There is this powder, so light so grey and it sticks to my fingers and I place them in my mouth and my throat rebels with my tongue at the taste. I stir it into an iced tea and chug it down gulp, gulp, gulping and it tastes so earthy – like white potter’s clay – and prickles down into my stomach like the cactus it came from. Then I am so aware of everything, so happy, flying on my feet and it brings me up. I am no longer depressed. Opressed. Repressed. Supressed. I am a million atoms and particles of matter buzzing into one almost impenetrable form. Only the half-moon’s light can soak into me. I drink it up. I need no other sustenance. I am dancing with the small breeze that escapes from the coast through the skyscrapers and office buildings into the inner-city atmosphere. The night is warm and in this city you can see the stars from the broken sidewalks and rutted tar. I stand on my wooden porch, the dirty gray paint flaky underfoot as my feet shift of their own accord; I cannot stand still. Every hair stands on end in its follicle. The slightest movement of a leaf on the ground next to me causes me to startle, intensely amazed at the ability for the breeze to pick it up and move it a half-centimeter after spiraling through the thick, end-of-summer night air as if it were nothing. Everything begins to feel heavier around me as I sink into my own thoughts. The forefinger and middle finger of my right hand are fully aware – on their own – of the nicotine woven in the smoke curling up around from the butt nestled almost forgotten between them. I study the black writing on the side, thinking that even the way the ash I have yet to flick off the end retains the letters gracefully. Death comes elegantly wrapped. Something in me remembers to raise it to my lips. I receive it like a lover’s kiss: breathing in deep, feeling every sweet toxin enter me. I feel the cleanest I have felt in a long time.

Somewhere I hear an owl and am reminded of home and how far I am away from it. I have become enchanted with the glittering of the asphalt and the un-silences of the city at night; the ambulances in the distance lamenting that all is not well. The sounds of badly-played drum sets beating mercilessly down the street. The zoom of cars passing the entrances to roads in between the dilapidated aluminum-sided houses and the brownstone condos. I feel tears trailing down my face, leaving wet salty sticky trails on my cheeks and think with an awed detachment that I am maybe homesick for simpler times. More wholesome times. Times when I could feel this rush of life without swallowing a pill, taking a hit, eating a gram, or drinking powdered tea. Sandi who is fragile like seashells but strong like the waves off the Florida coast tells me that this sadness is a part of who I am. She tells me that I need to stop taking all those pills because they are just screwing with my mind: Those pills will fuck you up, girl. She passes me the bowl. “Drugs are different.” They make you more of who you are.

I wake up the next morning so nauseous I don’t want to move. My mouth tastes like vomit and I walk through the next day like it is the dream. Last night was the reality.

I am starry-eyed little pieces of joy
exploding in your atmosphere
I am happy tiny lovebugs
crawling tickling along your seams

Exploding through your atmosphere
I am b-b-b-breathless sleeping next to
songs floating through the clear clear
ocean waves of deliciously rough cat tongue

I am b-b-b-breathless lapping
clapping hands with rock candy cliffs
I am ecstasy (not the drug) dreaming of
Intellect and feet thinking of dancing

Clapping hands with rock candy cliffs
I am like playing steel drums with dreads
swinging in the night, evading birthday wishes
obscuring sink drains with the sway of my hips

I am dreaded steel drum players
In a bathtub full of lipsticked kisses
I am bubble-bath icing with rubber-ducky candles
I am starry-eyed little pieces of joy!

In a bathtub filled with lipsticked kisses
I am laughing laughing with each cup of Indonesian tea
I am sewing machines producing higher education
like baseball fields with computer key bases

I am laughing laughing armed with Indonesian teacups like
Happiness wrapped in crepes with cherry compote
I am shiny sunshine kisses under moon craters
with Chinese New Year rabbits in my wake.

