Here; I dug up some old poems and interviews and stuff for you. I’m not willing to claim 100% responsibility for any dumb stuff I said before, say, 2013.
So Below is my fourth book, published by Vegetarian Alcoholic Press and designed and illustrated by the very magical Christopher Payne of Salted Teeth and Fine Print Press.
Feelings is as close as I will ever come to keeping a diary, and I’m grateful that Trembling Pillow Press printed it on actual paper in 2018.
Sorry It’s So Small is my first chapbook (or any kind of book, ever) and was published by Factory Hollow Press in 2011. It was a collaboration with the dazzling Krysten Brown, who designed cover and interiors, and it is now out of print.
The title refers to the size of the book (it is really small) as well as the way big feelings, both good and sad, seem to shrink as they recede into the distance.
Dear Lil Wayne (Magic Helicopter Press, 2014), a collection of letters sent to Lil Wayne while he was incarcerated, appears to be out of print; emoji shrug. Cover and interiors designed by Krysten Brown. No, he never wrote back. Yes, I meant what I said: his music actually saved my life. Yes, I do have the world’s last remaining copies.
All of the illustrations on this site come from a collaboration with Krysten Brown for the chapbook Sorry It’s So Small, published by Factory Hollow Press a really long time ago. It’s super out of print but I could sell you a copy for a lot of money if you really wanted one.
Wine I’m weightless in the wet neon night.
Smell of burning plastic wood smoke leather sleeves.
I can’t leave you without imagining your death.
I burn the inside of your palms with my brains.
Medicine Ball: Playwrights v. Poets - (D)Constructing Seattle was a collaborative writing, directing, and performance event. I wrote twelve pieces of flash fiction—or prose poems, if we must—that were passed on to a director and two actors to interpret. Some of the pieces below are linked the grainy video evidence of the result: two Seattle bros, one joint, one couch, one dream, trying to get to the heart of what made Seattle the beautiful mess it has become. And yes, I absolutely recycled these; they eventually became this book.
Ritual for Making a Home
Ritual for Finding the City Under the City
Take a piece of paper and smooth it with your open palm. Crumple it and toss it over the edge of the world. That is mountains. Light the city on fire with other people’s memories. Walk backwards over every bridge. Be sure to ignite each as you pass.
Ritual for Reenacting the Founding of Seattle
Do you see a piece of land you like? Take it. Is it freely given? Take it anyway. Possession is a kind of violence. Fuck anything that moves. You do not have to use your dick. Do you see those beautiful things? Destroy them with someone else’s hands. Find eighteen perfect things. Mix them into concrete. Pour over something I love.
Ritual for the Times Before Time
Find the folded hills. Shake them out. Use light to draw an outline of the mountains. Find the center of downtown. Dig a hole. Fill it up with ocean. Don’t stop until everyone you know is dead.
Ritual for Dispelling a Flock of Cranes
Clap your hands. Clap your hands. See how the cranes have not moved. Remember who you are. Eat a Xanax. Lay down in the shadow of the city of your dreams. Under you, the tumblers of earth will shift and lock. See how the cranes haven’t moved.
Ritual for Rebuilding a Broken City
Ritual for Finding Lost People
Sit down in the cupped palm of a yellow Caterpillar excavator. Touch each tooth in turn. Place the upturned dirt on your tongue. Chew until it forms a paste. Spit it out and mold it into a person. Make more. Make more. Make more until you have a small army. Tell this army, this is your city now. Give each soldier a name. Take them to each of the seven hills. Tell them, find The People of the Inside. Find the People of the Large Lake. Turn them loose. Watch them wander in ever-tightening circles until they fall off the edge of the earth.
Ritual for Recreating the Feeling You Had the First Time You Saw the Opal Face of Mt. Rainier Rise Above the Rain-Washed City
Eat a green blackberry. Drink from the rainwater pooled in a heavy red camellia. Find the still-burning cherry of a discarded cigarette and set it like a glowing jewel in your chest. Break skin. Anyone’s skin. Ride the 27 as far as it will take you. Feel the collected weight of the bus’ breath and its song of stops. Listening is presence. Look up as the bus crests Yesler. Maybe next time you will see the mountain.
Ritual for Remembering All the Places You Have Lost to Progress
Ritual for Finding Your Way in the Mutable City
Find a spirit duplicator. Ok. Then find a mimeograph. Mimeograph these rituals. While the paper is still warm, hold it to your cheek. Inhale until the stars behind your eyes blink on. With your eyes closed to the earth but open to the universe, move toward the heat of the breath of any living thing. Give them a mimeograph. Again and again until you run out. Open your eyes. Find your way back. There is no back.
