If you were to hold me,

would you hold the was-child me, brown-moon-eyed

even then, beneath Texas Sunheat hotter than a turtle's slick shell on a highway, or would you hold

teenage-me in the corner of that, shoved up against that

wall by my friend's father as he leans in for a kiss and I drip

water from my bathing suit onto the shag carpet, or would you hold me as I tumble--

embryo-me, down the stairs inside my mother, away from his clenched, olive-colored fist,

the peach-light blinking on and off, or, if you were to really hold me, would it be hard for you to accept my shoulder-shudder of not-wanting to be touched after that time teenage-me met that 

40someodd man in a chat-room-box, hold me later after he wouldn't take me home until after I had sex with him, would you be revolted to hold me after he left his smell in my hair and I told no soul--

not even you, would you be holding me through it-- holding the oldest, star-lit part of myself that shines galactic-bright like the north on a cold winter night, would you hold all the pieces of me, the 

reeking purple pieces I have forgotten

my God-childness, not in a field kneeling beside a stained glass window—not holy, not light-loved,

would you hold me

Nagoro: Valley of dolls

I didnt have much to do so I planted seeds

but none of them sprouted

I thought we needed a scarecrow

so I made one after my dead father

When I make dolls of dead people

the dolls are like my children

Facial expressions: the hardest part,

lips difficult I pull mouth strings

and they smile

I only think about the dolls

They scare some people

because they look so real

In the elements they don't live

as long as humans

I have a doll based on myself

She watches the pot and fire

She's taking a nap now

I don't think about death

I'll probably live forever

*A found poem based on the documentary short Valley of Dolls by Fritz SchumannValley of Dolls

Dolls take the place of former residents in a Japanese town left empty by an ageing population

Fritz Schumann

When pain replaces pain

But let us return to the child of the poem.

There is more here than a girl in pigtails, dragging

a doll by the hair, more than two brown eyes shrinking

in the Texas bright. Notice, for instance, the absence

of others. Notice how close cactus needles 

graze the girl's waist, fire ants at her feet carrying

a grain of bread from here to there. Heat rises

from pavement in a hazy wave, the bottom of her

shoes stick as she goes left to right. You are here now

so you notice the sounds coming through the door
-- the yelling and silence shatter against a heat so thick
you can barely breathe.

You are a visitor but this common as cacti for the girl,

as scorpion inside shoe-- inside her

a sadness has taken its root and coiled deep

in her gut and only the blue cat hiding

beneath the couch, understands.

But let us return to the child of the poem. Let us

watch as she sits on hundreds of

needles. Let us watch fire ants swarm her

hands, arms, bite her red. Let us

feel relief of the sadness leaving her body

in its place—a screaming pain.

Goddamn

Goddamn I love the sad smell of cedar, how it's musk weighs, in the closet soaking my clothes.

She's dusty, on the mantle, she leans between the naked angels and dried flowers.

I love sandpaper, the dust that makes me sneeze like I'm coming.

Im a little dark woman. I make things with my hands.

I fall asleep with my mind whirling thoughts like how no one has two shadows,
how in another life I'd become a truck driver--   

that endless road, all those lit cities, those unwritten poems.

Hungry to rub against a tree

I'm a necromantic. The rituals can be quite ellaborate.

I love black lace, wands and goats, have no time to waste

on people who spit in the face of a homosexual. I enjoy a Scandinavian

with gapped teeth and spend Fridays lying in fields

with goats, their ringed horns curved towards the moon like clits

calling up and out: hungry to rub against a tree. I have a soft spot

for cows. Their dumb eyes glaze over like mine & I wonder where they go.

I smell nice. I want longer hair and someone who spells correctly, someone

as warm as a black sheep in a barn.

I'm random. I want pigs to fly.I am for the alone and lonely. I love creases in the face and dead black women who sang or needed to.

Welcome to the water planet.

Most dont want to see 

the great white. Nearly all children begin to fear 

dark at age two,

but it's not entirely dark here, not with the head lamps,

not where I, submerged in underwater cage, 

jailed in a blue abyss light pours

above and I float. I'm crazy. 

I'm crazy here with the shark's teeth

and industrial jaw. 

My amygdala zapped and glowing I breathe in, I am lighting up.  

But now she sleeps in the warmth of her own bowed body

she once carried on her back 

silent pain till a balloon popped

and all the anxiety withered in the warm

trickle of blood down her leg, down stream into zero

she discended—that child, into a warm haze where

they left her-- all of them

                                                she was kind of floating out there

till the bite brought her back, the red

rivered puddles: the world was clear again,

the world was clear and the sheath stayed warm

with knife-in-mind for years

scars mapped her body in stripes,

blotted constellations beneath her sleeves

Angels and demons are not so distinguishable

In her head: a voice hawked her swiftly

into a kaleidoscopic wonderworld: triangles, stars,

trapezoids swirled

above and through her, she became

aware of a ringing from a rock-- an outer tinnitus in the silence, in the light

moss dripped and hummed its green. The presence was there-- that voice

in her head ushering her over her shoulder, over a cliff

in the black dark, feet leaving fogged prints on tile, she removes her clothes. She is not beautiful

naked-- a secret she wants to undress for the world. She is not beautiful naked

and in the dark-- free, she stumbles

Is it angel or velcroed-demon? Shamans say mental illness is a merging of the spirit

world into the earth world, a message to pass into a human body. What message is she meant to carry? What message so worthy of the burden.

The meds have all but taken the presence away, closed her portals tight so barely

light:

but she remembers how she once brewed under moonlight buckets, how she counted numbers till they meant something holy, how the world groaned fluorescent, all the time: meaning in every damn thing, every damn thing a doorway, a meadowsweet's beckon through it, so she could turn another fragrant corner into endlessness