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Who The Hell Is Asuka Langley, Anyway?

My name is Emily Michealson.
I am sixteen plus day one,
and I had never before in real life
seen a gun
until three days ago.

I had before seen pieces:
a magazine, a bullet,
a shell,
a custom grip that read,
"it's the devil's job to judge you,
but my job to send you to hell."

Well,
I ended up in hell, all right.
If hell is separation from God,
Goddess, Gaia. Earth.
According to my parents, my worth
is
three million
five hundred thirty-two thousand
and three dollars
and the nuisance of
sixty-three callers
from various news networks.

The youngest person to go into space.
Billions will watch as nanobots and radiation lay my body to waste
in this larvae-like sac and transform me
into a creature never before seen.

Or maybe I will just die
a gruesome death
and this will all be a waste of time.

ORBIT

I find myself in a spaceship.
The searing void stares out before
me. I am at the helm, thinking
only of the survival of
my cargo. There is little air
in this metal pocket, a thin
placenta between me and the
barren cavity of Seliph.

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In elementary school, all I wanted was to be an astronaut
and be shot up into space.
But this one chance I am getting
is going completely to waste
because there are no windows in this pod.

A nurse whispered to me to pray
to whatever god I owed my days
as she prepped my body for insertion
into this blasted sac.

Strip down to your skin.
We will now shave off all your hair,
Saturn's rings
passing Jupiter's waterfall one last time.
When the liquid pushes at your lungs,
do not hold your breath.
You will acclimate in time
after we stitch you inside.

Reverse birth
still hurts.
The sac's thick outer layer
only affords me a single prayer,
a hazy judgement of light outside.
A shadow of a form,
a light sharp outside but only warm
and indistinct.
I am the yellow of the egg,
but this time,
there is more than just goo inside.

Heating System

The air vents
that used to sing to me
at home are absent
from this pod.

The cooling air
that soothed me, hellbent,
no doubt wonders
where I went,
where I might have chosen to abscond
if I had ever had the choice.

I open my mouth.
Fluid rushes in.
I cannot hear my own voice.
The birds that used to dwell in my throat
have all fled south
for the winter.

Shadorma

Those lonely
nights I spent at my
grandma's house
I should have
cherished more. Every week in
childhood, Wednesdays.

Dwindling
as I grew older.
Do you know
the tragic
story of the opposite
fridge magnets?

Scraped across
the white door made marks.
Scooted by
each other,
friends. But back to back, doomed to
push apart.

Coins Cold, Child Sold

Corporate fat cat
who I wish sat on a tack
handed my parents a stack
of crisp bills.

Their eyes widened with glee
until they could no longer see
their daughter, me,
just a pile of cheap thrills.

The instant wealth went to their heads.
Unconditional love? Pah! They chose money instead.
A simple girl cannot ameliorate debt-induced dread,
just make it worse. Now, one less name to go on their wills.

Enough money can erase all ethical concerns.
Who cares about human rights? Soon you will turn
into an animal who cannot yearn
for those simple blue skies and grassy hills.

Heartery

I once read a poem
that said heartbreak
would evolve me to my next form.

And although I think
it was talking about romance,
the words still ripple through my body warm:

my heart feels on
the verge of collapse,
straining to keep my blood flowing.

There was supposed to be red
pumping through my veins.
But under my skin, blue is glowing.

Brevity

A poet's tale
in eleven syllables:
"I stand at the window
and feel important."

It only takes eight
to say,
"My sorry life
has been shortened."

Or maybe I have been condemned
to live a life without end,
endless sights to see
for anyone who can afford a TV.

A poet's tale
in nineteen syllables:
"I have a plethora of words
to describe heterosexuality."

It only takes eight
to admit defeat:
"Soon I won't be
able to speak."

Autogenesis

Nobody taught me
how to use this weapon
I call a human body.
I had to learn,
had to grow,
on my own.

One day in elementary school,
a man came in and showed us how cool
it was to play chess. On
his pocketed display board,
a horse
jumped in leaps and bounds.
I hounded
my mother if she could afford
to let me join the chess club.

She practically clubbed
me over the head
with her insistent no.

So I borrowed a book
from the library
and an empty reading nook
and learned to play solitary.

One day when I was ten,
my friend invited
me to come along to Friend Day at the dance studio
she took classes at. I said okay
and spent that evening bored
out of my mind, body worn.
They were practicing for a recital.
I knew none of the steps, fatal
in my off-rhythm.
A schism
between me and the rest of the students.
I never went back.

Full-grade school musical.
Only those who could prove
that they had been schooled
in dance could be a flower.
I licked the envelopes and mailed a million glowers
to the music teachers after they assigned me to be a farmer.
Not an organic kind, but an earth-harmer,
armed
with pesticide and hoe.
I wanted to grow,
to spread my petals to the sky.

So I tried
to teach myself to dance.
A twirl here,
a curtsey there,
no matter how many glares
I earned from my mother.

One day, the neighbor boy
at the bus stop who only saw me as a toy
for torment mocked me
for not being tougher.

I did not want to stand behind
him any longer. So I formed my own line,
only to find out I would be left behind
by the bus if I did not acquiesce
to every bully's presence.

"I'll just go my own way,"
I proclaimed.
"I'll carve my own path.
I'll drive on my own track."

And now you all have to pay bills
while I watch soft rolling hills
undulate under my metamorphic skin.
Which one of us will win
in the end?

Haynaku Keikaku

All
in line
with his plan.

LIFE IN SPACE

There used to be a lush greenhouse.
My crewmates and I would work in
long rows, crescent dirt moons under
our fingernails. A sudden
burst of flame. I take the flowers
and escape to the waiting pod.
"How much is your work worth?" she taunts.
It will never be quite enough.

I'm No Picasso

Five leaves clinging on
to the end of the tree branch
outside my bedroom window.
An accidental splat of paint,
a mis-flicked brush.

Maybe the painter blew his nose
too hard, too fast, and some snot
landed on the canvas.
This moment in time, where the world was silent,
he wanted to last,
but this refuse he did not.

