This is just a story.

That first night you held me
Longer than I expected
And I fed off you in the night
Like a moss, I embraced your skin.

It’s the last night now
Dry and disappointing,
Like the heel on a bread loaf,
This is what’s left.

...................................................

Extricating my body from yours,
You pulled out in multiple ways last night
And we slept as though I was not there
(the empty comfort of cuddling air)

I beg you to
Hold me lover.
I have no need of blankets
Give me the palms of your hands to wrap around.
Why is this bed such a desolate ground?

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like the insect rustling across my blanket,
Your memory spooked me from sleep.
And I shook, holding my pillow like a weapon,
Keeping watch in the dark.
I am alone now,
With books as bedtime companions.
I hand feed myself when necessary,
Nursing back the appetites you took when you left.
The insects gone, it dissolved into the dark,
Oblivious to the damage its entrance provoked.
I thought I’d left this fear behind,
Filed away with all those other childhood irrationalities.
But now when I dream, you hold me,
and your kisses shake me awake into dangers I never anticipated.
Leave the light on love.
I vacate the bed in favor of a more naïve companion.
Curling into the couch, I give in to your ghost.
This room is yours. Take it.
I acquiesce.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 12:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Re-Education of the Organs:

21 years go by and during the last few you’ve noticed this new weight
That punctuates your existence
Putting pressure on your sternum and crushing your tits flat
Into the slats of your rib cage.
These last few years you’ve learned to flinch at the touch of
Your own shadow and disguise your female markings with
Bars of plaid and buttons on the wrong side,
Cologne to cover the pheromones,
Letting body hair grow like moss
Each tendril exuding an aura that screams
Fuck off.

There’s a new weight now that’s buried under your stomach
Like a mold spreading roots into previously functioning organs,
It oozed into the crevices of your brain and you’re back to 3rd person narration,
Hiding in a tense that gives you space from a self you don’t remember.

Its all reruns and flashbacks now,
static on every station with neon flashing episodes egging the insides of your skull.
You get used to the smell.
Its all twisted limbs and 2am insanities, flopping fishlike on the mattress
In a lake of sweat and the excretion of very bad dreams.

Its taken time gone by for me to try and ensnare in language the
Circumstances and happenings
The “what went down� on that December night between us
Two persons, together on my twin bed lavender sheets.
Time gone by and still I struggle to articulate, define
To wrestle into intelligibility the events of one night.
Suffering does not tolerate forgetting
And the body has dark ways of making itself known.
The heart is not content to cry alone in its bucket of dark.

I’ve learned this fear that lurks behind my eyes.
It drops pebbles in the depths of my iris to transform every strong jaw into a razor blade,
Every handshake into pillaging fingers
Every kiss leaves the taste of cum
Since December
Since you.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Burn:

“Can I see your journal?� he asks.
“No� I reply.
“Why not?� He demands, “What don’t you want me to see?� He sits back in an imitation of relaxation, but the subtly condescending dimple in his left cheek is a warning siren. With each twitch of his lip, it deepens, and I wonder how such a small indentation can create such a vacuumous silence.
My inner monologue is a scathing rat scratching at the backs of my eyeballs, but I’m only brave inside the safety of my skull, so I say;
“You just can’t.�

“What if I just take it from you? What if I don’t give you a choice?� He murmurs quietly, as if I will be seduced by a purr. “You haven’t yet discovered what I’m fully capable of.�
His words are a caress, a gesture implementing the intimacy of a cheese grater in action.

My limbs stiffen against him as my blood frosts into glass crystals against the membrane of my veins and my fingertips compress, leaving indentations on the journals cover. His eyes linger, caressing my visage as one would apply a poultice of blistering wax.
He leans forward and kisses me. He doesn’t kiss me all that often. Mostly he breathes on my face; his jaw slack; a gasping fish pressed against my cheek. His hands slip around my waist and I collapse out of my chair into his arms on the floor. I feel him pull off my last layer with a tugging motion, it’s an odd sensation, like peeling off a gummy price tag, I’m sure there are little sticky bits left behind.

Damn these nights,
Of self-medicated torturous blunder
Finding yourself beneath this weight again,
As if turning on the faucet behind your eyes will save you from him..
Too late.
This one penetrated deep,
Like an ill timed burn.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 6:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Love and Eels:

On the final night they spent together, he made pasta. No one had ever cooked for her before. She was intoxicated by the comfort, the domesticity of the act. It was probably a symptom of something Oedipal, not enough care from her father or some shit. She’d tried to brush the thought away. Freud is an ideological recreational drug best used sparingly, and she was no first time user. Side effects: rage, diabolical wishes that ones vagina actually would grow teeth and initiate a spree of vigilante justice, the consumption of all the condiments in ones fridge (including an entire can of cake frosting and half a carton of sour cream) and occasionally the death of independent mental capacity. She’d concentrated instead on exploring the grooves of his bare back and shoulders hoping her hands or mouth might uncover a flimsy crack in his demeanor, a place to burrow up under his skin.

