Half Mast

It is a Viking name

It is a cold and weathered

Drift wood

Name

It is a name turned blue and stone and stiff

It is a chiseled

Still born

Box of teeth

She keeps him

As she keeps

My Self

Small and swaddled

Wet and wondered

Like a puppy

Or a bowl of fruit

She’s wrong

She’s mean and gone

She’s dead even to the dead

My Viking boy is grown

And cracked and puffed his cheeks

He’s smart

And big

And safe

Like a college

Or a light house

He’s mine

My brother

My older

Only Mine

All

Mine Like a trading card or a spoon of sugar MINE!

It is a Viking name

Eric Eric Eric

(Can you open up for me real quick? There we go, Good girl.)

~Skin and Toast

Drafted Rough.

When I Was 5 and Had My Looks

Oh a fox was I

A shell between a breast

I hung on frames

And shucked on legs

Yes

There was a flannel gown

Pressed between my gums

It draped on chains behind my door

It Pinked and pricked a

Sweet sweet basement of a girl

He was

A shelf on top my lungs

We

Never touched the ground

It’s fine

The sleeves claimed islands all their own

I often wonder

Will my waist come down

Again

To

Raise my ruffle

Like a barn in the night

And take my twenty pounds to bank

Oh a fox was I

I wonder

When can I peel back that time

Too her holy skinless

Boyhood raft

Oh to be a waffle cutting

Inner

Gated thigh

To be an opera on his loafer

To choke in threads

And feel once more

~Skin and Toast

Sound it out

I've learned annuity and lawn chairs and

The city of God against the pagans

I have a seat up front

Baseball season is fast approaching

I don't hate him on Thursdays

He took me to the games

That much I can say

I'll give you that

And she took me to the theatre

I'll give her that

Just

Read Jesus' son

Recommend it to the highest

I want to write something half Dillard half Johnson

I'd be happy not reading it out loud

My voice has been shaking lately

Swollen knees

Soft piano

Pink canals

There seems to be fluids on the floor, two inches deep

I sweep my jacket over my naked shoulder

And part my lips

And someone snaps a black and white January

And someone holds me on their private refreshing car

Sipping fizzy water in my pajamas I feel like my mountain has arrived

I've been in so many apartments it's embarrassing

And wonderful

Just awake enough to know I'm exhausted

Heavy friend with kings of kings of kings of kings

Skin and Toast

PS It's not a Chicago thing. On the south side the only way to save your parking space is to get your kids to lay down in it, face down. Your red cones and card board boxes get shot on the south side. Even Linda had a gun. And she drove an 84' silver ford tempo. Two door. Please.

Fuck the Steelers

I don't know anything about the Steelers.

I don't know anything about football.

I'm sure if I was ever at one time good at it, or if I had ever tried it, then I would have taken interest, and pursued.

Oh, lord wont you buy me, a two bedroom condo.

Wrote hard all my lifetime, nothing to show.

I have to say, waiting is the worst.

To be perfectly honest, all you ten or so followers, I have applied to Columbia College (MFA Poetry).

It seemed like the next step for me.

I wanted it.

I applied.

I filled it all out.

My electronic bulletin board tells me that all has been received.

And we have to remind ourselves that that is a win.

We have to remind ourselves that there was a rhyme with a time when getting out of bed meant we would shortly most definitely be hanging from the shower in no time at all, as in can't go on. As in might as well just lye still.

As in can't talk.

I remember saying that, I remember sitting down in acting class, and saying; guys, I'm here, but I can't talk. Nothing is going to come out. I just want you to know, that I'm here, but I cannot talk. I cannot speak.

I said that many times.

It sounds so utterly dramatic, but it was as articulate as I could muster.

Nothing.

There was a lot of nothing in that place.

It was all a waste.

I hate my father.

My father is not my father.

He came to the show in August with his latest whore.

I stood by the garbage can for a good forty five.

I couldn't talk.

I know a lot about garbage cans.

I used to eat out of his garbage can nightly.

Nightly.

I couldn't eat or talk at that Highland Park table.

I would wait till late at night when everyone else was asleep, and I would steel away to the sliding can, and I would eat Tuesdays crust, and suck Sundays lemons,

With abandon.

Dr. Un Rooley came to the show in December.

What a difference a man makes.

What a lifetime a friend makes.

What a family a boy makes.

What a lucky a girl is.

After all of that.

After Linda's and Tom's.

And bugs on sidewalks on screaming on courtrooms.

Yes, my last name is Anne.

And I will not take your bath.

I will not take it to my bed.

I will not put it with my dead.

Anne I am.

My months are measured in men, always a surprise that I am straight,

Skin and Toast

PS: Don't be confused. Friend Boy is my only. Un Rooley is like a Dempsey. It's not sexual. Those girls with issues who wanted to bone their teachers. I never did that. I like friend boy cause he's skinny. And cause he's the only. Not that I thought you would thought that I was implying any anything. I think the Steelers just won. I mean the Packers, the meat packers. Oh, pack that shit.

Over those fat extensions are we?

While trying to shed some holiday pound the image of Natalie out of my skull I must say that the winter stress is mounting pink tights to my eye balls and down loading epic amounts of feel goods and short stacks/And I actually caught myself thinking/Why did I agree to this again?/Shouldn't I be splashing around in the show?/Do I even miss the show?

