Doubts There are nights when I stand under the shower head feeling the hot water expand my hair and wondering if you knew what you were...

Girls with Red Flowers One cradles a bowl of red flowers, her nipples the same deep rose as the blooms. Tahiti is hot— we women may all...

Leave All Behind There you stood staring into the mirror thinking you were alone, but you weren’t, I was standing before you, peering...

Reclaim This body knows brands where brutality breeds. A process plans to split my legs like mayo marinated on a sandwich. Futile...

Eyes I’ve looked into the eyes of evil, Dilated, black pupils, Erasing earth brown, As he shoved the pill, Into my mouth, And held me...

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...