Five auburn blobs
drifting in a galaxy blanched,
preparing for the undertow.
The dark forest theory begs them to wait
before attempting to contact a civilization lush.

Because who knows
what lies out there in the galaxies God forgot?
I have no room to stretch my legs, to be anxious
about where I am being sent.
All that I am lies in the past.

All that I am is what that rich fuck bought.

Full Of Hot Air

I never wanted to be famous
because I knew I would eventually dissolve into a heinous
shadow of who I once was,
sold out for the cameras, packaged bottle of lust,

a fantasy of wealth, of power, of beauty,
but losing priceless luxury
of anonymity. That peace that comes with being alone,
with no fear of a fan walking up to your home.

I never wanted to be a star,
shooting across that sky blacker than tar.
Never mind the light pollution
that cloaks the cities, in good need of ablution.

I am bare, denuded, parts peeled back to the bone,
bleeding words never to be read,
riddled with feelings better left unsaid,
exposed for the cameras streaming back home.

To the city denizens, no doubt,
I am an instant star who they cannot go without.
But to some hidden inlet, some tribe deep in a forest,
I was a mere speck in the sky, here one second, gone the next.

Desolation

snow fall on a silent day
covering the ground in a suburb
and walking through the thin frost covering the dormant life below
under a grey sky
the same color as your heart in that moment

driving through the empty streets at midnight
watching the sleeping world pass by you
through your darkened window
illuminated by stoplights as your father drives

taking your unknowingly last steps in the train yard by your house
listening to the train horns in the distance
and making empty statements about running away
and your father says, "go ahead"
but you don't move
because there's no way that you can leave your whole life behind
at a whim

Thicker Skin

Here's the banger:
how many hangers
did I skin my fingers
on at work by accident?
After my shift, the pain lingered.

Here's the kicker:
my skin is growing thicker
on all my phalanges.
How handy,
to never need gloves again.

Did you ever hear the report
of the human who could run on all fours?
Moving so graceful,
but to others distasteful,
to emulate an animal on the ground.

Here's the news:
I will be followed by a robotic crew
armed with cameras to turn my perdition
into a test run for a future audition
for a reality TV show.

Who would pay
their life savings
to follow in my wake
and have a billion nanobots take
their plastic-surgeon-sculpted flesh
and thresh
them into an unearthly form as this?

Or will the rich be only sponsors,
erasing the debts of the poor
in exchange for creating a monster?

Orbiter

I was once your satellite,
staying up all night
for the chance to exchange sorry words
before your mother heard
you giggling from the garbage spewing
from whatever boy you loved that week.

I was once your little moon,
barren and waiting to bloom
under the sorry sheets.
But the moon is condemned to spin off one day,
having touched the earth once
and never again.

I was once your constellation,
spilling stories of damnation
into the blank sheets
I made my home, complete
already, not yet aware
you'd vanish into the cloudy air.

Scrying Machine

A dirty pile of laundry.
A perfect opportunity
to scry and the future see.

I plop down on the tile
of the laundry room floor, bite back bile:
the odor from the toilet wafts near, putrescine and vile.

A loose thread in a sleeve.
Soon will this stomach heave
and all the butterflies inside will leave.

An inside-out collar.
My little brother will grow yet taller
and even start earning a few dollars.

My yesterday-worn shirt.
Someone near me is about to get hurt.
Is this a burden I can divert?

This unfortunate naked personage.
I look like a pile of carnage
that has seen the underside of many a carriage.

A carriage.
A baby.
I am being carried

by a capsule
bulleting through space
to some distant human-uninhabitable place.

But I am grateful
for this second
I am able to forget.

Gone Fishing

Anoptichthys Jordani
cannot see.
They are blind
because nature deemed
them no longer having a need.

But I am not a fish
even though these cameras
serve me up like a dish,
a billion disembodied eyes
waiting for my demise,
for some internal organ
to expand and everything else squish.

I suppose it would
be easy to be misunderstood
as some creature piscene
when, even in this low light,
this tail between my legs gleams.

The webbing between my fingers,
the scales creeping up my spine
framed by bones.
Those at home
would deem me
horrific
to lay their eyes on,
me, bloodthirsty,
ichthyic.

Sijo

My mother tells me God lives in the heavens.
The heavens are where the suns and the stars live.
Maybe she chose to believe I would become an angel.

LITERARY ECHO

You and I sit behind the old
rocking chair in Grandma's living
room, reading nonexistent books
about a girl who had always
lived in space. You laugh. I do not
tell you about my vision, the one
where I am in orbit, entombed
in a decaying satellite.

Blanka

she was a poem of the highest order
as if a deity had handed her down themselves
but she was surrounded by illiterates

no use judging a book by its cover
if you can't even read the gold lettering on top

she walked through the empty hallways of her home
hammering and sawing reverberating through the walls
messages flew from her fingers to all of her friends
"would you run away with me?"

nobody is serious at seventeen
but she was pretty damn close
with her eyebrows drawn together
and her bottom lip sore from biting

the old shops in her new town creak and groan
"do you feel lonely?
it's a great big world out there"

Cirrhosis

From how poets describe whiskey,
you'd think it was a magical potion
that would afford, if nothing else, to flame the heat
that burns inside one's body,
to awaken divinity,
to shake the heavens
and bring the dead beloved back to me.

But my mother's side was never big on drinking,
a glass of wine a night at the most.
My father's side never missed an opportunity to toast,
polluting the air with cigarette smoke,
not giving a damn if their livers collapsed
or their children choked.

My twenty-first birthday fast approaches
in this hazy dream. I am not eager to croak
my way to an early grave
having sterilized my body,
when
instead
I can be buried with the frogs
in an abandoned bog
somewhere remote.

Hydra

This body, I've been taught,
is not quite my own,
my body puppeted, my
mind subtly controlled.
You keep sending me dreams
where I am a beast to behold,
but the fate I have written
does not match what is shown.

