nails

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this is a poem.






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these inconsistencies (don't cry)

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(Maybe it is true that I am an ugly girl.

An inconsistent, selfish woman.)

There is a mirror in the corner and it is watching.

There is a mirror in the corner

and it is a tape recorder.   Your step-father will know everything.

I look at my chin in the mirror and see it is too big.  Too big for you to love me.  Not big enough to keep you from fucking me but definitely too big to keep you from holding my hand on the street.  I am a simple and inconsistent woman and such an ugly girl to boot!  It’s true!  Don’t argue, it only makes you look stupid.  And every now and then stupid is worse than ugly.  Ask anybody.  My sister and I learned early that the best thing we could ever do is win the love of a man.  Our mother beat it in to us with her big curls and big lips.  Her big lips all done up in Yummy Plummy lipstick.  Don’t forget your push-up bra.  I was never beautiful when I was around her.  Who would have thought so?  Look at her.  Look at her lips and her hair and how tall and thin.  That isn’t me.  That was my mother.  I didn’t even come close.  And then she died.  It wrecked my eyes and my heart and all of my soft, aching insides.

I look at this man

his blond hair

and think    don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry

Such big, beautiful words falling

from his big, knowing hands.  Hands

that have turned so many

pages of the sacrosanct and

fell so gently upon

the nipples of so many

aching women.

How I ache!

How I ache!

Where are you?  Where are you now?

When there is nothing I’d love better than to waste away below the sweat of an angry hand. 

Let me shy away from your gaze.  I want to feel afraid of you. I want to be crass below your touch, say all the horrible words that embarrass me later in the day and cry your name out against your tangled sheets.  I want your fist in my hair.  I want your cock up my ass.  I want you to slap my face and smile against my hot cheek.  I see myself becoming a corpse and so I want to get fucked as hard and often as I can.  You seem like a man who might see the necessity of all this. 

It’s been so long since I’ve cried in front of anyone.

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as always, critique is welcome.  angelasimione at gmail dot com

i want to be good at this.

correct me. seriously.

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 there is nothing to promise

there is nothing to promise, I promise you.  please excuse the awkward tears in my paper.  the bites in your cheek.  let me lay quietly, don’t reprimand me.  don’t reprimand me just take my face in your hands, your big hands, your big hands.  if we were both willing and fashioned from stronger material maybe we could be the instruments from which music for bad people is made.  if we were stronger.  or if i was.  if i were better.  if i could take a better beating.  let me try.  i look at you and shiver.  i remember your blue eye.  the way you peered at me through that hot inch of air.  pupil to black pupil, my curiosity spread wide.  it is no secret that my ultimate intention is to burn this body down to nothing, just a cold and stupid, grey stump, good for nothing save for the paste you might make from spit and ash.  my mother’s heart rattles inside her silver tin.  my mother’s heart rattles in my ear.  i put your fingers in my mouth and suck the salt you offer.  i put whatever you offer into my mouth and take the meaning you provide.  down down down in to my stomach and i think of my skin turning young below your nails.  my mother’s heart was burned down to nothing and made useless save for the paste you might make from spit and ash.  her widower marries another and her ash still shivers in the cold confines of her Clock Urn.  he said “might as well have something useful” when he picked out the carriage for her remains.

now, ask me if I believe man’s love is eternal.  now watch me laugh.

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critique me.  i mean it.  i want to be good at this.  send me an email if you like.  angelasimione at gmail dot com

Mein Gesicht an dem Kissen

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some sort of unknowable pull.
some sort of intoxicated desire.
some sort of gross need.

some sort of unnameable itch.
some sort of gasping breath.
some sort of gaping mouth.
some sort of begging bitch. 

what fire?
what spit?
what fuel
burning across this livid skin, this apologetic pink?

what name?
what prayer?
what immoral ache?

see me
as if eyes had never found my face.
see me as if i were new.

what of all this anxiety and demand?
shut your mouth until it's time to kiss.


your face in my telephone.
your torso rising in my bereft and lonely dreams.


some sort of answer.
some sort of opiate.
some sort of comfort.

some sort of eager whisper across the knees.
some sort of fever.
some sort of austere hope.
some sort of home.

what fire.  what spit.  what fuel.

your accent tonguing the tips of my syllables,
polishing my silent cowboy edges.
in your mouth,

my name
my history
my fearful disbelief
never had it so good.



some sort of mirror.

some sort of reckoning.


