ode to processed food

radiation is cool
--buffalo wings, five minutes
I like microwaves

teeth on the edge of my lip
like small white almonds

eat me

ghost sheets

half-moons
in their nail beds
remind me

my period is coming

stains
so womanly
like nail polish
painted on my sheets

college essay

The Compensation Vectors of Fish Swimming Against a Sideways Current

Anorexia is a brittle word, often mistaken for a brittle disease. It is not. Rather, it is an invisible current, an undertow that pulled my junior year beneath water as I watched one of my best friends drown.
“This kind of sadness is normal for children your age,” my mother advised.
“Hormones,” my brother suggested.
“Female… problems?” my father tentatively put forward.
Isolation claimed me. I found myself torn between my health and that of my friend's. Her parents went so far as to pretend I invented her problems when I came to them for help.
“Your whole family is on anti-depressants,” her stepmother said vindictively. “You don’t know anything.” Meanwhile, I would sit with her at lunch, frozen with a horrible
fascination, watching her pinch what was left of her thigh obsessively. The worst came in October, when she was 95 pounds. “I think my hair is falling out,” she told me. “Why is my hair falling out?”
Later that night, I realized I hadn’t read a book since school had started; I used to
read one a night. My life had reconfigured itself into a tight orbit around my friend’s
rapidly deteriorating mental health.
And yet, strangely, this obsession was destructive for both of us. As she fell apart, so did our friendship. Despite the horrors she must have been experiencing, I ceased to be a nurturing and supportive friend. I refused to touch her. The fragile and breakable about her was repulsive to me. I would look at her and see death where I used to see our shared childhoods; bones where there used to be beauty. Excuses became my dialogue, both to her and about her. When she called, I would not answer, but perversely, I would do little in my free time other than wait for her to call me.
Luckily for the both of us, a brigade of teachers armed with boxes of Kleenex and maternal instinct took command. “Read Man’s Search for Meaning,” my psychology teacher
recommended. “You write about this,” my English teacher commanded. My biggest
revelation came to me during math class, when after opening my book I was confronted
with a very relevant word problem:

1a. Calculate the compensation vectors of fish swimming in a sideways current.

I knew then how to escape the current. I had to calculate the extent that isolation,
for me, was self-made. I had to compute the distance necessary to separate myself from
my friend’s hands pulling at me beneath the water. I, not anyone else, was responsible for finding new meaning in my life. Viktor Frankl’s words had especial meaning for me: “Everything can be taken from a man but… the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” I began to recover, to detach. At lunch, I no longer chose to sit in silence with her, but found laughter with other friends. I began to read again, but with a hunger I had not previously experienced.
This year, she is not fully recovered. I am.
And I wonder still if the decision I made was the only one to make. Occasionally options only make themselves known in hindsight, when the glare of uncertainty has faded. Now, as I look back, I wonder if my recovery had to be at the expense of hers; I wonder if I could have been better to her; I wonder if I was obligated to do something differently. I feel shame at my behavior, shame that the word 'selfishness' applies so fully to my actions.
But I understand now that each person must find his own way to struggle against the
current; that no one is responsible for my happiness but me; and that although depressions are dangerous waters, they are also escapable.

for each seed she swallowed

Persephone remained trapped in hell for

a month.

a Greek allegory for pregnancy scares?

the lost part of the myth:

Persephone's dad chases after Hades

with a rifle and a hunting permit

cause that pimply fuckin'

jerk knocked up his daughter

and didn't even take her out

to dinner first.

chain restaurants in colorado springs

Ben: Why do they call it a Cracker Barrel?
Me: Because it's full of white people.

after the dogs get out

a lamppost flickers uncertainly
like shaky hands
in the dark

passing cars mistake
my hips for the drag of
a dog in heat
headlights
lustful and insistent

"you wanna ride?
get in the car
get in the car"

I keep my back bent into a
middle finger,

throw my head back
and howl
with laughter

these teeth are sharp enough
to cut throats