Happiness wrapped in cherry compote crepes
I am as if your world had a soundtrack playing
Music with harps and saxophones
I am castles in clouds and fuck-me pot revolutions

I am a soundtrack for the world and
Scratch-and-sniff eyelashes giving you butterfly kisses
Or the first rhinoceros you ever pet as it glided down
The slide in front of you on the playground

I am scratchy butterfly kisses giving you
ice cream in the winter that tastes like angel food cake
and spaghetti that doesn’t leave a mess of sauce
on your cinnamon-bun-white dress

Like winter angel-food-cake ice cream tasting
that first Polly Pocket you swallowed when you were three
I am when the trees talk back after you swim in their branches
Around around the merry-go-round

I am starry-eyed little pieces of three-year old Polly Pockets
and cucumber sandwiches at noon on a Sunday morning
when the church is on vacation
in cleavage you can get lost in

Noon-day cucumber sandwiches in the morning
I am death wearing a tiara with one stone missing
in business suit made of jelly-bean flavors
and chocolate smothered blow-jobs

I am wearing a stoned tiara like death
With fried pickles dripping in your chin hairs
After pineapple watermelon ceilings
and a really good poop

I am fried chin-hairs dripping down
one thousand multiplied by infinity I love yous
after walking through leprechaun rainclouds
when you put both your feet behind your head

I am multiple I love you by the thousands
and am the nonsense of suction cups used for
running from the border patrol
across the vast Guadalupe river of your soul

Suctions cups nonsensical like
I am iPhone ringtones like fingerless gloves with feet in them
and being able to hand-write everything with letters
in upside down backwards baseball caps and take-out menus

I am feetless gloves with fingerlings attached
to budding spring-time cigarettes
I am never boring never bored Spanish English dictionary lovers
With toffee infused negligees

I am cigarettes in the spring like
I am sleepless nights and hula hoops stuck in trees
I am your arms holding me close
as pixies fly through monkey-grass clouds

I am hula-hooped trees stuck in a sleepless dream and
I am double double-sided printers next to taunting tamale stands
Using notebook paper made from melon-flavored chewing gum
In a jack and coke banana pancake

I am double-sided tamale stands like
electronica that sounds like spoken slam poetry
in a bright hot-air balloon when cassanova is along for the ride
I am pieces of starry-eyes joylets

Spoken slam poetry electronica that sounds like
The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics
On hot jalapeno mayonnaise spread with the tip of your tongue
like my nose belongs in a rocketship headed to inner space

I am the ethical professional society coda
Under a shit rainbow of gratitude like the Texas lege
I am rye-bread crumb wedding cake at a Pagan knitting circle
and I am so pleased with the outcome of my sweater-vest slippers

Under shitty Texas rainbow gratitude I am
old fur coats left to the coin jars meant for wishing wells
in a down-trodden economy after a surplus of penis drawings
on an ivy-league college entrance essay

I am meant for old coin-jar wishing wells left to
graveyard Moonpies in the in and out of anthills
I am the dinosaurs died because you touch yourself at night
with your fingers in my cinnamon cunt cranberry apple juices

In and out of anthills I am graveyards
like snow melting into pomegranate rivers of freshly dyed hair
I am inching up the tub drain of forever
because anything is possible if you don’t put too much platonic science in it

Like snow melting into pomegranates of dead hair
I am starry-eyed little pieces of joy
And I am the eternal infernal self-made orgasm of words on the page…

(For Allison James, Austin Chaffin, Sol Richey, and Alex Red)

It was just real all of the sudden,             Alison said. I couldn’t

handle it. I

had to run upstairs and scream and cry and

slump down on the floor.

“My friend shot himself in the head.”

The sentence had just come out

of nowhere.

Jeffrey and I had been sitting on the couch and

I

just broke             the             silence with that fact.

He didn’t say anything back,

he didn’t even look at me, he didn’t react.

I almost thought

he hadn’t even heard me. It made it so real then.

Austin and Sol              called me

on the way to his funeral.

I just wanted to speak with you.            We’re on the way,

Sol stayed the night and we’re going…             I

invited friends so he would have some friends there.

We’re going to have a party,

It’s what he would have wanted.