You insist I am your child,
your offspring, your kin,
but I retain human form,
my rage bottled within.
I have no weapons,
just my hubris and sin,
unaccompanied by any
save my chagrin.

It is your blood
running through my veins,
your legacy, your life,
that permeates my brain,
my every waking moment
wondering in vain:
what do you want from me?
What will cease your pain?

How am I supposed to forget?

Coomer Mk.I

Vacuum wrapper,
waifu trapper.

Statue stone,
rough to bone.

Open jar,
pit of tar.

Her transformation,
his masturbation.

La Vespo

the wasp
she hides within the alleys
the city lights are not enough to conceal her
with a black heart, she wears veils of white

calling me in the depths of the night
are you there? it's me, your faithful dog
coming back for another night
of tricks and treats

her lips are works of intricate art
spun sugar hiding scars of a lifetime
what stories hide in your tongue
that has caused such sorrow

she loves it when she flicks her eyes
and sees that yours are lost in the city lights
motionless but for the bumps of the car ride
have we lost it after all?

Jessica Banned

Manga book,
come take a look
at this girl struggling, pierced by hook.

She wants to leave humanity behind.
Like a rabbit, together like paws her fingers bind.
Elongate her teeth so she can chew on rinds.

Cut her legs off at the knees
so she can bounce as she pleases
around all the backyard trees.

Junior-high girl, no need to fear.
I'll open your skull and reroute your ears
so that you can hear
crystal-clear.

Have you ever heard the story of the woman with one big nostril?
To see that sight: a terrifying thrill!
I won't sculpt your button nose like that. But I will
your mind kill

so that you do not lie in torment
of the endless days left
without the agency of which you are now bereft.

I hope your owner at least lets
you go outside so you don't his carpet wet.
Have fun being a simple pet!

Small Fry

small fry, small fry,
where will you lie
when the rivers dry up
and the rain says goodbye?

will you flee to the oceans,
wild and untamed,
or let yourself be trapped in a bowl
sitting by the windowpane?

my slippery skin lets me
slip through Velouria's fingers,
but some lost scale of mine,
believing, still lingers

that you'll return to me one day
and I can shed this skin
and never have to breathe water again

Medeus

"Make me Medeus,"
I would whisper
as my arms pushed one more thrust

and then collapsed under
my body, the crash on concrete
the only thing I ever heard.

How else was I supposed to cope
with that tyrant, that kingdom of steel?
I'd have visions of hanging by a rope,

so painful was the day-to-day
of phy ed, a state-sanctioned hell
from which I had no escape

until the day I would graduate.

I still wear the scars
that shot across my skin
like falling stars,

meteors in a sky of hate
as my arms trembled
to lift a too-heavy weight.

One more teacher who laughs in my face
that my legs are not fast,
that I cannot keep pace

with those born in a world of coins
and credit cards, who never had to worry
about food for the fruit of their loins.

Lying on my back, heart pumping
against my will,
assistant teacher jumping

at the opportunity
to drag me to that public square
and make an example of me.

I handed her a knife
and gave her an ultimatum:
either she take my life

right then and there
or let her mouth run
with a desperate prayer.

Talk your tongue off
for a mile
and then see if you still have
the energy to smile.

Those in power
will never give you the tools
to bring down their ivory towers.

Those in power will
never give you the knowledge
to destroy them.

But how absurd
it is to think
one can craft a monster

and then try to cage
the rage
implanted within.

DREAM

Mom would mock me at breakfast for
checking out the same old school books
about the space shuttle, reading
while I ate. I wanted to
go into space. I wanted to
leave this place. I wanted to
meet Goddess, even though I did
not yet know her terrible name.

2020-11-26

The wind rustles in my feathers.
Your gaze is on the horizon,
more fixated on horizon's imposing weather

than the fact I almost nearly died
in the operation where my wings were finally fixed
and so, for now, I need to stay at your side.

It doesn't matter now.
The deed is done, the scars are scored.
I just need to listen to you tell me how

you need to leave me behind,
that there is something you and my brother
must this very moment desperately find.

You both take off into the sky. Neither fall.
I have to pee. I wander around
and finally locate, behind a thick curtain, a urinal-

"Hey! If you need to take a shit,
there's a bathroom right there. That urinal's
a public art installation. I don't want you ruining it."

There are two curtains, one of which
was hiding some stalls. I apologize and do
my business and check every stitch

that runs zigzag across my back, my chest.
My phone rings. Brother has been captured.
You have for me a new quest:

bring him home,
no matter where he might be.

I wash my hands and leave, wondering where
I can find something to stack: since the operation,
I've only ever practiced taking off from stairs.

I find some and gather them up in my arms
when the art director finds me again, lobs obscenities at me like so many bubbles:
the tops of these were custom-painted; he does not want them to befall any harm.

He catches me at the roof.
I stack them and take off my sandals,
hard as a horse's hoof

and tie them to my belt, tight around my hips,
that trusty piece of leather
that has served me many trips.

And I'm off - and while the stitches strain,
I remain airborne,
not succumbing to pain.

El Tiempo

waterfalls sliding off my arms
framed by shards of clifftops long gone
I am a giant, shambling through a village
footsteps boom like the beat to a song

the sun makes its journey across the sky
heads pound with exhaustion in reply

I woke up today with the clouds in my head
paint splattering underneath my fingers
for my friend turns sixteen today
but someone tore up the sky, and streaks of blood linger

he lays facedown and cocooned in the sheets
in bed he stays all day
refusing to get up until the sun goes down
and it has always been that way

Musca Domestica, Take Flight!

You and I and everyone else
are insects,
a blight on the earth's surface.

Just like that box of vitamins,
forgotten in a bathroom cabinet
that nobody ever looked in

and only discovered
once they were several years expired.
Some were candy, some were just sugar,

but every empty slot
that had been vacated on days long since forgot
had a coating not of crystalline cancer

but of tiny bugs long since taken their last breath
and now stood vigil with their comrades
in timeless death.

