#carmen brady

[gwm247]

Ericca Kern, Betty Pariso, Carmen Brady, Robin Parker, Tina Lockwood, Jennifer Greenbaum, Mary Samuel, Kimberly Rogers, Chris Bongiovanni, Jacque Till, Suzan Kaminga, D'Lynne Miller

[ultrafit]

Carmen Brady

[acatbeguiled]

[wordslikespells]

i wanted to compare this feeling to how the midwest looks spread outside an airplane window but i can never make it seem quite right (we are nothing like farmland even on our best days)

-Carmen Brady 

1.

i don’t know what parts of me are changing with each second

or how many of my cells are imbued into my bed

i have lived in cities

in rooms where the dust is mostly my own skin

and i have left them there

my own bits

do you see the sort of shifting monster

this world can make us become

2.

i couldn’t tell you the planes of my own body

and i can’t imagine yours now

forgetting and ignoring feel so much alike

3.

how your body used to sweat

i know

we were always trying to be volcanoes

now i want to live where the weather treats my flesh like an endless drum

4.

if i thought we could fall in love in the water

i’d sink us into lake superior

i know the vastness of the ocean makes you want but

tides are something i’d rather not admit to

the smallest influence turns me inside out

5.

i don’t think you ever noticed the games i played by myself while you were there

how you can have all your clothes off and never show your body

but i always kept my underwear around one ankle

and never looked at you when we fucked

intimacy can forget to be so many things

[wordslikespells]

I Love You in How You Braid Your Hair

-Carmen Brady

1. I used to be so afraid of my insides and taking up space now my big belly swells with all of me thighs like the horizon Each day is a lesson in cells and follicles I am afraid yet willing to learn 2. My mother has me take a picture on her mother's grave with the St. Louis humidity hugging us like a blanket There is the same type of desperate beauty in military cemeteries and suburbs straight lines and pathways do so much to me 3. Without my glasses I am a lineless haze you are just a ghost fucking me and I swear I don't mind laying here unfinished I’ve always thrived on loveless things that feel like a metaphor for me 4. Oh god, if I ever see you again I'm going to run my soft hands through your hair so tender Trying to find every bald spot Like your future revealing itself to me 5. We never ate pancakes together Or got to be teenagers in the same way But I think our love would be young In every other way 6. I saw the tendrils of LA at night And lately I'm so lost I don't know what to do I told you in a bar that I think we are only immortal If someone remembers us when we die And they get remembered too I’ve had some years since then I never know what is true 7. Slam yourself into me & Hold me like a megaphone When we kiss Know I am trying to put all my unsaid words inside your mouth Without having to worry about the faults in my phonology 8. Giving a blow job In the backseat of my car I know I'll never mean anything To anyone Here--something about my inability to stay put or speak when it's the right time at least all of you know me slithering into my seatbelt wiping my mouth sordid like I am