Terms and Conditions

Misophonia is the spike of hatred that shoots through the spine at the sound of chewing actual rage at molar grinding.

Hydrophobia is the shrinking of skin away from fluid life from liquid life because the fear is electric

Motherhood is the sprinting from bed at the sound of the wind the ache to wake my son and to keep him sleeping

Terms give rationale a treaty between the neuron jolt and the neuroses once identified, then nullified. To name it is to know it.

What is the name of seventeen death scenes and a mental list of who to call at the end of the world because your brain can't stop telling the story of what if the baby was dying?

Teething

The rhythm of the days is
        suddenly
                accelerated.
Short snatches of sleep
and frantic driving fingers
into a gnawing mouth.
The relief, too, is fragmented
wails into a space of silence ruptured
an eggshell snapping
a treebud bursting
a tooth poised to puncture.T

Kicked

To map the tremors
one must first accept
the truth of two living things.
A warm expanse stretched taut
with crisp bones and ridges
a landscape pulled smooth by tension.
A second force with ranging need
that spikes and drops
beneath the first
a sudden eddy against the weight
a shoving buoyancy demanded.
After this you may proceed
with hesistancy.
The mixture of the Richter scale
and dowsing rod
with jolts that spring unannounced
in the night to ripple through the dark.
The pattern rests, and swarms again,
a certain inconsistency
to breed obsession, to hook a fiend.
Each tremor fades, the map redrawn,
and untouched surface settles.
There is no change to eyed horizon
 but in the mind
the hunger grows,
another pulse, and then the wait.
Some needful knowledge or
pulsing ache.
There is no satisfaction found
while stillness haunts the hunting grounds.

Unaligned

I grow unsteady
while this mesh of tendon
and ligament and flesh
stretches tight around my frame
and springs suddenly loose
at times unaware.
There is a constant tilting
a lean into the world
like a prologue that only exists
to push some further thought
into being, or at least
into being heard.
The spreading of my feet
does not correspond
with the widening of the path;
instead I must, with single mind,
find balance
a constant negotiation
between two limits of which
both appear unclear.
The center of the self has shifted
forward and threatens separation
a relentless murmur for independence.
There is no solid ground
nor silence, nor serenity.
In the most sacred places,
I am not alone.
I grow unsteady
as this dream grows within me.

The Waiting Void

The thought of your being
is a thing-dream
an imaginary item.
Some sort of wishlist
sits in the midst of
my pulse, and appetite,
and urges
hunger for
an unlocked door.
I hear echoes in songs
and stories and shadows.
They cascade across my skin
tumbling about my bones
swelling in my brain.
It makes no sense
this you-it-thing.
I am full enough already
with longing and wanting
and more than I can handle-
things I can touch and turn
and create. You seem still
some trick, a feint
inside myself to consume
selfhood and develop otherness
a reduction by production.
Yet, for all that, I balloon
with this hunger for growing
stretching and swelling
and cannot let it be.
The thought, though, of a
you-thing, an object-self
weighs on my mind

The beaching

I wish to be adrift
free of the weight
of even my bones
with skin stretched 
between wave and sky
as smooth and countless
as the sand of beaches swelling
up into some portentous mass.
I imagine the silence
of nothing but the thrum
of my unfettered pulse 
echoing quietly into the horizon.
The horizon of course, is key
the solution to this puzzle between
the finite edges of myself
and this looming reach of space.
Perhaps between the water and air
the weightless self
can sort and split
redefine the sense of duty
into some more holy joy.
Till then I remain,
half-baptized, 
run aground in the tub.

Victory

The tension in my body swells.
It bubbles up
in softer rotund hips
in added creases around the elbow
in firm hints towards a double chin.
My skin resents me
for these protrusions
and in turn erupts in creamy stripes
new scars without a wound.
The only injury is that of weight
a heaviness my heart resists
by pounding
unrelenting at my ribcage.
How dare I let this happen?
My knees protest with my spine
in sore response.
The complaint is echoed in strain
and ache by every sullen part
but one.
And in its ceaseless gloat
the uterus smiles
and begins to bloat.