And when everyone switches from present to past tense,
their bodies, inert, become a nuisance.
Bloating, decay, feast to maggots

that we manage to ward off until
the family reunion at the morgue, the funeral.
Mourn in the morning, party with cousins for dinner.

When my father's father died,
that grumpy old man who cursed and would hide
himself in his bedroom whenever we kids came to visit,

who would exhaust his throat with yells
every time we, downstairs, would raise hell,
who was always in a bad mood for as long as he lived:

during his funeral, when every adult took the stand and whinged
about how he was such a good father who all their futures hinged
upon, I just played Tetris in silence on my watch.

We kids were only insects to him, for all of his years.
So I shed not a single tear
as we lowered him into the ground

for the insects to build
all their little mounds.

Rescue Disk

last night I had a dream
where I was the god of the universe
a whole blocky expanse at my feet
and I had to choose between swearing my allegiance to a clan of fat kids
and the clean-cuts but scraggly underneath

and instead
I accidentally blew half of my birthday money on a single smoothie
why should a smoothie cost twenty dollars?
unless it's gilded with gold, I guess
then I would understand

but the waitress thought I'd asked for a pop first
light green and bubbly and enemy of waistlines

last night I had a dream
where a certain boy came back into my room
and told me to retrieve the old computer from my grandmother's closet
and install parabola on it so I could be free

and instead
I tucked his suggestion away
because it was nowhere the weekend
and unfulfillable plans cause a great deal of stress
just festering in the back of my mind

but sometimes I do wonder
and I am still wondering
if someday I will ever run free

2020-12-17

I am a vampire
with a loving family
surrounding me.
I am in the midst of puberty,

and that means it is time
to randomly transform into creatures horrifying
or sent from the divine.

A six-legged spider
streaming webs across the room, wider
than could accomplish any arachnid lighter.

End, I collapse into the hallway.
A few yards away,
my cousins are eagerly playing
like nothing has happened to ruin their day.

A crow with a beak of obsidian.
Who needs a car when you can take to the wind?
Of course, you can't work if you can't swipe yourself in.

A space creature with... a C in his name?
A few T's maybe? Oh well, at least he can claim
with his legion tentacles some basketball fame,

awareness somewhere in the rented court's roof
as stream down those spry limbs that seem detached, aloof,
but still plenty capable of shooting hoops.

Human form again, I am sitting on the end of a coffee table,
on a couch. An aunt inquires if I am able
to tell her where I go when I disappear from this gable.

In other words, where do you go
when you awake? Is your swagger all for show,
or do you have other accomplishments about which we don't know?

The Dandelion Queen

A truly sublime woman
stands regal and supreme;
most only know her as
the Dandelion Queen.

Her breath is the wild wind
that blows fierce at my back,
asking quite calmly, "Where are the yellow
sprouts that this yard quite lacks?"

I hang my head in shame
and explain that Mother
has ordered their genocide in vain hopes
of making our yard tougher.

"Tougher?" she exclaims,
mouth wide oval in fright.
"Nonsense! What could be tougher
than a dandelion in flight?

For my children have been slain
I guess a billion and two to one,
and yet my legacy lives on
as they sway happy under the sun."

Her happy face shines bright
from Atlas to Nyx and back,
a stunning fortitude that most
other plants quite lack.

She shall never be defeated,
I am jubilant to proclaim,
unless the sun grows dim
and the bee counts start to wane.

Always just a step away,
gentle waiting like a lover,
for the sun may have birthed me
but the earth is still my mother.

A resilient woman
(or at least that's how it seems),
I know I am protected by
the Dandelion Queen.

Vagina Dentata

I am staring down a sea urchin
a pearly white thing I hold in my hands
a hundred quills between two lands
water lapping on the shores within

you stitch my lips shut with a laugh
as if this sideways frown
that in I would myself so gladly drown
I am banished from, I cannot have

a pink pearl in the flesh of a clam
a year's yearning through desert and cold
so close, and yet- to withhold,
begging me first to remember who I am

Fallen Angel

once a week, she walks into her own prison cell
unaccompanied by any person guards but still forced
but she kills her mind and stores it away for future resurrection
before this place can kill it and keep her down

these walls are covered in blood
swept under the carpet and painted white as angels
and as crooked as the compasses that think they need resetting
coerced into submission by the voices of sirens

this place says that it's a factory for peace
but it's really a factory for pain and anguish
manifesting itself years later as a shattering of glass walls
or as a donning of masks and a suppression of minds

she used to be the girl who could fly
until the stalking beings came and clipped her wings at an early age
and she has known nothing but a life-size cage with hellhounds waiting on the outside
but the house of wolves only started biting when she woke up with a key

FAMILIAL ALIENATION

You know I mean no disrespect.
I never do. It is just that
I entrusted the stars to bring
me back to that snowy driveway
when you would have just dawdled with
your phone blaring out a ceaseless
football game, unable to be
content under a silent night.

ACHTUNG I

I stole my mother's phone
many moons ago
under pretenses of checking
if my bank account was low

and while my words were of the truth,
I had a second puzzle:
my friends were strangely silent,
those lovers of the muzzle

on a whim, I checked her messages,
and what did my poor eyes see?
they had a second group chat,
one plainly without me

now, all is well with drawing
one's own borders, with exclusion,
but when I choose to do the same:
I am a monster for wanting seclusion?

I am a "dangerous influence"
when I ask why Mother can be alone
but when a brother requests the same
she confiscates his phone

under whispered secrecy
I teach those boys how to encrypt
and hope the parents never notice
that they can't see shit

but I know eventually the day will come
when my brothers' secretive care will lapse
and one of my parents will interrogate
me about those non-approved apps

and I can only hope against all odds,
when arrives that fateful day,
I have a thousand tunnels ready
to make a quick escape

Dog Song

My father's dog slept every night in a cage
with just enough room to stretch her legs.
Her front legs folded in, paws against her chest,
hoping I'd rub her tummy or something else to make her feel blessed.

