magician, Mr. Doctor, Mr. Statistician, tell me the odds of me running away and never looking back,

I’m stomping through the streets, my heels are grinding into the sidewalk’s cracks, 

The music pounding in my ears is unfamiliar, unfamilial, foreign spitting song frothing with the same vile sharpness I want to scream into your face–

Lately I’ve been angry, but lately means the past six years, I’ve been impatient, irritable, quick to anger, having trouble sleeping, I’m checking every box on the fucking form my therapist sends me, I imagine a scribbled tornado above my head all the time, furrowed brow, frown, scowl, score, 

home run, I’m running home, I’m running into open arms, I think my soul lives in the thick rubber sole of my boots--

Am I a book licker, people pleaser, full of pleasure? I dip my fingers inside myself and think of a list of men I absolutely should not be, I’m ignoring the inkling that I might be lonely, I’m checking the box that says I have had thoughts that

I am a disappointment to myself or others,

And slash or dot dot comma dash– 

My street stomping is a period it is end of sentence it is do not fucking talk to me it is do not fuck with me.  

[lucyintheskeye]

my eye has been twitching for a week this is no place for the fragile and weak, whoever took my cigarette give it back I am making stupid decisions and I wish I could tell my mom but she'l bitch about not trusting me, I'll yell about her not hearing me, she'll shout the same thing back.

I've run into three different boys two separate times each it's been a fucking week, each one a new slice in my heart and even though I'm pretending they're not that deep I think I need stitches, she sobbed, rocking on the floor, I just need something solid beneath my body and it used to be your body and you means my mom and my best friend from when I was six and the first boy I allowed my body to go limp under, over and out, all I think about is the next

terriblenogoodverybad decision I'm going to make, can hardly wait, someone please serve it to me on a silver plate, and I'm asking again to give me my fucking cigarette back I'll hit you and convince myself I'll win I can fight anyone but myself, limp elbow macaroni mushing in my mouth this tastes like being eight, my eye is still twitching and I'm making lists of the things I hate I think my name is number one and if you look at me the wrong way you'll be number two

I'm too impatient to listen to you because you're sucking down my fucking cigarette and I am

begging you to give it back.

[lucyintheskeye]

you are a dissipated memory 

i suck you in i am

greedy

my chest is tight and my throat burns but i will not breathe you out, this is almost

but not quite

about

who i always go to write

about

i write about the girl who doesn't talk to me anymore, stupid motherfucker, at least four boys, five or more on a poor day, pour my tears to my paper, needy pauper drowning in lack it tastes like chlorine from when i was thirteen and i moan and groan about that too, the grief swelling inside me until i debloat into rapidly decreasing tidal wave of complacent simmer-ripple of my chest as i

hack out the smoke the 

crack in my heart running deeper and deeper until it bleeds out my back i look at words for the poor and i know i'll always miss you more and i used to know you inside out, i am disgustingly devout to your watered down heart,

people toss your name like a bird without wings and when your cold consonant feathers slap me in the face i will

murmur; i hardly 

know

her

[lucyintheskeye]

Saltwater Desert

Written about the Jewish holiday of Pesach 

I throw up a stinging brine that is made of the same churning waves my ancestors fled under in the desert, salt and sand clawing my throat until it is torn and shredded, water dripping down my chin and into my cupped hands as a desperate act of remembrance.

Crystalline salt mixes with shattered sand in a glittering desert flooded with evaporated tears. A delicate dip of parsley in the ocean of my people’s pain is a shard on my tongue and a glassy mirror of bitter exodus.

The salt is ironic baptism, a liminal current sweeping bruised bodies from sinking dunes as ironic salvation. To forget the pain my people have borne is to take a sharp, glittering edge and drive it slowly into the backs of those who have crossed a deeply sorrowful sea. 

[lucyintheskeye]

I am scared to hold you the same way I am scared to hold a newborn;

I am worried I will push somewhere soft and too forgiving, 

that my trembling fingers will spasm, a startling representation of my innermost temptation, 

that my interrupting dagger thumbnail will sink into a layer of thin skin, 

that I will slice at the whispering of your heart beating through webbed veins. 