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excerpt:

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I sit across from the thin mirror in the corner.  I am folded up like a blanket , all my limbs arched and turned inward toward my form, shielding the delicate tips of pink from all eyes.  Even mine.  I look at my face.  I see the red lines I’ve allowed to be drawn across my forehead.  Examples of humiliation and confusion. Proofs.  It’s all mathematics now.  I stand up and walk to the dresser.  I pull out the black sweater in the top drawer.  I watch myself in the mirror.   I count the seconds it takes.  I recite my age.  I am acquainted with enough years to make sense of all the spinning.  I turn the knob and step out in to the hall.  The mirror stares after me.  I am looking out the window now.  I can count the avenues and detours.  I pull the sweater over my cold self and keep walking.  Two sleeves and a hole for my head.  I can count until I find myself outside your radius.  I can count rather than repeat your name.  I can watch the clouds.  I can count.  I can hope.  A window.  A window.  A way out.  

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last night while walking home from the train i left some poetry on the street

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each night, i die
text on abandonned mattress in Oakland, CA
angela simione, 2012

something to keep you warm while i'm gone...

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a poem and a song:



keep your guard up, little one.  the fire is here.  it's already at the foot of the bed.  keep your eyes opened wide, little one, and be ready to jump. be ready to run. be ready to lie to their immaculate faces in response to the damage they have done.  Truth has the benefit of being historically endorsed, he tells me, but maybe if we look close enough we will see there are also positive attributes and outcomes from the telling of lies. then he held me tightly to him in the white bed.  the fire was at my feet.  he said LOOK AT ME.  he remembered then something i'd said the night before about wanting to have my face slapped and up went his hand.  keep your guard up, little one, you've already taught him now how to love you.  keep your guard up, little one, you've told on yourself.  your secrets are hanging half-way out.  put your tongue back in his mouth, whatever it takes to keep you from talking, whatever it takes to keep you from confessing.  confession is the alter of love.  keep at a safe distance.  that isn't what we've come here for.  back up.   watch him, if you will, swell inch by massive inch and don't let go of the beauty of this impressive view.  high and hard, little one, keep your guard up. keep your eyes opened wide.  keep your tongue out.  don't blink and don't explain a fucking thing.

excerpt:

maybe...



(we breathed at each others mouths, panted at the open wish.  

we stared at each other, point blank,  blue eye to blue eye. 

he asked me if i was an atheist.

he had such a slow southern drawl.

he is the first man i ever watched masturbate.)



at a certain moment 
a certain level of detachment becomes necessary.

maybe one day i can be the thing that you can feel safe attaching your dreams to. 

maybe one day you can look at me and not feel abandoned.

maybe one day you can look at me and not feel like abandoning me.

maybe one day we can lay down, side by side, and just look at each other and talk easily, without any expectations about tomorrow.

maybe one day it'll be okay to think about tomorrow.

maybe one day thinking about tomorrow won't be so scary.

maybe one day you'll be able to brush my hair out of my eyes and fall in love with my smile.

maybe one day you'll be able to brush my hair out of my eyes and fall in love with me.

maybe one day we'll be able to tell the truth to each other and not get upset.

maybe one day i'll open myself to you in the way you've been wanting me to.

maybe one day i'll let you watch me.

maybe one day i'll be able to sleep below your warm body and resign myself to that lovely ache of hearts beating against one another, out of time, through so many layers of skin and sweat, belly button to belly button, my tits against your chest and my hair falling in to both our gasping mouths. 

maybe one day we won't be strange shapes in each others day.

maybe one day i won't drink so much.

maybe one day i won't stay up so late.

maybe one day we won't be strangers.



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