The first few weeks we shared a house, I hated her guts.
It didn't matter if she was a purebred or the mixiest of mutts:
she was a beast that shits everywhere and howls into the night
until someone lets her outside to relieve her bladder light.

Promises of mother's love all debased
the second she found a beast to that spot in her heart replace.
Our house was a gymnast's dream, twisting and jumping over barriers:
the kitchen is for the husky, the upstairs hallway is for the terriers.

I don't remember exactly, but I think one day the heating
was broken, and I needed to keep my heart beating,
so I found that fluffy beast, squished her close to my chest,
and she laid her head on my shoulder, eyes closed, in need of good rest.

Now that I am on route to become a martian,
no longer could I claim to be that dog's favorite person.
No more midnight walks, no more fingers running through her fur,
no more wondering what for behind those sky-blue eyes she yearns.

Flute

I'd like to be a skeleton,
gently soothed by the wind,
free of the burdens of the flesh
and the blood pumping within.

Maybe some future explorer
will carve part of my arm into a flute
and she'll send songs on the breeze
about her idyllic youth.

I'd like to be a fossil
gently sleeping in the soil,
the mud my weighted blanket,
unnecessary to thank it.

Framed in a museum,
gently brushed by him
or her,
the discoverer,
strung up like a marionette
so elementary children can see the holes in my head.

Sometimes I wish I was born a rock
or some other creature that couldn't talk,
that couldn't move, that couldn't gloat,
a moss ball that loves to soak.

Just chilling in a jar
through times easy and hard.
A shard severed from the earth's crust
until I crumble into dust.

Hissmas

Christmas Day was always a hellscape.
How am I supposed to survive
when all I am is laid bare
for everyone to see?
I am a pane of
glass, a statue,
ungrateful
wench who
cries.

Lazy Haiku

Jellyfish leggings
right by where people brush by
with shit on their hands.

Arms Of Protection Long Gone

I cried when the church men came to take away my grandmother's trees
chipping away at sheltering silent entities
that protected us as children, dear cousins and me,
as we discovered each other's unattainable fantasies

the old apple tree in the far back
where we picked rotten apples and filled up our sacks
long overdue for merciful death
after serving as launchpad for fairies headed west

and the colossus by the swingset crumbles into dust
forgotten dream-makers and squirrels' fervent lust

old and wizened giant crouching in front yard
backdrop for the most family photos by far
once offering its strong arms as solace for loss
now sits and condemns with a jagged cut across

Rat

I was grounded.
I don't remember why,
only that I was dumbfounded

at the uneven enforcement
of a rule
to a game I never consented to.

I rolled off of my bed,
catapulted into a sea
of stuffed animals
long since imbued with the scent of me.

You, mother,
walked into my room,
saw me, sneered as if staring
at the child of another.

"Rat."

And with that,
you walked away.

It's true.
I am the monster
you molded me into.

Diamonds form under slow pressure.
How many years have you implied
that I was a being lesser?
How many years have I carried
with me that designation after which you tarried:
"Rat"?
True, that
I am
a creature that hides in the walls,
a creature reviled for being so small,
a creature that nibbles away at your valuables
and leaves holes for the stories to leak out
that you'd rather refuse to tell.

I am a shell
of a human.
I am a rat
wearing a person's skin.
Can you say
that you're okay
with the monster you had me grow within?

Sleepover 2008

When I was little,
I used to curl up in the sheets
of my grandmother's guest room bed
and pretend I was a caterpillar complete,

ready to build cocoon,
soon
transforming into butterfly
come the morning light.

One night, I was aborted
from that shell because every time I snorted,
the foul fumes of my cousin's fart
would stain the air, would poison my heart.

Wandering the midnight halls,
soon loomed over me my grandmother, then tall,
and helped me assemble on the couch a bed
where I could sleep without fear of waking up dead.

The horse books, rarely about. Her
brother was magicked into being a spider.
I woke up in a web
and had to undo it before I could be human again.

What would she say,
I wonder,
knowing where I am now?
But this time, when I go under,

I have no choice of pretending come morning
that nothing happened,
that we are just two boring
suburban pre-teen humans.

THE MOVE

I forgot the constellation
I had taped onto my bedroom
ceiling, the one with the swan whose
beak always pointed north. Maybe
I thought, if it survived the rage
of the next kid to live there, then
it would sound its shrill ceaseless call,
would show the way to return home.

Pentri Per Mia Animo

the color is draining out of my hands
bleeding together into an incomprehensible mess
this is it: the death of my mind
you're not invited to the funeral

the stories say that there are people
whose jobs are to color the sky
if only I could see any of it
these colorblind eyes are cursed

there are monsters dwelling within both of us
one of them will destroy the other
I am collateral damage yet again
you never intended to uproot me

I'm one alone inside the crowd
I make no noise while they’re all so loud
my ears have always been too sensitive
just like my heart

Cxiufoje, Cxie

you called me crying at three in the morning
because I said that I was moving
and I wouldn't be giving you my new number
if I got one

but you have to understand
that what we had is rotten in the ground
this is a new start- turning over a new leaf
the soil's freshly toiled, the chaff’s blown away

I let you have all these nice things in life
your vapid celebrities, your cushy life
so let me have a nice thing too
albeit without you

maybe you can pretend that I'm some famous person
on the tail end of a fling with a fan
wrap your arms around me, sobbing at the airport
maybe I'll write a song about you

The Death Of Memory

walking through these familiar halls
a relic from a time long forgotten
I don't remember creating all these doors
but now I've got to take them down

a faint feeling of loss
even though if they had disappeared on their own
I would have never noticed
except for a fleeting thought of a past repressed

such simpler times were those
where I didn't constantly look over my shoulder
and it seemed like the things I held in my hand
were limitless and magical

my happiness and my power are connected
like the two curves on a fish
this life will probably kill me someday
but at least let me finish

Breaker Box

My bedroom was too small.
Mother watched my heart sink.
So Good Grandfather broke out his paintbrushes
and painted my bedroom pink.