Ritual for Making Use of a Deep and Unnamable Sadness
Cry a small stream. Let it cut through the city, Let it carve a new gorge behind your eyes. Let it run until it loosens the tight spool of sadness in your chest. Find someone with braided hair. Ask them to shake it loose and weave it with the ribbon of your pain. Together, look over the new city, divided by your tears. Say together, fuck this city. Fuck this city and its beauty and fuck this city and its bloodied shore. Say fuck this feeling of unnamable sadness. Now your chest is empty. Fill it with the just-washed light of the wet new streets.
Wake up
and you are already tired.
Go to sleep tired.
Your breasts are two bruised plums
circled by a drunk wasp.
You are so close to forty.
This was never supposed to happen.
Go back to the time before “time.”
Wake what’s sleeping there.
Make a ladder
of your own silky child’s hair.
Lick the tears
from your own smooth cheeks.
It is all very very tender.
Climb past your small curled self
curl your fingers
over the lip of the bowl
of the inverted world.
You have no idea
how far I’ve come
to tell you this.
What if those were all your teeth on the floor.
What would you say if your dream came true.
You move through the tunnels of me
you are the toasted odor of decay.
Something is always about to happen.
Why are scary things sexy. Why are doctors so tall.
If the future is a roller rink my skates are white
& my smile is white & I am dead & I am
couples skating to Cypress Hill.
click illustrations to view
Bronzed breast bone. Rattle rattle.
Even the air tastes like metal.
Mercury glass. The backs of spoons. Poor Brooklyn.
I-beams sway to comfort me.
All of Poland has turned out to hold my hands.
Gently weeping wolves. The tender hare.
I am disloyal to my own tears.
Thank you for breaking up with me
in the park. Now I get to hate
trees. Each dead leaf has a special
meaning: Death. Sleeping is a long slow fight.
Night makes breath sad clouds.
Dark breaks around every sound.
Each time the phone rings I remember who I am.
I'm Lauren Ireland. I thought I told you to shut up.
Once there was a city here or I forget what that means.
My body is preparing itself for California.
Physical distance is a kind of purifying pain
jasmine and urine a kind of sickened longing.
What if I said no place is a place for being okay
in the world. When I lay down drunk I’m in every city.
The spooky fuck of nostalgia and I forget.
My body is preparing itself for California.
And I am full of america. Those folded mountains
sleeping skin and hair. Weird peace in the rumpled hills.
Earthquake shoves our house and we shove back. High
and sighing in over the roofs and all the wrong trees
fog is a salve for all the lost words. Yes
I am straight with the kush
Grey falls all over everything
except my party dress. & even then
the whole galaxy is dusty,
& my hair. Well.
I am just trying to sift.
Remember when I was a person.
Remember when.
I have been waiting to be
pretty again & to be friendly.
Trees bend away.
Books fly off the shelf. I suck.
Let me tell you about the time
I was a person. Do you know
any more than I do? Snow, who cares.
I have seen a shark’s vagina.
Men are taking vibrant golden tinkles in the park.
Everything I do is wrong. Extravagant vomit
weak little talons it's all solid gold.
YOU are the god of the underworld
your job is to show no happiness. I get high & listen
to the music of the spheres. I love you. I'll die
if I can't keep moving I resent the full stop.
I want to be in a cold car
with all my selves
coat on
driving
in a Massachusetts I never left
or lived.
The divine sweetness of the girls
in my head
the car exhaling
dirty white
over dirty white roads.
The mountains
press the sky
press the clouds.
Far away geese are calling
I park at the party.
Cloud of golden midges
I’m in love
everything is on fire
it is four o’clock
on a Friday forever
it is almost spring
and I have never been hurt.
Sturdy yellow petals
over the turnstile
pleasure of excess
of heat
in the butterfly garden
I am already concerned
everything is past.
Nothing happens
fast enough
I will lick these peonies open myself.
Walking over the bridge of names
the darkest dark
I have ever seen
dark water
dark cars hushing
over the dark street.
Watching the party blink on
sealing everything with fear.
Warm scent of curled hair
on warm dense fur collar
dress red as a cat’s throat.
Cutty Sark.
When we go inside the party
who will we be.
Loose tobacco
quartz
faded brown rose
incense and silk scarves
at the cigarette shop.
Spiraling piles of books
under the windowsills
at Troubadour,
names gossiping in the flyleaves
spiders on the porch.
Here is the swimming hole
where we prise garnets from the rocks
little tick sucking at my chest
here is where the black bear waited
by the door
here is where we pulled over
to talk
in the unholy church
here is the shop
where we buy eggs and bread
here it is.
Making faces in the convex mirror
I’m told this is the face
that makes me pretty
and this is the face
that makes me me.
Wet leaf
on the wet skylight.
I am the ghost
at the feast
I am afraid
of the telephone
thunder
the dead
the space between now and then.
