House of Shame A letter to my body: For years you’ve played protector Shielded me from a truth that our twelve-year-old brain couldn’t...

I Was Swallowed by a Beam of Light Some say you were a plane, a flare, a mirage. / At first barely visible in the sky /but then your...

An Open Letter To My Fellow Survivors* You are not the house of horrors trauma built inside of you They tried to fit us into cheap hotel...

Photograph of Two Sisters We were like glass and he broke us we were open as water fine as milkweed and he damaged us. I can see it in...

Low Pile Fragments The words are plucking right there at my teeth crowded inside standing nervously like nape hairs that have known Fear...

My children fight like puppies. They bite, they goad, they test. My neighbor teaches me to make an o with my thumb and pointer and press;...

On becoming a parade float What would it feel like to live like he had never touched you? To live like he had never lived at all? To...

The Hard Way You never know people till they die you gingerly page through their privacy Those fresh, fateful photos: mothers in mauve...

In Your Mind A butterfly flits through a garden The rain nourishes the grass I contemplate simple beauty While looking back at an ugly...

24 GOSPELS OF GORE Twelve Japanese soldiers knacked me in wicked sequence, and twelve more filed outside my cell, donning grins of glee...

Phantom Moon When vicious sadness lances Spears that disembowel, My soul on which pain dances Emits a silent howl. But the moon to which...

Between a Light and Fire Between a light and fire arose Your buried appetite again last night I found it in a shoebox in a poem Every...

The Score My body knows the sum total of quick-quick heartbeats adrenaline too sick to fight too heavy for flight So long I lived in a...

Spattered The Tough Mudder race in Minnesota is only for the very tough. Contestants run through brambles, wade in water pits, and slog...

Anorexia The soundless scream of torturous pain, The story of which I cannot explain. Ashamed of my needs, yet I want them met,...

The Secret The secret was to be kept at all costs. The judge said if he did it again it would mean prison. We wouldn’t want to break her...