Shots fired, cup of Stars and Stripes half-empty;

Optimism was a casualty of the Civil War’s second act.

Brother turning against brother

All in the name of their leader’s cowardice.

They say if I can’t take the heat,

Get out of the kitchen.

And in the same breath,

Telling me that is the only place I belong.

Sandwiches with truth in every bite;

How does the swine taste?

Do his boots leave prints...

They warned me of the big, bad wolf lurking in the brush.

He had teeth yellow and stained with blood,

An insatiable hunger for my girlhood.

The glimmer of wonder shimmering in my eyes

Grew dull and weary of watching my back

For fear of fangs proclaiming themselves a knife,

Unzipping my flesh to unsheath my skeleton,

Spiraling, spiraling—

Squirming with my eight arachnid legs as I spin my web of ...

More clutter accumulates than a landfill gathers rubbish—

Boxes of my great-grandfather’s papers stacked to the ceiling.

He interpreted God in a way that speaks to the deepest trenches of my soul.

I’ve forgotten the sound of my conscience,

Dead air and space buzzing in my empty head—

No walls for the acoustics to bounce off of.

Shrill static, microphone feedback deafening to the point of no retu...

While chasing your ghost,

I became one myself.

Sitting by my window, knitting like a sailor’s wife,

Eyes glued to the horizon with the hope that your ship is the next to dock

But I know you washed upon Calypso’s shore

And can’t remember my name anymore.

I wandered the empty corridors of your subconscious

And saw a thousand closed doors.

I’m still haunted by you,

You injected me with your toxic ...

A madman wields an ax,

Craving the music of blade meeting bone—

Carving in the base of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,

The long-awaited resolution to the prophecy:

The madwoman that waves her quill,

Words within her that yield dark forces—

She writes what she held on her tongue,

Spitfire loose cannons,

If the slanderous chatter cannot be said with one breath—

There she blows,

Page smoki...

Father throws his empty bottle of Jack at the wall

And Mother cries over her burnt turkey dinner.

I spilled the wine and took my grandmother’s freshwater pearls.

I bared my sole

And shredded the tendons on the shards of glass,

Reminding me of the blood that was shed under the May Moon.

Veins tangled like the tree lights—

The only way to set them free is by severing....

She screamed from her fiery core—

She cannot keep herself cool and collected on the surface

Because the sun stepped out of the atmosphere

And sprinted toward her bodies of saltwater seas

To soothe the blistering of his own weathered, leathery skin

But it angered his wounds—

And Gaia offered him her shaded forests to rest his head.

Pillows of moss and fig leaves for shelter from the whistling wind...

The apple didn’t just fall far from the tree,

It crossed the cosmic threshold into another dimension

And fell on Newton’s head.

Law of Attraction states

We attract what we think we deserve.

Waterboarded with your toxic positivity

And false sense of hospitality.

You never intended for me to walk into your abode

And put my feet up on the coffee table like I owned the place.

I was the victim of yo...

I’ve got a one-way ticket to Crazy Town

Where they can never keep a good woman down.

One might suspect fatherless behavior.

Mine asked for a favor

While he was out buying booze

And came back less than enthused

To tell me his body is breaking down particle by particle.

Death, with a full moon under his hood, strokes his sickle

As it drools for a tendon to sever.

I watch the blood trickle

From my w...

My existence is an act of war.

I was not bred by submissive women—

I talk back

And don’t always know when to admit I’m wrong.

Dishes will rise to the ceiling,

Becoming a cesspool for plagues

And maggots.

I’ll step over the piles of dog dung in the den

And leave them for you to squelch your toes in its cold, mushy heap of smelly waste

When you’re half-asleep,

Making your morning commute to your d...