My home has taught me that
Love looks like handprints and
A kiss is delivered with a clenched fist
Little girls are hangover nurses
And flinching is a well rehearsed dance
Until the floor is where you rest your head
And your wrists are whittled twigs,
Your makeup pools under flightless eyes,
And your spine is shoved through plaster,
Never, ever fucking act like you know
What it’s like behind closed doors.

I. Prelude

Dear Daddy

Your name sounds like

Little girls choking on

steel and bourbon

II. A Petrified Genesis

Do you remember

How I was a faerie baby

With tomato cheeks and

Buttercup smiles

Running after the world with

Wide open arms screaming

“take me too, take me too!”

You used to carry me in the space between

Your arm and your ribcage,

Blanketed in cigarette quilts,

And sang me to sleep

in the language for just you and

me, not Mommy and no one else,

you promised to take me to the sea and

carve my name into the beach

teach me how to stand in the sand

III. Coordinates

Do you remember the

Night that you told me

That light shines from our eyes

In lines that fight for the space

Between our family’s ties,

Ties like nooses and

Shoe laces, and spaces

Like the ten miles between

A tree branch and the blood

Pooling below it…

And I blanched?

IV. Shovel Song

Do you remember

The first night you

Cried on the front step

For half an hour, Mama

Told us not to ask but I’ve

Never listened well and

You answered me in two languages,

Stinking like tears and vodka

And smashed mirrors?

I dug myself a hole in the

Back of my closet singing

Hey Jude because that’s what

Mama listens to when she cried too

Though she doesn’t do that very much anymore

And the baby asked me what was wrong with Daddy

Mama said “He’s sad” and the baby said

“I’m sad” and I just sobbed

When the next day you asked

What happened last night.

But not until you left.

V. Zipper Girl

I was a terminal for three years

I was a mercy killing

And when you found out that

I hid silver in the zippers

I sewed into my legs

You held out a knife

Right at the dinner table

Your wife shook and

The baby was quiet

And told me to go ahead,

Cut myself into several hundred

Shades of regret

For everyone to see,

But all I could do was look at our

One reflection in the blade

As you sneered at me to

Split my skin like a pomegranate

Like I did when your eyes

Are shut

(your eyes are always shut)

VI. Compass Heart On Ice

Do you remember

When I hugged my

Knees like knobby rosaries

And pushed valleys

Into my lip and hips

And finally learned that

My blood tastes like cognac,

Mama cries almost as quiet as me

When she thinks only

Broken kids are around,

And I would let you,

If you’d asked to hold me

But now the only one

Who holds me is bloodstained sheets

These days you walk past me

And we both pretend not to hear

When the other forgets to breathe,

Too afraid to even feel.

You still don’t ask me

What is the matter,

I still don’t tell you

That I want a father

We never had time to brace for impact…

They look at me, you know.

They look at me as if I have tarmac black blood

and aircraft veins that carried me straight to the city

on a morning that the sky hit the floor like our stomachs did.

My mothers people were the wild men

with brushfire hearts and calloused hands 

that felt like summer’s crooning blessing,

their white white faces turned tepid,

but they’re still snow capped mountains

high above not much of anything.

My fathers people are pomegranate 

pickers, goat herders and

charcoal babies but I am neither.

I am half desert sun and half

Appalachian lullaby but

they whisper sometimes 

when my ear is inverted that

I hold glycerin inside my mouth,

matchstick fingers that light bombs.

When their baby’s have been 

laid down to sleep, they pray 

to gods their souls to keep

away from my kind of people,

my kind of people that must be terrorists.

I pray sometimes to my god that 

one day my father will wake up not quite as dark

so he won’t have to watch their faces anymore, 

sometimes I pray that my friends won’t

wake up and decide to set fire to 

half of my body.

I turn on the news and pray

god please don’t let them look like my father

my uncle, my cousin, my sister, not mine,

but they do. They did.

They never check their tongues

at the door because my 

white white skin and 

white white hair are too

white

white

white

to be brown.

They whisper that it was 

“my kind of people” 

that burned those twins to the bottom

and watch my family through closed eyes

wondering, what happened?

but am I to be blamed, are we to be blamed,

for the flame of fanaticism, because

if being half desert sun burns out the staunch

Appalachian mysticism that somehow

the words “Middle East” resonate

with terrorism, then light my fuse. 