On the wall by my bookcase,
one could barely make out a square
of magnetic paint, holding up
school assignments and strangers' requests for prayers.

The opposite wall was magnet, too,
but only by coincidence,
likely because that wall also held
the only breaker box in the residence.

How many times Father yelled
from the upstairs kitchen
for me to climb up on my bed
and flip some poor old switch?

Too many. Mother made me move
my bed to under the window
so the inspector who demanded entry
to our house didn't start a row.

The next house had more space to cook,
but my room was a jail cell,
cramped from wall to wall with unpacked cardboard boxes,
my own personal little hell.

If that was tiny, then what do I call this pod
where there is barely any space to breathe?
Curled up like a prisoner in Mother's womb,
nothing to do but wait and seethe.

Nova Domo

my house has finally sold
and now our hold on it is in the final days
a dying rattling breath as a plant sprouts somewhere
and a garden left behind

goodbye, delicate apple trees
never bearing a bountiful load
and stoic pine trees, providing a place
for a young girl to learn her place in the world

the rotting dollhouses half-buried in the dirt
may one day provide purpose for a single man's future

all my life has been spent in a transitive state
neither here nor there
trying to move out just results in being sucked in further
to the confusing state that is my life

how big will the storage locker be?
big enough so that I can take my hopes and dreams with me,
I hope

Lost Horizon

Three in the morning.
I am practicing warring,
stuck on a video game level,
mashing buttons until my mind is just as disheveled
as my hair.

The enemy floods endless from the sky
and ceases not until all my allies
meet gruesome deaths
or I exit to the home screen, beginning to detest
myself for a misplaced move here or there.

You would think that one capable of turning into a beast
could at least
pull their chosen family a little closer
to the end. But alas, there are no bulldozers.
I am worse for wear

when I quit for the night.
Dawn's reddish light
is starting to spill
over the horizon I still
have the privilege to behold.

How I should have pulled closer my blanket
and thanked it
like an old colleague
for all those years of service to me
on all those nights bitter and cold.

Mother once gave me a box of children's
books about babysitters beholden
to their neighborhood in the seventies.
I steer into the weeds
of the back ads, paper yellowed and old.

Lost Horizon.
I have lost my childhood horizon,
indeed.

Catharsis

"the world is too much with us"?
pah! I've too much of the world
and yet not enough, for I am still young and inexperienced

I love a good romp in the wilderness
bringing me back to my days as a young child, still naive
assured that there would always be something to catch my fall
but no matter how many synonyms for "magic" you stuff into a shoddy poem
it just drains it when you take seventeen (or more!) stanzas to get your words across
did nobody ever tell you that brevity is key?

I can feel disconnected too
always have, always will
but that doesn't mean that I have to prostrate myself to outdated religions
in order to find a sense of self- rather, the opposite
for melding myself to a set of expectations I know I will never achieve
would be tantamount to suicide

Packing List

angel pendant
broken puzzle cube
cat, several, stuffed
dolls passed down from Mother
elephant, large, stuffed, prize from Girl Scout cookie selling
fragment of purple flag from second grade
golden dollar coins in cheap ceramic container
houseplant, artificial, white daisies
igneous rock
jar of hair, mold-filled
knife, wooden
laminated map of grandma's house, downstairs, outdated
markers, whiteboard, dried / used up
nails, construction (wood) type, loose
oven, toy, plastic
parasol, broken
questions, unanswered
resentment
resentment
resentment

EVENT HORIZON

"On a scale of one to ten, how
would you feel about becoming
an entirely new lifeform,
too beautiful and fearsome to
behold?" How I would gladly throw
myself into the darkest void,
so long as I could keep my mind,
these fingers that have served me well.

Root

it is almost summer
time of sweaty children and melting popsicles
and yet I feel so cold inside

am I a machine?
a god birthed in a sprawling mess of wires and cords
cocoon made of chips and solders
awaiting a less turbulent world

I'm slowly watching as the last vestiges of a former life
slip off my shoulders like so many layers of dead skin
giving birth to someone stripped away, exposed
purified

we say we are society
but we are society
we are individuals
fighting against ourselves

No Ouroboros

During what could, in some sorry way,
be confused for a sleep cycle,
my legs have managed to get
tangled in my tail.

Slippery skin
like a fish's fin
tickles the backside
of one of my limbs.

I turn an eight on its side,
one hole for each leg,
a tsunami wide
that shoves everything aside.
Infinity dry,
but I am soaked
in what will not allow me to die.

In a time now lost to me,
that gated pool that gleamed
azure held my body
as I tried to swim like a mermaid.
I had tied my ankles together
with a pool toy
so I would not be tempted to kick
like any human girl or boy.

My uncle was livid.
I could have gotten him kicked
out of the community pool
for endangering myself.

But what else was I supposed to do?
I wanted a tail.
I wanted to swim faster than a shark
and feel the swift current on my skin pale.

I can only hope there will be lakes
on Mars. Or maybe an entire ocean
devoid of the cameras' devotion.

Tricube

Twelve years is
when all things
went to dogs

in my life.
Dogged chase
across fields

blue, begging
for a slice
of new life.

I Gotta Hand It To You

Breaking news:
Man soaks his hands in dry ice
to kill them. Claims to want paws
instead, to the point of near demise.
Boyfriend still believes him not a lost cause.

School news:
Elementary school science teacher
tapes students' thumbs to their index fingers
to teach about joints. Creates creatures
feral instead that destroy the computer lab printers.

Family news:
One of my cousins comes out as trans.
I will not get to know how his transition
goes. And while we will both keep our hands,
he will not be condemned to perdition.

Company Policy 42

Do you recall
those maddened days
where reason flew out the window
and everyone went insane?

Nobody could take a single step
without being harangued to wear a mask.
It was supposed to trap one's breath- and trap it did;
at the end of every work shift, the white thing had turned green.
To think it clean
to hold one's germs so close for so long:
in a better world, it would be obscene.