Freud spent a portion of his youth dissecting hundreds of eels in search of their reproductive organs, attempting to disprove Aristotle’s hypothesis that they birthed from the guts of the soil. He was unsuccessful and changed the direction of his studies, leading to his eventual explorations of psychoanalysis and sexuality. 132 years later, a woman holds a man, and she wishes for a knife, or an organ, capable of penetrating and infecting his body, dissolving him into a shuddering mass of adoring jelly inside a translucent sack of skin. This is what he has done to her, and they call him a man. She stays quiet and acquiesces to his pillaging hands and loveless kiss. Thanks to the elusive gonads of an eel, there are dangerous books about women like her, women who dream of reciprocating the piercing, destruction of their soul…

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That was my Love:

Part 1:

“Are you this ridiculous with every strange woman you meet?� I chide softly, smiling at him through the side curtain of my hair. His lip twitches with foreign emotion, reminding me of the consistent unreadable quality of his mouth. His cheeks subtly undulate and bulge, stretching to conceal the epicenter of this shaking. I wonder if he is meant to be appreciated without vision, like Braille, maybe his lips have to be touched. My heart is ringing obnoxiously loud and it’s probably only a matter of time before everyone catches on where the noise is coming from. I hate being the idiot who can’t remember to put her organs on vibrate.

He considers me out of the corner of his eye.
“You have the most astounding laugh,�, he replies quietly.

Part 2:

While engaged in a stare down contest with a pen he left on her desk, she makes a mental promise to herself to never again allow a man to fix or touch an object she can’t later dispose of after the inevitable fin. Unlike this pen, which will soon find residency in the garbage under the sink, the closet door he reattached is a little more permanent.

The objects he fixed for her tremor slightly under her gaze. If he’s gone will the lamp come loose? These surfaces pulse, rippling like waves with the echo of his thin fingers, as if he’d impregnated the walls with rhythms akin to his blood flow. Couldn’t she have changed her own light bulbs?
She turns off the lights and tentatively sits on the floor near the fridge, fearing what unearthed memories lurk beneath the tile. Do memories live autonomously? More importantly, are they subject to the laws of osmosis, capable of diffusing through the semi-permeable layers of her thighs? She considers phoning her mother to ask if her 9th grade chemistry notes are still boxed away in the basement. Someone must know.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 4:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What she meant to say:

Like a well know song
You slip into my heart.
But lower,
Hanging like a sock filled with water.

Forgive my porous nature,
But I sweat you.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 3:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. Pillow Talk

I woke up this morning and you were a wet dream
That forgot it wasn’t supposed to be real.
I walked home still covered in the sugary grime
Of your flesh memory.
It won’t scrub off in the shower.
You’re stronger than soap.

2. Ebony

Heavy with the ink of one long perverted love poem I didn’t mean to write,
These pages scream, echoing like bells.
Do you picture me with black hair?

3. Siren Song

I got lost in you
While drowning on recycled breath
In the cradle between your shoulder blades.
can you remember a time when we didn’t do this?

We loved each other, didn’t we?
I’d forgotten.

4. Gods girlfriend

My journal is you.
I see it in the shuddery stilted way
I scraped my hand across the page.
(like a cup kisses concrete)

I consumed the cut glass validation you offered,
Cutting my lips on each caress.

I’ve been wasting time.
The ink knows.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 6:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ritual:

My teapot is chirping with resounding rings,
As if it is bending
And it will soon break.

This twisting noise escalates
And the water shrieks
In a cloud of injected smoke.

Boiling hurts.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 6:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cocoon:

I tucked myself naked into my bed
And I wished for the day when I could lie there
Senseless
Wrapped in the nothing of my blankets

But I am afraid to sleep.
My dreams are where I am most dangerous.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 6:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Old Breath:

My grandfathers breath wheezes like a cat locked out on the porch.

This room is filled with leftovers and I want them reheated.
I’m not at home here.
The customs are unfamiliar, like a museum, I expect guards.

I’m attempting to navigate
with maps of old photographs,
the old stories.
I guess you had to be there.

I hear my sister’s fingers tapping a computer keyboard,
And I follow these clicking breadcrumbs home.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 6:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Damages: unknown

Damn these nights of self medicated torturous blunder
Finding yourself beneath this weight again:
As if turning on the faucet
Will save you from him.

