in glory undimmed.

i'm anais. 20. that's all you need to know.

[superluminary]

that's really pretty. Did you draw it?

no, the center piece is a figure from a sketch by Salvador Dali, and I added the breezes.

[superluminary]

what is it?

[superluminary]

did you get a tattoo?

oh yes I did a big one on my back.

[superluminary]

numbness is a light bulb in the off position.

my synapses, undead

char instead of sparking

oh, it’s all in a day’s work to keep myself plugged in

so I can keep from smoking

or going up in smoke

Because sometimes I find myself asking someone I don’t love if maybe

She wants to share a stack

Of those greasy late night hangover pancakes.

No, I don’t have to burn

I’m too soaked wet in some sort of purifying laundry detergent

Made from wine and sticky sweat between my legs.

It’s a comfort to know that nothing is less incandescent.

I swear I heard the bottle

and the queasy peach I discarded on the bedside 3 weeks ago

Talking one night after she fell asleep; they didn’t know I was listening.

Now I know they would rather find their own careers than collaborate

With my feral desperation for the worldliness of the malformed and picturesque.

But these days, you might as well demand a late term abortion.

we’re all already gestating in my domestic collection.

I keep telling myself that preservation is the same as evolution so

I save obsessively, not pristinely

I want to see time on my yellow correspondence, stained receipts

And cracked novelty mug on the armoire.

And I, sleeping through classes to screw

Anyone who comes along.

I adore the trivial decay of anything that proves that

I never cared.

they’re all in my essay on the ascetic ecstasy of being right.

I’m writing it in the ink of endless disputes with my secondary characters

Any other day I wouldn’t look twice but

I’m fucking and smoking and

Some wall-eyed face displayed beneath rude old bar lights

Telling me that yeah, other women can’t

Drink whiskey the way I do

keeps me from exploding

But when I stand hacking up slimy remnants of these far-too-late debates

On the pavement outside some jittery apartment at 4 am,

Gesturing sincerely over some absurd goddamn who-knows-what

with greasy do-gooders and sleazy whatevers

I barely build a flatline in my chest.

I’m still fumbling for the switch;

Some days I still find myself walking out the door

Possessed with some antiquated bitch, who sneaks out of the garbage heap

For the chance to scream whatever trivial, shapely justification

might let me take you out again for drinks.

Fuck. I’m only as courteous as sin.

[superluminary]

why does being sad make my selfies so much better

[superluminary]

yesterday I was beating the brain out of a broken china doll

she grinned at me in red paint and I smashed her

face in,

god

it felt good hearing the hollow of her china-blonde head

scream

today I’m

gluing shards of her to the wall

little blood teardrops drip drip drip

from my fingers on the razor

sharp edges of her curves

(it’s in the eyes, blue as sin and green as envy)

oh, what a pretty picture!

blood and braids all in a banal bacchanal.

you removed the brain,

but you can keep the face in a jar:

the label says “apply daily”

and I bought if from the factory:

paintbrush, red lips,

black lashes, dead eyes

and tomorrow I’ll smash it again,

yum, the hammer goes in intravenously.

I’m dying to paint my brain on the floor,

cuz everyone says that

hollow dolls aren’t broken

[superluminary]

It's too fucked up.

one of those posters in the metro with the risks of smoking

gruyered lungs and bloated slugs for tongues.

but what I've been puffing is a smell that seeps out of my bones

the locked door of your miasmic pheromones

purple, putrid, rank blueberries at the bottom of an old basket.

I remember they were volumptuous when we picked them.

what an egregious luster!

 the skins all fit with eagerness to burst.

I felt their their sticky golden flesh trickle down

neck, breasts, fingers, legs

I was wreathed in it

you were too busy watching my lids flutter and rest

to lick it off

you were too busy making lightning and promises

for the clean shudder of water and filth rolling off my skin

these demented pheromones.

I've heard they're soluble in detergent but

when I tossed my old clothes and old stains into the washer

they only clung to me like logs, like alligators

stalking riverbanks, growing stale, growing moss.

perhaps this clinical whirlpool should be my graveyard.

everything I am is tainted --gilded-- and

I'm left alone with my empty skin, this old worn jumper.

they've long since closed the factory making hearts, minds, eyes.

and Arachne never made a needle fit to fix my holes

but buying second hand is too expensive so

I should put this skin in with the dirty laundry

clinging, dirty, dead.

I threw it in, but only as I fell down and rooted with feral desperation

through the musty remnants of our curdled memories,

looking for one more exquisite fruit --for the compost heap!

but I love the smell of rot and oh, instead, I always lift it to my lips.

[superluminary]

[superluminary]

[superluminary]

when left to its own devices the music player on my phone always defaults back to Bowie’s “Tis a Pity She Was a Whore”

[superluminary]

[superluminary]

the idea of Living with Strangers makes my heart curl up inside me time passing would be fine if I could pass it somewhere happy if all these other things work out that is the only thing I'm dreading in the next 5 months dreading dreading dreading it I'd like a closet if I could have it to myself or a couch if I knew who would walk by

[superluminary]

I've spent my trip writing letters to Dead People so they will Know I'm Here.

[superluminary]

I should be sleeping

[superluminary]

I think Contentment has such a short shelf life that it withers before you even bring it home from the air-conditioned aisle of the grocery store. or maybe the dampening layers of silence around me suffocate it before it has a chance to breathe.

there are the long nights when you wonder whether you’re alone or you’re lonely and lose along the way the What You Are. maybe I could be sad (and I am) but mostly I resent resent resent that I made this casket of myself and lost the key long ago.

forget it, I would trade contentment or happiness or whatever it’s supposed to be in exchange for a Reason to do anything at all. she must be in there somewhere, dead asleep.

I really thought the end of the semester would help.

[superluminary]

hello, I’m Not Easy to Get Along With

[superluminary]

I like when you take shoes off and they stay just in the position you use when you push one heel off with the other

they touch just back to tip at just this angle every time