Friendly                                                                         joking,

I don’t know the words,             he was older, 22                 and

he             did             seem more responsible he seemed like he

was older             than the rest of us,

but at the same time he was still –

he didn’t             act             like he was older than us –

he didn’t

treat us like we

were younger, he seemed genuine.

When he talked to people            it was like he wanted to hear

what they had to say, not just formalities

like when you meet someone

he                                                  was actually interested. He

was like that with everyone,

he would always introduce himself.

Allison said.

I remember the first time I met him,                                             I

was hanging out with jimmy and

we weren’t really doing anything and

he just showed up and said                                          Hey,

I brought over a bottle of Crown!

It was the middle of the day.

He treated everyone the same

it was like we had all been good friends.

The western world keeps death so distant, so dissociated.

People die in hospitals; we send them away to die.

It is not real for me in the daylight,    with the normal world

hustling and bustling.

Other cultures worship their dead, praise them, have picnics

on their graves and parties in their memories.

We                                                                        keep it sterile,

safe,                         distant,                         out of mind.

Death.

It’s like I could go back there,                         right now and

every thing would be the same.

But that’s not true. Everything is so different. He’s gone.

It’s not real right now,

yesterday it was real.

It was                         like                         I had to pull it together and

make it unreal again.

I don’t know.

Red hair

really

red hair –                                                            I remember

someone mentioning him

once before

Asking             if             I knew him

You know,

tall guy

red hair

No I don’t know him.

very red,

very distinctive.

He was cute,

he was nice                                                 he was handsome,

tall,             he was built,

he wasn’t like the skinny guys at Bard.

moan
by elizabeth c. neavel

Tell me:
how it feels
when you enter:

Tell me: how
my cunt, hot and ready
feels to you as you delve, delicately
into a slippery smoothness
that sucks at your foreskin
inviting you inside:

Tell me: your thoughts
when I sit on top
and lower myself, stretching
to grind so hard against you
vertically concentric.

Tell me:
what my nipples feel like, hard –
in-between your teeth, pulsing
underneath your tongue, rubbing
up against your chest
sweat mixing with sweat –
pink like erasers at the end of pencil.

We’ll make a deal:
I’ll let you know how it feels
when your lips press against me
when I thrash with joy
on the end of your tongue, pumping
soft and hard and wild
into me.

Tell me:
if you feel
what I feel
watching your cum
mixed with my cum
dripping down
onto the sweaty sheets below:

Moan.

1.
You growl into me
Pinned down like prey, the rush
In controlling arms.

2.
Crying out, an animal
You love it when I pounce, bite
My need so primal.

3.
Throw me down again
No noise of passion too loud
Soft on the white bed

4.
It is so easy,
You move so hard against me
Pause to kiss my mouth

5.
Deep, deep, soft and deep
Grinding, slipping, sliding
Come! and it is enough

6.
Soft touches from both
We lay together tired
So much love in us.

It Is Not That Makes Me A Woman
by elizabeth c. neavel

It is not the curve
of my breast as it
hangs low
nipples pointing down
with gravity
beneath my blouse
that makes me a woman.

It is not
the youth of my hips
concealing the
Soft
inner white
dimples of my thighs
swaying under my blue jeans
worn from second-hand use.

It is not my Lips
as they smile
and inhale
and purse
and blow smoke rings from
the hose
and kiss yours.

It is my eyes.
And what I let you see inside of them.
It is how my hands move
over your chest,
and how my wrist looks small
in your rough hands.
And how
It Is
that i love you.

She had too many staples, she decided.

They just sat there on her cluttered desk
in her tiny apartment
in their little blue box
taking up space.

“Fuck,” he said,
sitting desperate in his spacious flat downtown
holding his final college essay
ever.
“I just ran out
of staples.”

Later, at the convenience store,
He complained to the clerk:
“You know that pack you buy at the beginning of freshman year?”

Yeah, she said.
The package comes with 500 staples.

“You think,” he said,
“you’d never use that many staples.”

I know what you mean, she said.

