From the Desk of the Alien Princess

No passion, no love—
stinging like a smoking gun.
Empty buildings, crowded streets,
Endless deserts of concrete.
Nothing to lose, nothing to save,
I radio skyward: “Hit the button—
this one’s already in the grave.”

I’m a “fuck you” graffitied in hot pink,
I’m only seven razor sharp nails
So I can still fuck and roll joints,
Yeah, I warp this gender like a waterlogged book!
I’m a pearl in the docs, a lace gun,
A cig with a lipstick ring,
A creature that just wants to fuck like all the textbooks said,
Yeah, I’ll cram your words down this throat just to see how far they’ll go!
I’m the itch and burn from a cheap earring,
I’m that purple laughter, that guttural scream,
The distant click of heels approaching,
And you’ll never reach in deep enough to touch my soft core—

unless I part my dew-laden petals
and place my hard-won dignity
on your outstretched fingertips,
like a fine-tempered sword blesses
the knight’s calloused shoulders.

I saw a haunted doll at the thrift store today,
porcelain limbs and a soft body.
Golden hair tangled and matted,
one eyelash strip stuck in it.
A forgotten ribbon with a dab of dried glue clinging desperately to the edges of it.
Powder-blue dress, fake silk and lace with tulle beneath.
I looked into the still, glassy blue eyes,
(one missing an eyelash)
& I remembered my own porcelain doll:
Flaxen curls from a fairy tale, little pink dress.
I wanted to take her home and fix her up:
Comb the hair very gently, first with my fingers and then a little brush,
(I used to brush my dolls’ hair with my own brush so we’d have something to share),
taking care not to pull out the hairs while untangling knots –
she can’t grow any more, after all.
I’d snip that stupid ribbon and replace it with one tied about the head, removable –
I want her to be comfortable.
I would remove her dress, bathe her limbs with a damp cloth.
Lay her on my bed to rest while I fix up the clothes, re-sewing buttons and roses.

A doll is sort of like a daughter, sort of like a best friend –
Always ruined and abandoned in the end.

It’s beautiful out today:
the type of day that makes you throw down the screens,
abandon all the necessary work,
forget the unnatural silence of a snowless January night.
Today is for basking in springlike sun.
See the geese shrieking overhead,
a dotted V against a clear blue sky.
Maybe everything will be ok in the end.

the china teacup trembling in its saucer,
its electric oil-stained quarters
and two lovers at the centre.
beneath a violet-houred sky
sweet rivers run smooth and deep.
this is what i want to feel.
this is what i want to keep.

I want so badly to be good.
So desperate for it that I let
the desire do its devouring
all the way down to my cyanide-seeded core.
Pick my bones, and before long we’ll have
a pile of my own gravestones.
I can feel the maggots in my gut already.
My imprints in shifting sand fade within the day.
& the worst part isn’t even all this rot—
it’s that I can see it coming, but I can’t stop.

I wish I could curl up like a cat
And sleep the world away—
Today, everything is terrifying
In the most mundane of ways.

I wish I could spread my wings like a bird
And scatter my song across the sky—
Every day I long to be heard
And yet never really try.

I wish I could be a mouse
Settled in your walls,
Unnoticed but for the
Incessant scratching.
I wish I could be a microbe
And make a home in your gut,
Unnoticed but for the
Acid gurgling.

I wish I was anything but a person—
This unruly body demands too much.
I wish I didn’t want to be embraced
Because I shrink from every touch.

Human screams cut a gaping rift in the universe,
Tearing the nameless fear limb from limb.
We live and breathe politics,
Guilt and anger and grief
Mixed in one bitter drink.
What good is it to fear what’s out there
When there’s so much to fear right here?
Consolidate your resources,
Worry about the rest later.
Chew your tongue to a pulp,
Dig your nails in til your palms bleed.
Nothing is nothing is something is everything
In the face of incomprehensible greed.

It seems to me,
as I sit with my cigarette,
the figure opposite of a tree
melds shadow with silhouette,
effortlessly.

Backlit in the bracing dark
of a December morning
by the streetlamp’s mini-sun: stark
artifice of conforming—
it’s no place for a lark.

It’s the same as me:
roots confounded by cement,
its breathing a mere accessory
to consume the cigarette
of an exhaust-pipe, mercilessly.