Too late
This one penetrated deep.
Like an ill timed burn.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An expiration date:

Once again
Tucking myself in 3 am
Stuck on my back as usual
Is this sex or a sacrifice?
I’ll be dead afterward either way.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Growing back limbs

I carried you with me today.
The smell of latex congealing in my hair;
Funny,
I don’t remember getting it there.

Sleeping on a pile of sheets;
I haven’t set the bed since company came.
You’ve given new meaning to that phrase.

This temporary occupation
Has seriously fucked with my emotional insulation
And you know,
It’s cold in here now.

I hope soul scabs over
As quickly as skin.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Superhero’s don’t hide dirty dishes above the sink

There is a horn like a pitch pipe
Sounding a G G G G
Beneath my window.
And it’s waiting for my cue…

The anticipation of this song
Is long past due.

So I’m just going to turn out my light
and pretend I’m strong enough
to turn off my phone.
Reminding myself
An unsung song is better
Mourned alone.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Overgrown Algae: a conversation of hair

My hair is alive
Though,
It would like me to suspect otherwise.
Thread-like leeches;
Parasitic in nature;
Undulating in brunette tangles
Medusa inverted
With the screaming snakes mouths
Inside my skull.
I’d like to bleed you myself
But I can’t help but treat you
As a limb
With the frightened respect I owe
To a bone.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eurydice learned the first time

Door open into daylight:
Discovery of your form framed by brick.

Damn these nights
of irreversible irresistible stupidity.

Wordlessly ascending,
our foot echo reverberating
in my stairwell

door knob click
each hinge in accordance
“can I kiss you yet?�

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Safety of Screening

Slow drag nicotine moan of your
Hello
over the phone.

Nervous flutter of paper wings
Pathetically
Escaping, into your snare.

Your hello
Renders an impossibility
To my kitten murmured
No

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I fear moths.

Why does a simple flip of your hand
Resembling –his hand
Send me reeling
As if he lives
Disembodied
In your fingertips.

Forgive my flinch
Those hands-his
Rasp off limbs
in their caresses
and I am still so
damn
scabbed

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The fruit fondler :

What swelling hot pressure water balloon,
Sending hot cough sparks up my throat,
Sends me reeling
Into these two a.m.insanities?

Be this love, or rabies,
The froth is a fact.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rebecca and I found this in the skyway market on the west bank.

Normally, I think i would have walked by.

But today we couldn't.

I need and demand an alternative space, a heterotopia if you will,
a space without the presence of derogatory media
that pimps female bodies for profit.

I don't know how this space will ever exist.
But I can hope,
because isn't that the goal in the end?
To create a world in which we can exist? a world that wants us in it?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Womb Wolf
- Z
Ferocious beast woman scratching behind clenched jaw
Stop fighting my lock down steel sinuses
Don’t you know,
Your meat in this world.

Pandora showed mercy.
There is none of that here.

Damn inner animal,
Don’t make me see you in slices;
Sectioned off into cutlets;
Your tender bits poised and quivering on the lips
Of some butcher entrepreneurial lover;

That’s what they do to meat in this world.
Stay quiet and caged.
That’s what happens to food.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Nature of Gothic:
By margarat attwood

I show you a girl running at night
Among trees that do not love her
And the shadows of many fathers

Without paths, without even torn bread or white stones
Under a moon that says nothing to her.
I mean it says: Nothing.

There is a man nearby
Who claims he is a lover
But smells of plunder.
How many times will he have to tell her
To kill herself before she does?

It is no use to say
To this girl: You are well cared for
Here is a safe room, here
Is food and everything you need.

She cannot see what you see.
The darkness washes toward her
Like an avalanche. Like falling.
She would like to step forward into it
As if it were not a vacancy
But a destination,
Leaving her body pulled off
And crumpled behind her like a sleeve

I am the old woman
Found always in stories like this one,
Who says, go back, my dear.

Back is into the cellar
Where the worst is,
Where the others are,
Where you can see
What you would look like dead
And who wants it.

Then you will be free
To choose. To make
Your way.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Reflections on Atwood:
-Z
My alter ego,
Is a girl
Running somewhere
Through a forest of loveless foliage.

A man in waiting
Perhaps in the trees
Or behind a stone
Beast or man
Lover or destroyer
These adjectives are redundant in this context.

She is running toward him
The marauder of her heart
Because honestly,
Lost in the wood
Where else do you go?

--------------------------------------------------
-Z
I’ll clip my hair close.
It’s no rope ladder.
Don’t get any ideas.