“But here it is,” he said.
“Last week of senior year,
and now I have to go buy a whole new pack.”

She looked at him in pity.

They’re down aisle five, she said.

Seriously.

I just left the shower

to say

I love my pussy.

And that

all I wanted to do was take

one

slow

shower.

Cleanse my body.

My thoughts.

My soul.

But

all I did 

was stick my hand in the fast

hot jets,

draw it out again

and sigh with   intense    exasperation.

Because:

you,

my insufferable muse,

decided that I would

march

right back to my room

and type how much I love

my hairy,

pink and

dirty

little centerpiece.

How sweet it is,

my unwrapped little box.

How I just   adore   my tight slippery cunt.

How I am ashamed that

sometimes

I want to shave it bare,

So that

I look

all shivery

small

and smooth.

And that

sometimes

I pretend it is a jungle

because I’m too tired to care

what little beasties

may be hiding in my folds.

And how

sometimes

most-times

I tenderly trim it

as I think about the

softness

the wetness

the safe dark

within

and the love that

pours out of it.

Vagina,

dear vagina:

how much

you inspire me.

How much

you get me into trouble.

So:

I sit here in my towel

hunched over screen

writing about how much

I fucking love you.

And how much

I really

really

would rather be taking a shower.

I

Sometimes

you can sit in a graying hanging-basket swing (so weathered by the years on St. Lawrence),

on an island with             pine trees  

so dense and

humming birds

so small and             fast outside

of the screened-in             porch windows.

And they are gone to the store

it is just you                        and

the rain.

Sometimes youcan revel in the sound of boats churning the waves that will

hit             the lichen-covered rocks and

kiss the toes of your feet as

you                                     inhale

that unholy smoke and

exhale

into blue,

waiting for dinner.

Sometimes a blue and white sailboat will dock in your bay and the fishing line will tangle

            when it’s cast and

the rain will come down all day and the oven will refuse to heat and…

Sometimes the world will call for writing, but all you can scribble is “I miss you,” and

“I want you,” and

‘I absolutely need you.”

II

Sometimes

you can write

a whole poem about

a                                     droplet

of rain             on             the end of

a single

pine-needle,

and how from far away it looks

stagnant,

hanging,

like the jewel                         on the end

of an upside-

down

scepter.

III

Sometimes

the Canadian sand

            between your

copper-painted toenails can inspire

a whole song of rebirth and,                         just so 

the wind can blow kisses against your eardrums

so the goldfinches’             tonal             suggestions

are not lost. Sometimes you can feel a             whole

novel

well up             in your chest and

curdle in your brain and

then: sit,             waiting,             rotting

in your fingertips because

all that throws itself onto the page is

How far away he is.

How soft her lips are.

How safe his arms,            

when they held you before you left.

How delicious her neck smelled as you nuzzled into it before you came in her.

How you wept when you found him not in your bed when you woke.

How you didn’t bathe for two days after she got on that plane because her             scent

was still all over you.

And

sometimes

all you want to do is drink your tea and watch

the rain hit the dock

and the boat that won’t start

and thelilypads above the catfish that won’t bite

or

listen to the muted chirrups of soggy birds

and think about the one you love and

their smile and how it’s not raining in Texas.

And all you can do is write and             hope

that the fish start biting soon

because it’s almost time for dinner.

and I could not sleep

all I could think about

was how you told me you

wanted me to spread them

and how you liked that I got so juicy.

and I opened the window

letting the cool October air

whisper over me

my nipples grew hard

my hands forgot themselves

and I began to wander

and the sirens

that wail in the middle of the night

did not bother me

and the light from the alley

falling into my window

could not reach me

and my smooth thighs

quivered

thinking of you

thinking of me

and it was slippery

and I was warm

my face was flushed

my forehead sweaty

my pupils dilated

and my hands were in

and out

and around

and became their own rhythm.

and my toes curled.

and my breathe came

hard like I did.

and

and I could not sleep because

all I could think about was how much I love you

how much I needed

you

to touch me.