excerpt:

i think the diary is the most compelling form of writing there is... and that it can be harnessed to make a document of such astounding pain and beauty. i am so taken in by it, so ensnared. its value to me is immeasurable, indescribable. it is, itself, a reckoning.

i've been trying to find a way to take passages of my own diary and twist them in to something else. an alter ego? an alter ego that is somehow more real, more true, more honest that i am? or just me... myself, without all the shit in the way? my precious manners and readiness to please.






Worry Over Me.






A bare bulb flickering against a dark ceiling. I feel it almost all the time.

I curl. I turn. A line of smoke. The world closes. The ceiling descends.


It is 11 o’clock. The water is boiling. The man is asleep. No birds. No cars. The door is locked. No one will knock. Go wash the face. Go brush the teeth. Make everything clean. It is almost time to get the zipper down.

I’ve been yelling a lot at the man. It isn’t fair. Or it is more than fair. It is hard to know for sure. It is so hard to care about right and wrong now. I become my opposite. I slide against myself, eager to rub away my actuality. Give me the bad and dirty dream. Give me a bed to lie in. to Lie in. Lie to myself with everything I’ve got because all I am is In Pain and all I want is more pain. I must crack in half. It is the only way to alleviate this. No one seems to understand my needs.

The odd tempo, returning returning.
The odd tempo: brain beating
against hot bed sheets, the horrible echo,
horrible mouths...

Der Herrgott gibt.
Der Herrgott nimmt.

The heavy white descends. The ceiling drops and I spin. I spin in the Hot and Filth. The horrible mouth. The slammed doors. The yelling. The names. I called my mother HYPOCRITE. She grabbed me by the throat. I held her bony hand. Body polluted by tumors. Face distorted. Nameless Figure. Tuneless Fugue. This horror, grafted to her bones, pressed itself against her brain. Words ripped away. She could not speak to me. I held her bony hand. I watched her full lips falling from her face. I laid my head on her empty stomach when she died. I laid her dead hand on my face.




Twist my face. Twist it away.


My hair makes a nice strong rope. Twist it round your big fist. Twisted lips, such a sweet smile. My wide welcome. Hot husk of deer. Scent rising. Batch of Gardenia. Crush the white. Grind the petal. Pull. Pull. Twist. Take yourself a gift.

Dive without regard to me. Dive and do not stop. Do not think of me, just watch. Brim with resentment and make me a coward. A good long roll in my bad parts. The heated grimace. Polish the worst of me. Shape the edges to a point. Bore. Bore. Bore and dive. Enough of this and we’ll stop caring about everything. We’ll be pleased with the stretch and snag. Smug and crass.

I turn.

Twist the rope in your hand. Twist it round your fist. Turn my face to the ceiling. Turn my face to the floor. Close the world. Drop the ceiling. I want to be flattened out by morning.



There must have been something before now. a space, a time, a road before the white drowned everything out. Before she was stalled and made spare. Before her mother’s blue eye fell out, rolled in to her palm, made her sick, made her spare and thin, made her lay in bed all day with her legs aimed at heaven. There was a time before all this when her mother was still yawning, stretching in the morning, smiling over coffee with cream. There was a time when the girl wore her hair in a ponytail. when the girl was a daughter not a whore. Had a father. Had a mother.

Descending, descending, the ceiling wants to crash. Her blue eye. Her blue eye. Sick in the palm of my hand.



I want to tell you about my mother’s death so you can know what it has done to me. I need someone else to hear me when I cry and when I say her last word. When I repeat her last word. When I gasp on it. When I cringe on it. When I roll the word over my tongue and it catches in my throat like a fist. When I choke on it. The word spirals and snags, barbed now in my mouth. She opened her eyes. She looked straight ahead. She did not look at me. The blue of her eyes seemed milky. A wet scab. She sounded like a little girl. She cleared her throat. She opened her mouth and the word came out.







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