The dark is alive
with the imagined scents
of sleep and hair
I pull it on like a blanket
the night’s most awful blanket
I’m breathing dreadful clouds
like dreams
wet can of wet ash
burnt cigarette ends
ice on the sill
on my elbows.
Everyone who lived here
before me
is dead.
Is that a nice thing
to tell me
before I go to bed?
Then merciful sleeping
into the charred morning.
Honey light
and the frozen millstream.
Kitten-faced violas in a mug
whole afternoons on the grass
screen door slamming and slamming
fresh red blood
on my palm.
I am thinking of something
tell me what I am thinking.
I shouldn’t
but I am.
I don’t remember anything
rainy afternoon on Locust
following smells home
detergent
jasmine
dough
shit
the cold expensive smell
of the coats on the bed
is it wrong
to care about this
no.
Amanita
hen-of-the-woods
little red one with white dots
every slender thing
that grows on the forest floor
has a name.
Brackish water has a taste
like fear.
Fear tastes like aspirin
inside the old cupboard
in the shed
overturned boat
stored in the eaves
doves
dove shit
it is not ok to be here.
Ferns grow
out of bricks.
The apples are going
with sweet dead faces.
Wet dusty scent of storm windows
ozone
Non-shadow of blinds making vertebrae
watery light on the wall
the sound of mail being sent (slide whistle of joy)
the dumb daily things
the luxury of abstinence from lipstick
o world
o world when
did you get so small.
Yes
all these sounds
low and holy in my ear like night.
Dangerous whiff of rotting apples. I’m gutted.
Wasps don’t sting they bite. Actually I have seen my dad cry.
Real fruit or nothing. Cheetos. Everything
I remember about being three is wrong.
I look good in a bikini. Give me my fuckin money.
Give me my fuckin money. Give me my fuckin money. Give me my fuckin money.
The creek overflows. Moccasins will leap
to bite you where you stand. No you can’t touch me.
The creek overflows. Teenagers suck
their thumbs it’s hot-hot. I’m not on drugs
or anything, but I can see the molecules vibrate.
Plus there is a cheese sandwich inside me, making me feel cozy.
Standing in line for the roller coaster: it’s 1998.
You can buy wine at the 7-11.
Bodysuits are for prostitutes.
I just thought you should know.
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare fuck
your accordion. There are marigolds and rich sadnesses.
I’m crying on 5th Avenue thank you it’s raining but just
a little bit bright blood on a bright hot day. There is no
great mystery. Music comes from cars. God comes
from books. Love comes from paper. Hare hare.
My heart is a hotel room
and I am alone here tonight
cold windows, cold sheets, warm breath
cold city sparkling coldly below
time drying on my thighs.
If you ask me, I will tell you:
even as a child, I knew
childhood was a mistake.
It’s been a long day.
Now I am 37. The mornings go on
until four o’clock.
That is when I am closest to death.
Today I am eating tulip leaves, dying of water.
Because there is the unreal
and then there is the really really unreal.
When you are my age you will understand.
My hair grows long and I cut it
my hair grows long again and I cut it again.
Change is seduction.
Change is seduction,
seduction is a message:
you could never be this again
even if you wanted it.
Now I am 37.
Who even am I
hungover, not even real
I froze my eyes with the lip of a Coke can.
Well water and jasmine
milk milk lemonade
the perfume of the suburbs haunts my hangover
and every ex-boyfriend finds me on the internet.
I was drunk enough to look in the mirror
and think, this is OK.
Now I am stoned, eating cake in bed.
Sorrow is a long game.
When there is nowhere else to go
past all desire, past the place of feelings
my hands are sexy lions
hunting in the yellow forests of memory.
I don’t want to remember things.
Paper like moth wings
those folded notes
soft foxed edges.
Handful of pony beads.
High school high school high school.
Why won’t you help me not feel like this?
All the dying commas fall
blazing from the sky.
The moon has a drunken face
laughing and laughing over the gravel drive
in the blood-bright October air.
The truth is not that bad
coming from you.
But when the truth is
coming for you
that is another story.
Who can loosen a Champagne muselet with her teeth?
Uh-oh.
I can.
Are we ever not within a breath of hell?
Jim Beams, like 3 or 4 of them, and
I am past reason.
I am licking the tender inside
of my own tender elbow.
I am the rickety queen of my own bed.
The last time I was beautiful I
carried the cold in on my coat
carried a book wrapped in brown paper,
a surprise. My hair a crown of braids.
Candlelight, fat glasses of golden wine.
Be careful what you wish for
in the airport bar.
Now I am burning
and burning in circles.
My crown is fire. No, rain. No, fire.
My crown is the heat of things passing.
published in Fine Print’s Fall 2019 issue