Wide concentric rings
when counted show years;
that wonder lost when sings
the industry of Nature’s tears,
all beings reduced to mere things.

My musings I must cut short,
for chill seeps in, daylight draws near;
Cars go by in waves to exhort
a human purpose made so clear
against what trees purport.

But in looking, I know;
its truth courses thru my veins,
that idleness is not to show
humanity what activity gains,
but in still silence we shall grow.

When will I let myself write for fun again?
This morning I awoke
still dreaming of old playlists,
moody jazz looping its arms thru
scenes unwritten, plots awaiting their unfurlment.
I came to this place on a prayer
from my foremothers,
devoted to slash in the way
of one who has never been loved.
I used to brandish my fangs with pride,
sink them ferociously
into ghostly figures on the other side
of the fourth wall.
Unravishing now,
I watch my former world from afar,
fragmenting exponentially,
new signifieds punctuating
my alienation
with every /

I navigate my writing life IRL slowly,
hesitantly.
Nobody else can see
the tentacular mess
lurking in the depths
of an already-choppy sea.
Each time I read
I’m blinded by a lighthouse-glare;
not the beacon of hope it should be,
but a provocation of that thing.
I try to beat it back with a stick and it bites me.
And every boat glides seamlessly by.
Their slipstreams have me retching, gravity bending
in sickening contours that leave me reeling.
I’m sick of being cold
in my fingers and toes,
sick of feeling like everyone knows
something I don’t—
So rotting, I float.

When will I let myself write for fun again?
In my dreams my tomb draws tourists,
high schoolers groan over my work
in their anthologies.
It’s for this I’ve stopped embroidering
my name on the mundane,
and I fear it will be a very grave mistake.

Spit me out like a cherry pit—
I’m something you shouldn’t swallow.
If you force me down I’ll live
Like a rock in your gut, Kronos,
A geode set to explode inside.
You know it’s only a matter of time.

Welcome to Mars:
between the harsh desert sun and icy tundra winds
Salmacis disappears.
Men speak in tongues foreign to my ears,
pretty girls let themselves be led
by invisible leashes to miserable beds.

I know I am not fit for the usual she-fate.
I won’t shave my legs,
I won’t contour my face.
I won’t cling with coffin-nails
to a womanhood that was never meant for me.

But
I want to be the fluttering helix of butterflies in orbit.
I want to be roses growing through wrought-iron gates,
I want ribbons and flowers and birdsong and lace.
I want a perfumed chamber, honey strained through stained glass.
I want work, I want a kitchen,
I want strawberries and kittens and chickens,
I want a china teapot and the sweet whistle of a kettle,
I want strong nimble hands that can work a needle.

I want the fire in the core of me
to spill from my pen like smoke from a recoilless,
I want to be heteropatriarchy’s murderess.
I want future,
I want freedom,
I want all my sisters safe—
Like man never even existed in the first place.

Let me be free
in the femininity
I’ve created for me.

I have no friends.
Just enemies,
self-unaware robot enemies,
goons on world 1-1 working for the big boss.
If only this life was just a game.
I press pause, button-mash to no avail.
I want to explain,
but I know I'll inevitably fail.
That's why every single time
I look into your bright young eyes,
I just feel like crying.

No one wants to work
No one pays the workers

The sky fills with smoke
Politicians say it’s normal

A gold carriage and glittering crown
Slumped forms line the tunnel

Forced to dig the gap
You’ll be buried in

Let it simmer
Let it simmer
Let it simmer

The space between the stars mocks me—
(non) existence in that murky Infinite.
No before, no after,
no here, no there.

I know that
Nothing comes from Nothing
but God
and that Nothing is a misnomer
for Something—
but my lungs are still tight
like I’m in the vacuum of space,
holding on to that empty ache
for you, you, you.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust:
We all return to the compost bin.
Even the manager, interrupting
The workers’ talk in devotion
To an uncaring corporate god.
Even the boss, who yells at
The broke busboy
For nibbling on extra bread,
To squeeze just a couple more
Crumbs into the money-altar.

Forks clink and scrape against plates,
Creating more and more food waste.
I watch the murky water swirl down the drain
And wish capitalism a death of endless pain.

I was born fully clothed in a mall parking lot—
hesitant to accept Her touch,
but it was the crest of the first dawn,
welcomed home, open-armed,
infected with joy.