Sometimes I wonder when I drive home

I wonder how spectacular it could be

if I pushed through the windowsheild

bled a little more

choked a little harder

breathed a little less

like a broken yoke seeping through the eggshell

would my body contort as I fell

would my skin pale as I fled

would my skin blue as I faded

would my lips curl up as I froze

would you weep for my dirt bones

I am just dirt in the ground already

and this is an allegory of the dead

and I am gone already

my dear

my darling

my dead

forgive me

I just don’t remember where I left me.

I spun into this world

on a day that tore me in half, 

half the sky bled between my lips

and the sun and the moon

planted rose gardens inside my hips

and each grabbed limbs that they

pulled into different directions,

the moon whispered “never stay, darling,

never dare to stay” and I listened.

My mother was earthbound,

bound in quilters thread and 

calligraphy ink; my father,

steel structure steeple-fear

and frozen finger paint.

My sister fell to earth on top 

of me but my bones were already broken, so

it didn’t matter much anyway…

I was born on a day that 

ripped me to shreds,

split the deck into two 

and folded with half a mind 

to flush out Jack, but

the sun always sighs 

while the moon laughs madly,

that the words always come out as pleas

and the poet’s hands are shaking.

hitrecordjoe:

chasewhiteside:

ryanjdavis:

The Ali Forney Center, the largest and most comprehensive LGBT homeless youth organization in the country, suffered a major loss due to Hurricane Sandy. Their drop-in center, which is a lifeline to kids who live on the streets, was destroyed.

Below is a letter from their executive director, Carl Siciliano, detailing the situation and how you can help. (Hint: they really need your money.)

This organization is near and dear to my heart, I’m on the Board of Directors and have produced The Broadway Beauty Pageant for them for many years. Please give what you can to this very important cause.

Dear Friends,

Yesterday we were finally able to inspect our drop-in center in Chelsea, half a block from the Hudson River. Our worst fears were realized; everything was destroyed and the space is uninhabitable. The water level went four feet high, destroying our phones, computers, refrigerator, food and supplies.

This is a terrible tragedy for the homeless LGBT youth we serve there. This space was dedicated to our most vulnerable kids, the thousands stranded on the streets without shelter, and was a place where they received food, showers, clothing, medical care, HIV testing and treatment, and mental health and substance abuse services. Basically a lifeline for LGBT kids whose lives are in danger.

We are currently scrambling for a plan to provide care to these desperate kids while we prepare to ultimately move into a larger space that will better meet our needs. The NYC LGBT Center has very kindly and generously offered to let us temporarily use some of their space, and we hope to determine the viability of that on Monday.

We have been deluged with kind offers from people who wish to volunteer and donate goods. Unfortunately, we will have to provide our services in the time being in much smaller spaces that won’t accommodate volunteers or allow for much storage space. The best way people can reach out to help in this very challenging time is by making monetary donations. Please go to our website at www.aliforneycenter.org/hurricanesandy

It is heartbreaking to see this space come to such a sad end. For the past seven years it has been a place of refuge to thousands of kids reeling from being thrown away by their parents for being LGBT. For many of these kids coming to our drop-in center provided their first encounter with a loving and affirming LGBT community. I thank all of you for your care and support in a most difficult time.

- Carl Siciliano

Signal boost for support.

Sandy’s heading my way, though hopefully won’t hit us until eight o’clock tonight. I think this is the perfect time to take up permanent residence on my couch with some tea and my new Pat Conroy, and pray that Sandy doesn’t utterly destroy us. Wish me luck!

I am woman

Hollow womb and full eyes

My cup runneth over, they say, but

I am godless they say,

They say, she is our rib bone, clever

Incased in glass of our

Rotting bodies

Taken out of us, and

Us of her, no longer

 Ours.

