Tag Archives: PTSD

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Psychosomatic

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I dreamt about you today.

Washed ashore in a sea of blackout drunk and fever,

Drenched in sweat and saltwater

……..

I told my therapist ‘displacement’ was a sexist trope,

A hysterical comorbidity, of upper-class trophy wives, resurrected from an Era that didn’t know what epilepsy was.

……..

He asked me why my shoulders ache.

And I remembered I had carried you here

I remembered how I watch for you on trains.

I remembered turning to find you standing in the center of my nightmares.

……..

The muscles in my neck twist out my spine

As it hangs from your clothesline

A bucket of bubbles and palpitations

Churning in outlandish red light

……..

Sweep me back out to queasy seas

And find me picking your words out from between my teeth like old food

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Crashing Out

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Missed my appointment for sobriety;

The bus dropped me off at jail.

These official courthouse letters,

Always find me in the mail.

……………………………………

A woman in hijab got on,

Six stops down the line;

I saw my best friend in a tweaker

Who assured me you were doing fine.

……………………………………

I sacrificed my handwriting to tremors;

Vodka makes me gag.

Of every ex who haunts my nightmares;

You’re the own who moves most like my dad

…………………………………..

I saw a dead man OD on the sidewalk,

It has trapped me in a daze;

There are children I will never see again; who I helped raise.

……………………………………

My roommate is resentful.

My mother is concerned.

There’s not a friendship or a bridge inside this town I have not burned.

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in another life you were better

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Rod Serling haunts me;

The way my father intended.






You leave copies of bell hooks out when we fight;





While your boyfriend calls me a pussy. 





In another life you were better;





In another life we were better.










I owe the people $128.





You owe some broken girl-child from the mountains everything.










You of all people were supposed to understand me.





You gave me every book about myself that you have never read 










I watch the tendrils of apathy and capital coil;





You could not hold the pain of a widow if she payed you 






			

	
	


				
					



	

		
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Labor Shortage in Omelas


				

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I will myself to hold the taste of this failure in my mouth.
Just one more flavor my white parents did not know how to cook with.





I smother the bitterness of asparagus and your contempt in garlic and white wine.





if god where my dinner guest;

He would ask me which brown woman we owed for tonight’s spice blend;
He would remind me that none of us have ever lived anywhere but Omelas;
He would remember how the acid of the lemon juice cut through the grease and your vitriol.





There is no violence or abuse
This sous chef pretending to be a line cook; did not teach me how to plate.





Salt. Fat. Acid. 
I have always held my own magic.