Read an Excerpt
ROSE RED
I woke in the glass coffin of my bedroom. I watched the color go: first the fingertips, then the white traveling up my arm’s length. Both legs, thighs. The ribcage and neck. Lips the color of blood drained slow. Bone lit. No glow of rose tinted cheeks. I experimented with rouge, dyes and paint. I covered myself in rubies, but beneath the glimmer was skin as white as snow. Ice cold. Frozen over. This medication, they said, keep taking it. For the pain.
***
OBSCURIAL AND OTHER SPELLS FOR SURVIVAL
a mother and a girl a curl in the backseat
bent mountains of her knees
against the rushing of cedar trees
little fingers go from glass
to a wound beneath the belly
she is checking to see
if she is still intact
are the guts here the liver the stomach
the heart
or is she in pieces
a thing taken apart
she searches in the back of a Buick
for a lost thing
a firework turned inside out
blackening the car
in a cloud of gunpowder
and smoke
a shadow mass of soot needles
sends the car a-spin
ditchward
throws the girl ten feet
from the crumpled metal
of what used to be
the backseat
it begins with an accident
a girl wakes on the forest floor
makes her way to the road
to find her mother
taking inventory of the wreckage
shaking her head over
an upside down engine
but the look
on her mother’s face
upon that charcoal black
amassing above her little girl
and gasping not realizing
she had taken
two steps
back
so the girl learns loneliness
and how to climb trees
escape the thing
that held like a storm
to her insides
weave cedar ropes
in the hopes of holding it in
bind the self to nurse logs
for entire moon cycles
but in the dark of a gymnasium
with a boy’s hands clasped
at her waist she sways back and forth
to Boyz to Men
again
a fire that eats itself
back to blackness
blacks out the dancefloor
the boy and the bathroom stall
she falls into puking tar into the toilet
when she thought to release it
neither scissors nor seam ripper
would sever it
if Peter Pan could somehow
escape his shadow why not her
but the darkness clung harder
she learned to like the taste of it
ate it everyday back
into the bloodstream
on her wedding night
she snatched it trapped it up inside
a plastic bag and emptied it
into a bell jar
the mantle placed upon her
the new home
there they watched
the thing move and spin
caught within
glass walls
an apparition lost
without the host
it begins with dishes
with bags of peaches
from the fruit stand
paint samples and leaves raked
baked goods red velvet cakes
a hairline fracture
over time cracks
even the foundation
and when he came home
there was nothing left
save a small bit of fabric
from her dress
feathering
into ash
***
THE LOST BOYS
Drink this and be one of us
my brother passed
his bottle of wine to me
tried to offer life eternal
he was always trying to fix things
but this highway is haunted
the coast and its ghosts remind me
that I am broken
my brother has become
something immortal
and he didn’t even
have to die first
his thirst
for a better life
turned him
into darkness
and my mother tried to grieve
but it is hard to mourn
the living
so I tell her he is dead
because gone is better than missing
gone is a ghost you can blow out
the candle for
it is my duty to take him apart
to burn the letters rip down the flyers
drive the stake through his heart
because you cannot hang posters
for lost children pretending
they will one day come home
because at some point you realize
the pictures were for you
so for her I have become
a vampire hunter
armed with garlic
and holy water
but the truth is
I can’t do it
the truth is
behind fangs I still see
the lost boy
who used to be
my brother
so when he offered the wine
that was his blood
I took a swallow
tried to follow him
in shadow
but I remembered my promise
not to become a daughter missing
had to quit the ritual halfway
and watch my brother
say hello to the night
and fight alone
in Santa Cruz
I cry into my beloved’s hands
and abandon immortality
and he knows how hard this is for me
knows my capacity
for vanishing
so I anchor myself to him
and watch the waves
return to shore
I whisper a spell
of protection
for my brother
for all the lost boys
who came before
***
HALF MOON BAY
Half Indian
an old woman laughs
I must take after
a white father
because I can pass
they say the tribes
lived along the coast
all along San Francisco Bay
driving alongside waves
I feel alone
feel home drift away
the moon hooks the sky
and I drive trying to catch it
between my fingers
a crescent of white
a fight still present
Garbage Indians
the old woman told me
that’s what we called them
growing up in Monterey
the dump was on their reservation
because isn’t it always
and I bite my tongue until it bleeds
until I quiet the anger in me
and I’ll wait until I leave
Half Moon Bay
to scream into my fist
and say all the things
we are not supposed to say
to the people who are older than us