Nobody had a mouth.
Voices came from everywhere and nowhere.
Those that retained their humanity
were branded as uncouth.

How quickly I yanked that thing off
come time to my home return.
But this new mask will never come off,
this jaw rough as a sunburn.

No more ears proper to wear loops,
this thing on my face more resembling a scoop
or a knight's upside-down visor.
My supervisor
would likely seem me compliant
if this form did not first frighten.

Say Apple

Alienation.
The determination
to make a person hate
or to just separate
in mind or body
them from what they would
normally be linked to.

How many times
was I, in my youth,
locked into a room
like a feral beast
with nothing but vocabulary cards?
Yes, I know what an apple
is, you priest
of a fascist state-backed chapel.

Your damn state
told me to make eight
hundred dollars,
long hours in food service until my hands burned and bled
and then, come tax season,
had a "clerical error"
and just stole all my money instead.

Alienation.
The process
of making a person a brute.
Let's uproot
you from all you've ever known
for the sake of sheer curiosity.
After all,
what harm could possibly befall
a person in desperate need for money?

Six fingers on each hand.
Three eyes.
An exoskeleton like a web over this frame.
To think I was once deemed lame.
I am complete and have come to despise
that body that belonged to my former land.

A deep rumble comes from the base of my throat.
Tell me to say "apple" now
with this mouth incapable of language's sound
and I'll rip the apple from your throat.

Dead Spider

A spider found dead
in its own web,
hanging by an almost-severed leg.

It hurried its life
too fast, and now
it is a dead thing
waiting to be buried.

I am a dead thing,
if "I" is the offspring
of my parents,
of those who, in childhood,
took me under their wing.

There is no more Emily.
There is only left a monster to see
on the TV,
on a tiny phone screen
as one waits out their work fifteen.

I hope there will be spiders
on Mars, on that iron
planet void of desire.

I hope there will be
just enough life to sustain me
and no more.

Twin Lunas

Mars has two
twin moons, Phobos and
Deimos. I fear not,

and while my
veins pulse with vitality, I'm
not a deity.

MARS

Apotheosis, they said, would
be impossible for a mere
human like me. But I emerge
from this gooey pod a creature
unknown to Earthen soil, the
sky beyond a thousand different
colors I have never seen, Earth
a distant speck in the night sky.

Hatch

A scene from a superhero movie,
who knows how many minutes in.
A pod, crash-landed on an island.
The top hatch flies off. Legs appear.
There is a person within.

But I am not so elegant,
I, this beast Earth sent
as its first sentient emissary
to this planet that,
to these eyes, more resembles a cherry.

A chicken whose claws scrape
against the underside of its egg until some finger takes
on a handle- or maybe a button- whatever
can free me, can this vacuum seal sever.

My hands- or front feet, I guess, that still retain some sharp semblance of fingers
rip through the sac first. They linger
beside the pod hatch's release,
first to taste the stale air
I have unwittingly carried with me.

A sound like a zipper
is a ripper
through this space
as I tear the sac apace.
Air fills my new lungs,
and for a few precious seconds, I choke as if a hung
prisoner, a baby with an umbilical noose.
I am swimming in a sea
of what has oxygenated me
for the past eight months.

I slide the hatch open.
I poke my head out-
An impediment.
My antlers knock against the pod hull.
My brain rings like there were two tuning forks welded to my skull.
I shiver back.
My muscles ache from so much new movement.
I am not yet ready to leave the sac.

Exit

An image once graced my eyes
of a polar bear hiding right under the ice.
Or maybe it was just water. I remember not
but those black eyes peering out from a ripple,
threatening to rip
the intruder, send him to hell.

Mars was once far, far
colder than the Arctic
where that polar bear lived.
Had I been shot here during those days:
oh, I could not count the ways
I would have instantly died.
Birth water frozen in a flash,
an atmosphere that could not catch
even the thinnest semblance of air.

But unlike that old image,
I am daring to move, to unhinge
myself from where I have spent the night
watching my chest expand and contract,
this intricate frame of bones silver in the light.

Going slowly so I do not catch
myself on the open hatch
again, I climb out. The soil crunches
under all fours like a satisfying lunch.

And hunger I do, the sensation
a stranger to I who has spent these past months in gestation,
second birth. There is vegetation
encircling this crater
I landed in. I will return later,

but for now, time to eat.

Amphora

Gophertown. A world under the internet's skin
that still pumped quietly within,
ninety-nine percent dead,
abandoned holes with no more to be said.

A dusty dungeon, exploring with torch in hand
a place that could disappear into sand
at any moment.
And yet
the words that had been formed
before I was first born
still stood with no room for regret.

How many times did I misconstrue
the old Zaibatsu
for a space station layered in musty air and muck,
populated by those who'd ran out of luck?

One's stomach sterilized, microbes replaced,
stripped of possessions, and then set free to find one's own way
in that dead world, the end of the line,
where decay had claimed even the concept of time.

I don't know what I expected Mars to be.
Perhaps some sensuous Garden of Eden,
terraformation complete,
a flowering garden rife
with fruit ripe
waiting for me.

And while from horizon to sea
it's not quite a desert,
neither is it blooming
or birds of opportunity looming
overhead.

I pull together a salad.
More like a pile of leaves sad
on a boulder with top flat.
Rocks I have never laid my eyes on,
that geologists would hunt
me down for a chance to hold,
to my teeth are mere croutons.

At the Zaibatsu,
we had to make do
with the limited resources.
Don't leave yourself logged on overnight,
don't hog disk space tight,
use outside channels for your commercial discourses.

But I am likely the only sentient
being for miles, if even that.
Why should I be lenient
in ravaging this corner of the planet?

Something rustles in a nearby bush.
This flora is not lush,
but still the intruder evades.
I lower myself to the ground and wait

a few seconds
until it makes its presence
known.

A foot-long ant- no, a camera
with body like an amphora,
a stand-in for those at home.