I get tired of all the contracts and dots. I think about babies named Olive and puppies named Charles. I wash dishes for hours and try to make sense of things. I see myself as possibly more tired then I actually am. I press on my happy trail and drool on my cheeks.

I pour myself something and pride myself on the copy of Howl I keep on the window sill along with the Yoko instructions and sea salt. I dream of san fran and contemplate Zola.

I don't remember all the things I have to do, but assure myself that I'm doing most of them to the best of my FAS. I erase a lot. The floor is charcoal. I panic already. About everything. I cling to his leather coat and worry that he's cold. I try not to step on dead cats on the way to the bus at 3am in the fucking 3am.

I wash my feet in jelly fish puss cause Jesus patented the hole water thing. My left arm is considerably larger then the right from lifting gallons of milk.

But, the smell of the evergreen candle and the taste of ginger makes me easy and smoked, a Reuben on the streets of France at a writers retreat for Christian liberal women with adopted children and surviving cats.

Thank you for your pity, it feels later then it is, flip the pod and disregard,

Skin and Toast

How did I get here?

How did I find this pattern of the moon to be so desired?

How did I wake up warm?

How did I break that ice against that rock?

How did I sign up for things like Net Flix and McSweeney?

How did pack the teeth that the BoyGirls knocked out?

How did I get to the place where I thought it was actually a good idea to entertain the questions I usually find great satisfaction in mocking.

It's dry in here.

At least it's not cold.

I can't be cold.

I also can't open with it.

But, I will seep it in.

I was born in February.

I'm sure it was cold.

I'm sure it was biting.

I'm sure there were lungs falling from the sky.

Hot beating lungs swaddled in rice patties and turnips.

Pure pockets of air.

Blanched and boiled in angel gas and titian robes.

Golden chords of type O blood tied around suction cups like leashes on greyhounds.

I wonder.

I stand very still on the bed in the cold and try to go back as far as I can.

Usually stop at twelve for a glass of strawberry quick and a fluffernutter on white.

I am a white girl.

Connan cracker white.

I am lower lower class with thousands and thousands of quarters in a Delia's shoe box.

That once contained the platform shoes I was going to wear to prom.

But, ended up borrowing some brick red clog looking things from the girl in the dorm next to me.

I can't believe I went to prom.

I rode in a limo with two girls I barely knew.

They offered.

I needed a ride.

Picked me up on the corner of Dearborn and Goethe.

Sat outside with the smokers and the jokers.

Exceedingly uneventful and ugly was I in my banded head and above the knee silk.

Angela looked at her thinnest.

Michelle paints apples on walls.

I would have latched on to that harder then a Spanish test in the spring

Awakening.

I'm not on a diet, I'm just cutting out sodium. That would have bought me a good two months. Easy.

Good thing it's cold. If you know what I mean.

Audrey Hepburn is a whoar. Those girls in their dorms, they nail her Tiffany ass to their ceilings and their lunch pales. And forget about the impossible body standards that tone deaf ballerina immigrates down to her Twiggy Moss row. ----She's leaning out of that car window perspiring what? Sweetness and light? That's all I get. All I see is an eye lash batting waif. A chicken waffle material fad.

It's possible I'm ignorant. Or a little gay. Or just plain raw and irritated in my winter eczema.

But, I'll blast my Ani Difranco, read my KATHERINE Hepburn biographies, fold my flannel shirts, donate my clogs, wash off my mascara, and hang my Julie Andrew posters with pride.

Like Mondo, she was robbed.

Emily Dickinson was short. Everybody was back then. I'd fit right in. I'd take her to prom and hold her tight. And later that night we'd confess to each other that we're actually not gay. We're just writing letters to someone far away who has no idea. And then we'll cry a little and kiss each other's eye lids, and sniff each other's necks. Like dinosaurs. We'll fall asleep shivering on the sand.

I hope where ever she is she's waking up to him.

Like me,

Skin and Toast

Check.

Reading

Anne

Lamott

Imperfect

Birds

Had

Sassy

Eggs

Toured

Papered

Mic

Scratched

lacquered

Scalp

Opened

Digital

Camera

Brushed

Powdered

Sugar

Gave

Some

Remarks

Peeled

Eyes

Away

Took

In

A

Skunk

Shaved

Down

The

Middle

Waned

Through

My

Trunk

Had

Pleasant

Cakes

Dropped

A

Necklace

Down

A

Well

That

Was

Fair

For

Food.

He said there was a baby carriage down on Noyes street. But, nobody was pushing it. Then the lens shattered in his hand. And I thought to myself, Marie, everything is lost. Nowhere to go but south. Because who wants to live North of Evanston? I mean, really? This time of year?

I look better on whisky then I do on paper.

And I am now officially obsessed with Zola Jesus. Really came on quick. Love when that happens.

Remember when you were able to stand naked in a river in Maine, and the reflection staring back at you was more then acceptable. Borderline beautiful. Now if you could just get to the point where sitting naked on the closed lid of the toilette, with the folds of your flesh winking back at you, with the dimples of your sides squinting up at you--where that was border line stunning. We would be so rich. Because you're moisturizing after your shower to the drown of NPR, and you have to stop for Arizona, and all you can think about is how hard it is to stay small. And all you ever complain about is wanting to be like the big girls. And you know exactly what it's like to be nine years. That's about the age that you stopped.

Shame in Peace,

Skin and Toast