Shit, my hand has slipped, I’ve swiped something small and delicate in the hollow of your chest with my intrusive 

grasping, and I can tell this something 

that I have gouged is

something you keep tucked away on purpose, 

but 

I can’t tell if it’s out of fear or

shame or

sadness or

something else 

and 

it’s a knife in my own heart not to know this about you—

But— 

the point is,

that the point of my thumbnail has pinpointed this 

pinprick of a secret in your 

personhood, 

and I have pushed where I was not supposed to. 

I am even more scared to touch your damp cheeks, startling representation of my own 

mis -

step, mis -

stab, mis -

take. 

I am even more scared to touch your damp cheeks in selfish swiping attempt to sew this slit shut, because what if the rest of my fist 

follows— 

That all ten of my scrabbling claws will cling to you— 

That you will cry out both salty tears and sappy blood, 

and I will not allow myself to lap up either of them. 

[lucyintheskeye]

Bitch

Woof. 

I am open jaw snarl, law;less creature fear of feminine/masculine, 

You refuse to allow my middle existence, you contort my flesh like the sinch of my teardrop hips against my straining ribcage. 

You will call me either a cruel bitch or that I think too much with my heart, refusing to believe that I will rip you apart;

You want me pale, pink, pretty, pure, 

Until you shape me into red, dripping, coy vixen, 

dangerously allure; so 

bite me. 

Dog eat dog world, except I am not actually allowed to eat, 

and I am actually the slab of glistening meat being tossed into your greedy mouth, for I have become the lamb at slaughter, a delicately splayed virgin display, while you lick your chops and 

chomp. 

You will tear at me and I will yank myself back from your foaming mouth, 

As if I am supposed to see your glimmering, triangle teeth and still remain your angelic devotee, 

As if I don’t see the knife disguised as guiding light shadowed in your striking palm. 

And you will call me a bitch. 

You are angry that I don’t want you to touch me, 

that I am free and able to flee from your animalistic ferocity, 

you are angry the latex leash rips through your claws, that you’re deafened by the applause 

that comes from my bitch sisters as I growl into your neck 

and bite at your scruff.

I am a paralyzing recreation of your bitch mother, a reminder of the tender tit you bit before mine, 

but all you saw was showdog;

Until I revealed the bitch I really am. 

Woof. 

[nobrashfestivity]

Tetsuo Aoki

Two People

Woodcut

Davidson Galleries

[lucyintheskeye]

I am on my knees for you again, except this time, I kneel in soft dirt. I am crawling up the side of a ravine in the woods after you; I’m looking through the ferns the same way I look up at you through my lashes. I am trying to tell you I would go anywhere with you.

I’m standing at the top of the rock’s ledge, holding onto a rope swing, I am imagining pushing and swinging into the air, but I slip

and

you’re too fast, too quick, also too unsteady,

you reach for me

and

all of a sudden we’re both hanging in the air, my fingers burning around a corpse of coarse rope,

I don’t even remember where you clung to me, just that you were,

until you weren’t

and

oh fuck

we’re falling.

You said it was fifteen feet high but I’m hyperbolic so I tell everyone it was twenty.

You have scratches on your stomach,

I only have a couple on my arm and under my chin, and I’m jealous, like the pain is something to win,

that I deserve something that stings in the shower.

I remember looking at you, a few feet below me, both of our eyes wide and worried.

I remember thinking, my god, this could have been so much worse.

I am more surprised at how empty I felt while I fell, the slick feeling of numb, open-armed ascendance slipping through my stomach instead of a frantic, desperate swipe for acceptance.

We walk back to mine, both of us still trembling from the shock, even though, honestly, I have never felt such peace before/during/after eating shit off a twenty-five foot high rock.

We walk back to mine, and you show me a song you and your roommate wrote. I’m walking behind you, watching the back of your head

until I’m not;

I stopped walking

and

I am gutted.

It’s the most devastating song I’ve ever heard and it cracks a ravine of my own through my beating heart, your voice echoing between my ribs until I am left more fallen apart than when we plummeted off that rock.

And I realize,

that when I fell off that rope swing I fell

in love with you on

the way down.

