When You Don’t Believe In God, Pray Sweetly To The Moon
one night
there was you
sitting just there
at the tip of
a skinny moon
your head dangling over
the milky edge
knocking it back
and forth
like a curious dog
just as though
there you’d always been
playing Parcheesi
in a crater pit
Alien, I called
up to you
with eyes like fishbowls
and razor blade
teeth purple like jellyfish skin
you must not be
from around here, I said
but you just laughed out
your wide blue mouth
and I watched that laugh
drip down
and plop
from the roof
to the window
into my bed tied
up in a yellow bow
a winter lemon
a ball of marigold butter
a comet’s broken tail
I suspect
you wouldn’t say but
you built the stars
in the back of your throat
and spit them
out right over my bedroom
window so I might follow
Orion’s loose belt
or Ursa Major’s curious snout
to maybe once see
your glass float eyes
filled with little green
dots glowing
sea plankton
tea leaves
escaped from
the bag
I might hear
your favorite jazz singer
playing from other planets
where you’ve stashed
your stolen radio
and greasy napkined
love letters penned
with web strung
talon hooked hands
I’d ask if you’d like
to lay down
just with me
beneath the covers
where it might
be warmer than
it is on the moon
*
7 a.m, A Fight in the Bathroom
The stream of water each morning
gallops gently down to sit witness
to this thing she made
how she intended:
fish boned, tentacle bearded,
man eyed. Hooks dug in
left to stain the bed
instead of the silver scale.
Brown black irises, wet
as a waterhorse’s back,
calculate the distance in nautical
miles, move from one white space to another.
The honied moments of peace, before
absences are hurled from tiger shark teeth
into the salivating sea.
This is the truth:
barnacles ripped from the surface,
the bathtub split down the middle.
Darling, remember the risk.
Love, stay.
*
Archeology
In my room there is a shadowbox of messes
a collector’s case of overcompensation
of breakups and breakdowns,
a shrine of fruit that’s gone too sweet with overripe
Next to my bed there is a paper log of
all the bruises I had last month,
the abrasions that marked up my face.
You can follow along if you just read the dates:
50 freckles by mid-July,
4 crooked teeth in April.
In January, 2 apple red beads of blood
that landed on my lip after you got punched in the mouth.
In the hall you’ll find a jar of secrets because
nobody can ever seem to keep them. Keep looking
for the labeled vase of mistakes that were made
last year – repeat them, don’t learn a thing.
They should be next to the burning eyes pinned like
a beetle wing. The lumps in throats,
the dropper bottle I’ve kept of tears that wore
the backs of my eyeballs flat.
I saved the memory of my first kiss in a cast of resin,
even though my teeth clicked behind his
and my face burned for days, just because
I liked that I didn’t know where my hands should go.
If I could show my collection to The World
I’d do it by letting them capture that same mouth.
I’d swallow up every reminder I get that pain sits
in the belly like a stone.
I’d tell them with my lips, hurt comes
with a basis for comparison. Hearts ache
only when they have something to
sink their sickly sweet love into.
Blemishes only form under skin that can blush.
Bone feels weak after muscle gets worn.
The World is a tragic, fragile, lovely place
immortalized in this showcase.
I’d have a gallery wing devoted to every lie I’ve ever told.
I would devote this museum to bedlam.
I would fall in love again and again.
I would be a mess forever.
*
Tatum Williams is 22 year old student at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, studying English and creative writing. She is just a few short months away from receiving her Bachelor’s degree, and is hopeful in pursuing her first poetry publication. She is a thrifter, pottery painter, and lover of miserably hot summers.