Radicle

Poem in praise of self-hatred

I feel potent in my pains, in my curved spine, in the increasing

difficulty of holding the pages when I read in public … I might

have a bizarre sense of beauty, but my disease feels beautiful to

me. It feels powerful. —Raúl Zurita

inside of me there is a barren field I am ecologically sparse

in a thicket somewhere the bees hum monstrous children searching for my tit

in this new city where I have a new body

where I am the apogee of my efforts some sick sort of patchwork girl

I kneel I give thanks to the various gods of confusion

in the mirror I’m a museum of indecency

my nudity I do not understand I get the shivers when I see myself

my skin my arms pocked with scars

& I say out loud to the empty apartment

I feel like the most vile thing on this earth I think back

to the spaceship I used to pilot

that I had to guide through each dangerous maze

I was a child & watched my mother drown our family

I was just 12 years old & I knew I would never be the kind of happy

the kind that other people had so much of

the kind they threw to their dogs

I learned not to like anything especially myself

this habit has proven particularly impossible to correct

it’s nearly spring now I flit my tongue into the cold

I want to freeze my senses so that I won’t have to know desire

look at this life I am holding it together like carrying a completed puzzle from one table to another

& in the black forests of my mind

I imagine the future real & tangible splayed beside me on my bed

& I squeeze it close & I pray for the sun to die

outside my window they’ve just installed a new street lamp it is the brightest lamp in all of history

out there everything strains outward

I become the definition of anxiety

& my indescribably messy bedroom my precious squalor begins to tighten around my middle

I gasp into the stain of cigarette smoke haunting the walls

the tin ceiling dancing its little patterns

outside my window they are doing work

I don’t know what that means I don’t know anything about work

the Gowanus smells like carbon monoxide an odorless gas

last week I found a noose tied to a branch of a mulberry tree hanging over the water

I don’t know why I brought it home I’m not looking to use it

the dead fish of the Gowanus swim with the grace of an oil spill

the rope is strong in my hands the way my hands are not

a friend holds my feeble heart through the phone

I feel like a prop the cast forgot to incorporate into the scene

do you like my mask isn’t it pretty it raises the dead

this is me at my most desperate

I’ve begun to worship the weight of my wineglass

outside my window of course I can see no stars

in the sky innumerable corporate satellites are training their red lights on me

infinite possible universes bubble in my gut

in the sky nothing is happening

the G train rumbles through the night there are no passengers

in the sky I wish there were infinite poetries

I consider the way Zurita kissed the sky & made it sing to all of New York City

MI DIOS ES HAMBRE

MI DIOS ES NIEVE

MI DIOS ES NO

MI DIOS ES DESENGAÑO

MI DIOS ES CARROÑA

& my pain is my great comfort a blanket of the worst snow

I watch my sweet disease take hold of me as I exit my body I epitomize glee

I watch my pain swing my body into a liquid motion

I watch the sickness of my heart steam itself over a candle & whistle like an incantatory kettle

I watch my perversion on the small screen of my palm & it makes me shudder

I know definitively things are not alright

I am the soil toxic down to the bedrock I am a poisonous plant in an herb garden

waiting to be held waiting to secrete my paralyzing substances onto someone’s gentle hands

I snort two lines of coke & while I hold one nostril shut

I see my father in his coma I hear the respirator’s fading buzz

sing to me O muse I am your pious sieve