Fit for the dogs, tossed down like an

Unrepentant messiah

I am woman

Hollow womb and full eyes

Flesh in soft curvature, cruel caricature of their

Geese flock waists and

Huntsman lips, unstrung but

Bows nonetheless, my

Appalachian hips bleeding over

Bones too bruised

Against kitchen sinks, too

Blunt after dishtowels and bleached

Scoured away like

Plagues smashing through your church doors, and

Clutch your scarred crosses to your chest and

Shut your eyes to pray

Because the religion of your sex

Can’t save you now

Be careful not to tumble

Like the words on my skin

Pulled away past breasts

Like ripe melons but ripe

Is not ready and ripe

Does not mean yes

I am woman

 Hollow womb and full eyes

But, they say it’s not my place to

Stand on the same step before shifting doors to

Pound my fist into granite and place trumpets in the throats of my sisters but

I am not the one who makes them scream

Carry their paper backs torn by

Fat, meaty fingers

Who crawled under their skin

And stuffed their mouths full of red

Shame and

I am woman hollow womb and full eyes

But the weight of y sex weighs heavy on my back

Like shackles of the whitest iron and

Last week I guess I shouldn’t have worn that skirt like that

Or bit my lip just like that

Or left alone like that because

That night my skin escaped into concrete

And gravel bit my back, my

Insides felt like fire

Flame fingers tearing and stealing,

Stolen, my

Insides are stolen and replaced with ash

They tell me y insides are aflame,

Fire-womb, they call me

Hollow womb no more

I am woman

Full womb and hollow eyes

I am stolen

And they say

Didn’t I raise you better?

Didn’t I teach you better, than to

Dress in that manner,

Don’t you stammer at me,

Girl… I didn’t make this happen, and

They didn’t, but

They say it was me,

It was me! Who

Brought the shame of

Stained shirts and bloated stomachs

To pain this nation

And they say your

Body was beautiful but

I don’t want to see it anymore

I danced naked, spark plugs

Wrapped round my ankles

“She’s a fire hazard,’ they whispered

But they kept their matchstick fingers

Over their mouths as they watched, but

Now that I hold a charcoal baby, they say

“I don’t want to see it anymore.”

It’s not the

Same…

But didn’t anyone raise you to treat

Women like men, men like women

When did my name become a crime?

When did my name, our name, become

The worst to be, and

I am woman

Full womb and hollow eyes

And I feel myself choking on wire hangers

Because I’m scared I could never love an ashborn baby

Scared of his eyes

And his hair and

Skin forever

And they deny me because a life without pills

Is a vote in their bill but

We are women

Full womb and hollow eyes

Hollow womb and full eyes

Full womb and full eyes

And the rights to our body is not a liability

We will not suffer the ability to bear fruit to barren grounds

Because no means no and

You don’t paint over eyes and

If my body’s a temple you are an atheist and

What’s mine is not yours until I say, so

Hold your fucking breath.

Sweetheart.

I have a secret fear

of being dead before

I remember that I

used to eat tangerines,

and used to let them

touch my archaic skin,

but most of all

I have a secret fear

of dying and realizing

I never began to breathe

She is secret symbolic

Sings silver medallions

Wrapped in funny white fingers

That archangels don’t hear

Always brushes her hair to the left

Because she’s not all right, it’s

Not all right

sly smiles and smirks

that hint at hedonism but

Holy hell

There are holes in her floor

Like the heels that she slips on

To take the edge off of sleep

Like slipping pills down

Her arms into

Skinny elbow crooks undone and

Inundated patriotism

She is secret symbolic

Stealing pastels because

Secretly she doesn’t dream

In black in white

Like she said last Sunday

Secretly she is blood and

Bone wedged through copper

Wiring, ringing

You in morning hours for

Three words neither want to hear

Solace is a one word phrase

But silent is a more familiar term

She is secret symbolic

Always bites her lip

Hoping you like peach

Ice cream and winter sun

But you are blissed on braille souls and

She is bleeding on the

Barrier of paper

And pen

That tastes

Of secret symbolic

of-a-ginger:

“Missing You”, a piece of slam in which I sing.

I love this, and this girl is one of my best friends- an amazing poet AND person.

oxree01:

wood

The republican party needs to stay the hell away from my vagina. I don’t tell you what to do with your body, and you certainly have no goddamn right to tell me what to do with mine. You claim to be a “Christian” oriented party, a religion that emphasizes the worth of all people, and yet you blatantly degrade women in assuming controls of their body. Furthermore, as far as I’m aware of, the constitution and prior laws of this nation guarantee:
1. Freedom of religion- I would like to point out that the totality of the United States of America is not christian, and therefore, does not automatically believe that abortion/birth control is wrong, immoral, or otherwise incorrect. Similarly, not all Christians believe this anyway. Forcing your religion upon someone is incredibly disgusting,insulting, immoral, and in fact, goes against the very foundation of this country. Remember those people called Pilgrims? I thought you might.
2. Free

This spoken word is by my dearest and most kick-ass friend Monica, better known as the recently-deactivated TRAVESTYINTECHNICOLOUR. I highly suggest you listen to this amazing slam poem. Also, she’d like you all to know you can find her on her personal (non-writing) blog here, and on the tree blog we run together.