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"i don't think this next poem needs any introduction-- it's best to let the words speak for themselves"- Billy Collins, in his poem, "The Introduction."

9.28.2010

bound 

Today i tried to bind my breasts
with an ace bandage
i found on the shelf at walgreens
unwrapped,
discarded,
perhaps by some other curious boygirl,
nervous
they made it easier for me.
i made it out of the store,
free
ness hidden in my purse,

but it hurt me.
it was hard to move,
to breathe.

i felt bound.
like corsets and sets of teeth
gnashing.
like dreams.

there are two sets of dreams:
there are the ones where i am free
and the ones where i am bound.

My breasts bind me.
to calls on the streets
to minutes spent with men who take my
no
like pick-pockets
when they shake my hand,
with smiling eyes,
and put it in their pockets.

then, when they say you're pretty,
and ask you for your number,
you look for your
no,
first in your hands,
then in their eyes,
and all you see is danger,
so you smile back
because you know the way like metal

aut
o
mat
ic

you know the way the world runs,
cold.

my dreams bind my chest closed,
bind my body to my bed,
wrap my room up,
around the windows,
so it is dark,
cucoon my house, my town
in panicked nighttime,
bind Time
so it is tiny,
stilted, silent,
short and fluttering winged heartbeat
of a moth
that forgets
where it has gone,
all the forests,
that have taken flight
underneath its belly.

we are
Stuck.
in fabric
clothesed.

and if i could choose
its taste, my name,
it would be red silk,
carved by dying silkworms
in iron pans
stuck
to eachother's bodies
sliding on the round metal ground,
burning
like the summer asphault.
against my feet
when i am running
from nothing, toward nothing,
haunted by nothing but a knowing at my back,
a quivering cold rain
without memories.

that's how they get the silk out, you know?

last week, in my dream, i said no,
but it didn't matter.
and then i forgot it on His skin.

bodies and streets have a way of getting me lost,

together.

in mo(u)rning,
i forgot my dream,
but knew the silken film it left in me
like it had crawled in
each pore of skin
needle sharp,
nothing left closed.

i knew the taste of metal in my mouth,
the gag,
Bound.
to
Forget

i want a new body,
new street,
new dream,
new memory.

but all i have is this,

this cloth in my hands.
heard Ana @ 1:04 PM