She is
warm tea
the sunset on my back
lingering sand after the beach—
sunflowers turn their heads towards She.

Her touch has made me know
that wherever I may go,
I am forever and never alone.

I don’t want to hang my fate on a clockwork star,
but Sagittarius and Cupid both shoot
with the same blind arms.

As the moon ripples in its laked reflection,
I too am drenched in distortion.

Listen. The call of the loon brings the moment into focus.
Water birds tend to mate for life, don’t they?
Droplets form crystals on resistant feathers,
mini constellations.
Where I see a harvest plow, you might see a pot.

To cleft your brain
and dive between its slick folds is all I really want.
Instead I offer you the gift of silence:
perfect, suffocating silence.

epigram of the everyday:
crisscrossed by telephone wires
and the silhouettes of pigeons,
beauty once again rears its ugly head.
rainbow streaks the pavement:
iridescent drool that oozes
from the black-coughing maws
of wheeled beasts, the liquid state
of its unforgiving growl.
its solid state grasped in your fist
sags under the weight of
milk, bread, and cucumber-scented shampoo—
its stretched-thin handles cut into your hands
like the bills and rent that chafe your brain,
the rotting no-longer-pink brain that
sags under the weight of
everything.

and your body, how could it help you?
meta-narratives whisper in your ears,
threading their poisons through your DNA—
controlling, optimizing, capitalizing,
dripping sickly sticking oil through cogs,
grinding gears to screeching halts—
you’re an abandoned automaton.

but lifting your glazed-over eyes
to the brilliant, glorious display of sky-fire
kindles a long-dormant ember—

and your trapped-butterfly heart
faintly flutters.

Click-clack, chitter and scatter,
six spindly legs going pitter-patter
up the ridges of your crooked spine,
nesting in the bubblegum
that holds your canines.

Ghost spiders tickle my arms
in sleepless dreams,
I shiver and twitch
at any air-current shift.
I’ve been screaming in the shower,
sobbing into my hair dryer,
scratching every itch
with a nauseous thrill—
I feel them in my ears, my hair,
my brains, behind my eyes,
buzzing and cicada-screaming
inside—
and they want
out.

I’m going to explode into blackflies.
I’ll lay eggs in your laundry,
crawl around in your breakfast.
I’ll inject you with my disease
and die in your cup of tea.
You slurp up worms like noodles,
so I’m sure you wouldn’t mind.
Besides, a new roommate
shouldn’t be too hard to find.

When I run through the long grasses
they bow in waves,
a worshipful motion. I, too,
live only for change.
I kiss the dew good-morning
and flee into the brightening day.

I spend hours helping clouds like pulled-apart yarn
shift and morph so,
ever so
infinitesimally
slowly.
Clouds are slow—
they have all the time in the world.
I move on to dandelion seeds,
whirl around with them and disperse,
a T-shirt cannon of babies.

Then I spend some time
(I’ve lost track)
frolicking in slipstreams,
being spat out of moving things. I gush
into the tunnel behind a train and push
the commuters back.
Most of them don’t even blink.
But they’re a fraction of an inch
away from where they stood before—
that’s still change. That’s something.

I sweep through city streets,
picking through litter-filled gutters
and skinny sidewalk-planted trees,
conducting an orchestra of leaves.
Their cages rattle in a cry to be free.
Two grocery-laden girls
struggle against my current
so I back up, reverse, become
a guiding hand on their backs,
gentle and kind, even as I brush
past their ears in a cold rush.

My mother is going to bed
when I return home, my father just rising.
I am gentle when mother watches over me,
but with father I get to scream and howl,
throw myself against window-panes.
Sometimes, violence is change.
I rip up trees, bend telephone-poles,
weep and wail at it all—
the horror,
the awe,
the love.

Yes, the love.
I love this wide, wide world—
that’s why I want it to change.

I found her beneath mossy rocks in March.
Those days, I went to the creek just to breathe.
She sang to me with the voice of a lark,
And came to me in the shape of different trees.
Overarching oak whose bark pooled into roots,
A swaying willow, weeping away, with a wiry trunk,
Cold and fragrant-needled pine or spruce,
A silver birch who offered her leaves to pluck,
Sticky sugar maple that caught in my teeth.
I watered her roots and watched as new shoots
Sprang up and wrapped 'round me like a wreath,
Grew mulberries so I could taste her fruit.
I knew by the morning’s light she’d have fled,
And when I woke there were just leaves in my bed.

