My Overdose

Not like a river. Not like flying. Not a good taste, anywhere. Not dark. Not like a tunnel, not like a train coming out of that tunnel, with me tied across the tracks, me under the wheels. Not like music, playing softly in the distance. Not like the slang, not like anything misspelled or garbled. No small animals at the fringes. Not in the mouth of a large dog. Not like dragging a piano through the street, a rope around my neck. Not like many soft hands. Not like falling deep into a feather bed from a great height. Not like a film playing in slow-motion across my stomach, across my mouth. A little like a tiger, like a tiger falling from a great height in slow-motion, with a rope around her neck, in her mouth, watched by small animals softly in the distance.

Lines Excised from the 5th Poem About Your Death

Then you said, I'm not really your mother. How, when you took off your shirt, I saw your black-winged bra cupping your freckled breasts. The Wednesday when you told me you couldn't answer my call last night because you had someone's cock in your mouth. The script you wrote for me for valium, so you could get some yourself. The part where you kept your fingers under your eyes to stop the mascara from running. How your hair got in my mouth on the ferris wheel. How you were supposed to engaged, but the obituary said single. The part where you were a pole dancer. The part where you fucked the hospital janitor. The pink lampshade with the feather trim. Your son's pencil drawings of rats on your refrigerator. How you cried every time in the same monotone when your boyfriends broke up with you. The matching bitchy cats under your sofa, your sink. The poster of a pastel garden just above your toilet that appeared to be painted by an extremely depressed grandmother. The part where your pregnant patient hung herself. How you counted to three in a voice as sweet as any hypnotist to get your son to put his video games away. How he has your enormous bronze eyes, the eyes of a busy victim. The sickly yellow light above your stove, how it made us all look bloodless, dying. How we looked in that polaroid from the party, curled up on the black velvet sofa, the white of your big teeth matching the backs of my hands. The dislocated, sudden shadows a flash makes. How in all my dreams of you, you are wearing a yellow flowered scarf around your head, although you never wore a scarf. How you swoop slowly down from turbulent clouds as if you are riding a floating dinner plate. What you really said to me. How you made me my first martini, and I was disappointed. The part where you came on to my psychiatrist and he turned you down. How your insides ached afterwards, as if you'd been hit with a shovel in the stomach. How I tried to pretend to sympathize. The drugs we shared on that couch. The kiss we nearly shared on that couch. How you said you were worried about the stereo speakers, Is sound coming out, or going in? Are we being recorded? How I told you to close your eyes and it would soon get better. How you wanted to ride the bumper cars three times in a row. How you hit my car so hard my elbow dislocated. How it didn't, eventually, get better; none of it.

Why Didn't You Save Me,
You Continue to Ask


July, the month of smoke, the month
of long dry houses, burning.

How to make a bong with a knife
and a salt shaker, a knife and a shoelace,
a knife and a human hand.

You yelled once-- a long, dog-
like sound. Something yellow in my

peripheral vision. A bruise on your jaw,
a new white around the rims of your eyes.

Nyquil and orange juice, wine and five
Sudafed, we were chopping aspirin
into powder: what could we do
to the inside of our noses?

We used lighters covered with hearts
to melt my Breyer animals
into the shape of a boat:

the calves,
the tiny horsemen,
the stiff collies, bending slow

then quick to the flame

Teen Angel



That year, everyone had your same name,
but spelled it with an "S". Black beauties

in baggies at the bottom of your purse.
A 28-year-old boyfriend. Your whispers

that my bangs made me look retarded.
I watched you break the mirror in your

locker with your hands, then stare at
the tiny blood like it was something

new. Drunk in the backseat of my car
on the way to a party. A handful of aspirin.

Some kind of song, that summer, with your
name over and over. I never knew how to

look at you, quite, one eye fixed just
a finger's breadth to the left of the other.

Dopesick Angel


The bedsheets he uses to cover his
windows chatter in the wind, I watch

the stains on their edges move
into formation, grow wings. I imagine

what she saw just before the Mustang
struck her, I see her trying to raise her

hand to cover her eyes. He said he kissed
me because the mole next to my eye

reminded him of her, although she
didn't have any moles, and was much

softer and easier to touch. I touch
his crown as he's sleeping; I rub

the plastic edges, peel the stick-on
bunnies off the inner rim.

Driving with the Top Down

You're touching my waist, my hips, but it's not you,
it's the guy who looks like you and we're climbing

the stairs between rooms of warm pink light, complicated
wallpaper and soft, soft gray couches.  One of my

friends -- the long-haired one with hand tattoos --
is trying to teach us guitar, but we can only watch

each other's lips and tongues.  Your words have a
feel, they feel like felt or a wool skirt and everything

is just a little too hot so I take off my skirt and I'm
wearing my knee socks pulled all the way

up and some high-heeled boots which catch on
the rug while we leave the noisy warm room with

its guitar music and lacy pink drapes, but you catch
my hand, you grab me by the elbow and haul me

up and you say, next time, I'm driving.