Ganglari Safari

There is no escape
for this ex-ape.

There is nowhere for me to roam
safe from the eyes of home.

My cousin was once bit
on the finger by an ant petite.

But this contraption that gives chase
every time I dash apace

across the craggy landscape
has not even a mouth to gape.

It watches me with single beady eye
that I swear I could crawl inside,

that could suck me up whole
and spit me back through all

those one hundred forty million
miles between here and heaven.

Songs About Swimming

Degraded JPEG
that looms over my head
and wants to know if I,
meme to meme, am white.

But although these legs whisk me over the ground
and wherever I want to go, I cannot travel at the speed of sound.
You be red. Someone else be blue.
I have better things to do.

This skin is no longer quite pink,
but it still flushes whenever I drink
from this lucky pond.
I can go wherever I want, now that I have nothing to abscond

with, no baggage,
no need to worry about monthly wage.
Just me, misplaced fauna,
arranging boulders to make a place to wait for dawn.

The sun dips lower behind Mars' clouds.
I slip into the nearby lake. The sound
is eerie against the silence,
this sloshing as I try to creep quiet like a mouse.

I turn my head
just as the water gets deep enough to tread.
That blasted ant is waiting at the shore.
What more

could it possibly want?

I dip my head below
the surface and let out a groan,
a roar, a call to hell.
It all just dissolves the same into bubbles.

The water rushes through my lungs,
an arctic song waiting to be sung.
If I hold still and slow my breathing,
I can feel this strong heart beating,

already offering a war drum.

Apology

An animal's life is
not very eventful.
What story could they
possibly tell?

I scavenged for greens.
I laid in the sun.
I battled against some
overgrown vines and won.

The sunbathing, I'd say,
was quite the luxury,
stretching out these cramped muscles,
my tail, my feet.

And while my human swimsuit
made me puff out with bloat,
it is quite enjoyable to be lithe
and dive
without fear of boats
or jet skis
or anything else
that could manslaughter me.

Although I was never a man,
and now I am not
in either sense of the word.

I can't say I miss
in any meaningful sense
that weak body that only lived in past tense.

Nothing to write home about.
But that damned ant
keeps up its pursuit
of fake internet points and clout.

C.H.A.D. (Chaos! Hatred! Anger! Dissent!)

Buzzing flies
around my thighs,
squatting behind a shed.

Old rusted
composted
(past tense,
since it no longer functions)
rusting slowly
under the paint red.

My least favorite activity,
when nature calls
and I must heed
the panging in my bowels.

I dig a hole by a tree
and squat to do my duty.

And what should catch the sun's evening gleam
but that damn ant,
streaming
for the world to see!

I take it by the throat.
Literary echo be damned.
It's lighter than I thought,
maybe one or two soup cans
at full capacity.

Its little legs squirm.
Some remnant of my human heart
beats then, pleading
to spare this device
from a beating,
that some poor engineer
went through the trouble
to assemble a shell and processors double.

In long forgotten days,
my father took me to his school to learn the ways
he taught the spotty curriculum
that was tossed by the principal to him.

Helicopters falling into the ocean
to make room for human life.
But what if there hadn't been strife?
There was room plenty on the shores
for people to wait a little more
and not waste a single cent.
The land itself does not bite.

This ant does not bite.
This ant cannot fight back.
It merely watches as I bash its back
into the tree trunk
again and again and again.

Eight tries. That is how long it takes
for the plastic shell to come loose.
I reach inside the abdomen
and sever the wires
to the power brick,
to home's news.

And that is that.
Not even a spark.

Tell me, heart, what do you say now?
Your one last link to home
is now inoperable.
There is no repair shop
to take back your hubris.
There is nobody who will come
and retrieve your body when you perish.

The hell are they going to do about it?
Change me back
into a sorry sack
of human-shaped flesh and blood?
Or maybe they'll demand my "dowry" back
from my parents, whose lack
of me they'll never mourn.

I will never be mourned.
I will never be saved.
All I can do now is run
until my body is worn
out
and I come to the end of my days.

Night

All the accursed twinkling stars
billow out over my head,
this blanket the sky I once yearned to tread,
from the planet with no real name that I departed
to where I stand now, Mars.

A thought I could have sworn
I'd had a million times before,
but what rule declares
I can't use it once more?

I have curled myself into a shallow alcove
in the earth, a cave, a dimple in the land
whose floor is filled with dirt and dust.
No matter. For even if it gets into my joints,
it will only take a bath to obliterate the grime.

I wonder if my parents sent me away out of love.
If they knew I never stood a chance of gaining marriage's hand
or a good job because I had finally earned someone's trust
or maybe just enough internet points.
If they knew I was running out of time.

I kept it a secret, that I was falling apart,
that my breasts were covered in boils
and my skin in rough brown patches
that, no matter how hard I scrubbed,
would stay just the same,

that unnatural rhythms made a home of my heart
whenever I tried to work any toils,
the unexplained scratches,
that my joints were starting to say "enough",
that I was developing a limp, trying not to become lame.

My inheritance is a heart full of umbrage
and a lifetime to scatter it upon Mars' dirt
as if it were an urn full of ashes,
a family member unburied.

You hurried your life
too fast, and now your match
is burnt out,
your wick too short
to give any light.

But I will not give into the fright.
This is only the first night
in a very long life to go.
And, all things considered,
I think I fared alright.

I curl up around myself, tail against my face,
shielding my eyes from the future morning's
harsh rising sun.
I will bow to no one.
I will live under no gaze.
And come the robot crew with their all-seeing heads:
oh, let me count the ways
I will rip them to shreds.

Let me count the ways
I have made a home of resentment.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

VANE VANDER has unwittingly found herself in a hell of her own construction. She spends her free time napping, napping but in a slightly different position, and DDoSing her home internet so that her brothers can't watch vapid cartoons. She can be found LARPing as an intellectual at mayvaneday.org.

Copyright © 2021-2025 Vane Vander. All rights reserved as detailed in Copyright.