I got too high when I was with you. I remember one day,
my skeleton tried to rip its way out of my flesh. You
had me diving for scraps, throwing me a bone every

now and then, so I wanted to give you all of mine.
When I retreated to my nondescript bed, I slept
naked with the door unlocked in the hopes

you’d slip inside and I could pull your insides
out. I remember when I tried to kill myself
in that room I locked the door, even though I knew

my body would start to smell eventually.
Whether I wanted to let you in or keep you
out, it was all rot. I remember one day,

you asked if I was a Capricorn and I spent
three weeks wondering what that meant.
In the sex dream I woke from in a cold sweat,

you looked different but I knew it was you.
In my waking life, just your touch on my thigh
made us both scream in terror, and an

indirect kiss from smoking my cigarette
made you spray-paint vomit all over your bed.
I’m still afraid of the perfume you said

was hot, but I can’t bring myself
to buy something else. I’m still
digging my nails into you. I guess

I could blame the smoke, or the pills,
or the one line I did to impress
you at that stupid party, but

all the drugs don’t add up to what
I became. The gasoline was always there –
you just dropped the match. And I’ll burn forever

because of you. I guess what I’m trying to say is,
you broke my heart because you were the one
person I thought I was safe from. You found

a key I’d long since stopped looking for and
opened all my worst doors. I think it was
on purpose. I’ll never know for sure,

but sometimes I think if I saw you on the street,
I’d grab you and shake you and yell,
I was overdosing and you could tell.

I am not the woman in the mirror,
I am not the one you seek.

I am the man in the door with a gun,
the one who returns to the scene of the crime,
the gynecologist with a scalpel.

I am the fetus, feeding greedily on placenta,
puppetting a liability body,
forever-violatable,
as I plot to tear my way out.

But no, go ahead: cut out my tongue,
sew my lips together.
Make me your silent doll
to sit at this inane tea party.

I’ve practised choking on my own blood—
I know how to do it quietly,
politely.

All those sick July nights
Became my favourite twisted delights –
Starship Nostalgia makes them a planet
To return to when I’m missing you.
I ate the pomegranate
And learned growing up is forgiving you.

When the black hole yawned
We became scattered planetary debris –
But we were strong,
Pulled back together by our own gravity,
Exchanged our atoms
’Til we couldn’t tell who was who
Or what happened –
Amnesiac twin moons.

Jupiter can laugh cruelly,
Neptune can weep crocodile tears.
I still believe in you truly –
Libra’s golden scale doesn’t measure years.

The huge summer passed
Like a snake swallowing the moon.
A black hole, burning cold so vast
Could not destroy our sun at high noon.
No, our heat was intense;
In it I nearly drowned.
I came up for air, incensed
That in dangerous waters love abounds.

There is no one to blame,
No reason for such deep shame.
It’s all just the ebb and flow of energy –
And despite everything,
I love you endlessly.

My fire-haired beauty comes only once a year,
With eyes so wise and cranberry lips
To kiss away the summer’s tears;
To feed me joy fleeting as an eclipse.
Upon her head she wears a diadem
Of clearest cornflower, or cloudy opal,
Or night’s darkest black with a central moon-gem
And spangled with pin-prick diamonds for all.
She brings me gifts of pumpkin, squash, and grain,
Kisses my flushed cheeks with ice-promisèd breath,
Invites me to dance in the wind and rain,
Sings with the whippoorwills of coming death.
She leaves me breathless, chilled to the bone,
Prepared to face the winter alone.

Cast off your demure veil,
Tonight we dine on nectar!
In the eye of a hurricane-gale
We become ephemeral as spectres.

Time slips ’tween fingers
Though it be no cloth.
You’ve spun me like a globe,
And touching so lingers
As a flame burns a moth.
Snake-skin shed your robes;
Let these ivy-arms grow
About your marble neck.
I’ve a purple-stained, enchanted tongue
That licks the room dark in one go.
Slowly we come to rest, statuesque,
Our duet out of breath and sung.

In this state, are we not most pure?
Drunk on green-glowing absinthe,
Succumbed to a fast-flowing allure?
Indulgence, ’tis said, far wiser than absence.

In peripheral of epiphany, I see
The wild girls dance in ecstasy.
You may think all this uncouth,
But this is decadence; this is youth.