lipstick & other obsessions

poem composed of lipstick shades

the therapist says I must be fine

        because I don’t wear a bare pout—   

bear with me— it is my obsession

        to strip clementine from rind

pluck hair from chin, sebum from

        skin, trim myself primrose

& proper— doctor, you should see me

        on a brunch date, in a board meeting,

in the grocery line— I am chronically

        overdressed. my kitten heels don’t

have time for this. I am dazed— in &

        out of my daisy dress. I’m afraid

I have ginger snapped orange popped—

        I feel rotten— wrought copper

penny sweating in a palm. I won’t last

        very long in this oxidized crust—

would you like me apple crumbled, rust-flaked

clean? can you see me now? can you see?

abecedarian with loss of appetite

around the time you stop caring about

being alive, you also start avoiding solid food—

canned tomato soup & applesauce on

days the spoon can coax the suckle.

easier to stop eating altogether once your body 

forgets the need for molar & stomach:

gummy white bread turned over & over by the tongue,

halting mechanism of an unwilling jaw, like an

infant refusing the breast. it’s not that you don’t want to,

just that you can’t. your grandmother sees your

knotted spine curl like a claw & says thinner

like she’s saying prettier. your body tries to

metabolize your mother’s prayers, but there is

nothing to nurse the shame of this condition. you

only want to say: look mom, i ate my veggies, my

plate is licked clean. she gives you linden to

quench the anxiety, chamomile for sleep, but these

remedies rooted in faith won’t cure a symptom of a

symptom. the deepest hunger you will ever feel is

the desire to be happy enough for other people.

until then, it’s easier just to say: i took all my

vitamins, i finished my plate. but you’re too

weak to do it on your own & even a child knows

xrays don’t work on something this empty.

you let her spoon feed you: little gelatin capsules of

zinc, st. john’s, valerian root hidden in a carrot purée.

negative space

i never regretted leaving this city until i was supine under

the artificial light of a strip mall salon.

natalie, acrylic hair claw

& gold flip flops, goes to work like i’m for the morgue:

sterilized tweezers & microscope. the girls talk shellac

manicure in their miami upspeak; syllables stick

& taffy-stretch.                       when i left, i kept mine

gum-cement under the desk. now watch this sorry

unsister rewet tacky wad between american teeth. my dumb

maw chews & this unhome carves itself

around me. i’m being

                            dramatic again— prosthetic lash & box dye sheen.

what a way to prove i could both leave & stay

me. come to realize what this nontongue already knows:

         (somewhere downtown, a not-me mourns her own

transposed effect) i had to come back to notice i ever left.