[lucyintheskeye]

I am scrubbing my face wash into my skin;

Until my cheeks are red and porcelain.

I only feel pretty if my calves are smooth and burning.

The shower is so hot, my little piggy skin pinkens, torrent of jagged drops slice into my skin and I feel my throbbing pulse in my head as I stand up too fast I don’t know how

I ended up on the floor, my ear is throbbing with the gnawing of an assassinating migraine.

I get out and try not to slip, avoid the thought, glaring viscera of a choreographed fall I’ve envisioned many times before, my skull shattering and sticky slipstream of red splattering

against the tiles, I’m looking into the mirror I have survived stepping out of the slick shower, I live to tell of another day.

I’m looking into the mirror, my eye is now pounding I am staring at rounding raw shoulders, slope

curve

x and y

this shell is not mine, my face becomes a Frankenstein's monster, held together by serums and moisturizer, my mascara slips into the soft fold of my eyelid and gouges at my pinking brain.

I withdraw the wand and my vision is smeared blue, a break from the haze of my usually red view, window into soul, just fucking tell me who I am I turned the lights off because it’s too bright but I can still see my crooked spine sometimes the space between my hips and shoulders feels hollow and other times I am a waterlogged harlot,

hollering whore, please, tell me more about your outside show. Shower. I was supposed to be getting

ready. Set go; this monologue of my waking prologue is the naked nature of my aching day.

[lucyintheskeye]

Brown eye to brown eye, I sit and wait. 

You speak first, bubble burst. 

Haha you wanna fuck me 

And I say haha yeah I do

You’re a funny guy, slick guy, real hot guy. 

I cling to the magic eight ball and shake, pray it’ll tell me if you’re mine, 

You’re a risky bet but I’m past looking back. I’ve never had the foresight to think of hindsight. Fuck if house always wins, my ruby red chips are already thrown all-in. I’m trying to clutch my cards to my chest to at least pretend to have a semblance of mystery, hoping you can’t read me, hoping I can mask my blushing virgin poker face, 

so fuck me. 

You speak first again: Your eyes are your tell

And I don’t say anything 

And then you say, haha I make you nervous 

and I try to say no but all that comes out is a little girl giggle. 

Because yes, you make me nervous, and I am trying to pretend to be brave but I am betrayed

by my humming heart, so now it’s my turn to try to pick and peel you apart, let me see your cards. 

So how can I make you fold, how can I prove I’m not pleading for you, that I walked in and only spent as much as I said I would?

So I kneel over and arch my scaredy-cat back and spit. I don’t look up. I stare at your soft belly and imagine resting on it like a fucked-up, washed-up deep sea creature, my spiking black fins a harsh misfeature against your gentle breath. 

You come and I hope I did it right, and then I ask you four times, did I do it right, and you laugh at me and I want to crawl into my skin, but you’ve already been everywhere, so I sink into your arm instead. 

We watch each other from the pillow. You’re staring at me like it’s your sworn duty, like you know what you’re doing. 

I feel like when you’re not biting my neck you’re biting your tongue.

I push you away but you pull me right back, wrist to chest, lips to breast. 

Haha. 

So fuck me. 

[luca-girlblog]

The Waking Woman

The waking woman waits. She is perched on her bright hopeful crest and flaps, flaps, she is searching wildly, her feathers aflight, her beak clacks and on this glorious sun to which she pays no attention she pleads with the dark room above her. She ignores illumination. She pleads with the slumbering rooms and black windows. She is pecking now, pecking away pathetically at this immovable darkness. She waits.

The sleeping man sleeps. He is peaceful. He is unmoved. Tell him you are in pain. Tell him how it shakes you, shudders through your brittle bones, rips across your throat, tell him. See what he does. He sleeps. The silent man dies silently. He is dark but not because the lights are off, no, the dark is inside and growing, this metastatic wonder that he is, how stoic to be so mutely mangled; Aurelius, teach this bird. Teach her to cease her endless din, her peck peck peck, clamp her beak, chop those fluttering wings. She cannot reach your window so she flies, tries for this sleeping beast, but oh how you know how he sleeps. And you die.

The silent man dies silently. The sleeping man sleeps. The waking woman waits.