----------------------------------------------------------------
The insomniac is a woman
-Z

Tomorrow
I will wake up
and I will wear men as my hats
accessorize.
and I will have no need of them
greater than the need
of a woman for her shoe
or her lipstick
or her purse.

Tomorrow
I will wake up
and I will regard all my pretty things
accessories.
and I will have no need of them
as they do not complete me
or fill me
or bring me real joy.

Tomorrow
I will wake up
and I will not be a woman
an accessory
to the life of men
and I will have no need of my hair
or my ovum
or my hats.

-------------------------------------------------
~The Stick Turned Blue
-Z

An exquisite wet dream
the masculine fetish

she sits.

Her flesh falls soft, in fabric draping curves.
Tendrils pushing out of her skull,
(parasitic leeches in waves of rippled gold)
she clutches a pair of safety scissors
wondering, which limb?

Rapunzel is waiting.

~Ephebophilia
-Z

the passive sleep

preserved heroine. yellow. Brittle.
She is a hollow pressed flower.
A dry bone.

An IV of pomegranate
the tart syrup congeals in her veins
and her lips stain with a smear
all bodies who choose to touch.

take your turn.

she is two things, split like a fruit
visited by gelatinous leechs
who would till her flesh in search
for a bucket of nails
(lifes seed)
and quench their dry sponge gums
on her syrupy sweat
gooey and coagulating
in her creases.

but the soil is dead. She is a dry hole.
Filled with rotten acorns.
remembering
the
wet smell
of green.

and whispering
When I die,
I hope there will be no more dreams.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An orb of lichen moss
That consumes your sleeping form:
It grows in the dark

It feeds on me.

You challenge my divinity
because the ephemeral memory
(Of your knee shaking smile)

It feeds on me.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Word Retrieval: separate, rinse, repeat.

I’m losing track of the boundaries of my body
It happened today
I walked. I wasn’t there
I felt my face blend
(Get rubbed over)
Like smearing oil pastel peanut butter

It snapped back rubber band like
And I kept walking
While my hands drifted further and further away.

Just give me a minute.
i'm starting to forget
(how to breathe)
so forgive me if i babble.
just give me a minute
i'm starting to forget
lets see if it makes sense
in the end.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Caution: Eye Irritant.

I will remember
What it felt like
To fall asleep and wake to find you enveloping me
Your Leg slung across my hip
Arm pinned under my head.
We layered our limbs
And woke up drenched in each others heat.

In that twin bed
We had no space to wiggle, to breathe
Ah, to realize the mortal danger in a sneeze.
But even no room
was too much room
when it came to you.

I’m not ready to wash you
Out of my sheets.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I name and validate the women in my life who have shown me strenght and grace.
Forgive my failure to articulate with decent poetry.
I couldn't find the words, so I settled for some words

---------------------------------------------

For Sarah-
You are my savior
In that I see you survive
If at times,
Only in your laughter.
It’s a blissful relief
To find a mind that comprehends
All that we still don’t understand
About us.
-----------------------------

For Emily-
I envy your
Compassionate strength
And the ease with which I find your company.
Unconditional care
Is hard to come by.
Lets always come home
And find each other there.
-------------------------------------

For Beth-
My ivory lady
Your wit, your constant quest for poise
(Sharp as iron needles)
Manages to puncture the vast distances
Between us.
You will never be less
than family to me.
---------------------------------------------------------

For Rebecca-
You give me the strength
To stick it to the institutions that be.
(however cliché it may seem)
You remind me that passion persists.
And though injustice brings us to tears,
you help me believe
“Dreamers move mountains�

-----------------------------------------------------------

For Briar-
Moments with you
Foolishly brilliant poignant lady that you are
Have shown me
What a soul’s connection might be
I will always be grateful
for your defacement of my white paper loneliness.
Please know,
Even when you stop speaking,
I’ll keep listening.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 6:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ani Difranco's incredible performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11BM_jNj9os

I recently read Communion: The Female Search for love by Bell Hooks

She had some interesting statements that I thought paralleled the commentary in Beyond Beats and Rhymes. A filmed male stated that in the “box of patriarchal misogynistic� the only way men are allowed to connect with women is through sex. How do you form connections with the gender you label a commodity?

Bell Hooks on heterosexual love and romantic friendships

Women who are steadfastly heterosexual may live a lifetime without feeling true love between themselves and a heterosexual partner. The greatest tragedy of marriage within patriarchal culture is not that so many couples divorce but that an even greater number of couples stay together without feeling that they love each other.

I hear us testify that the loneliness that may come with the full self-love and self-actualization is far preferable to the loneliness of being in a relationship where love is not present (…) loneliness chosen is always preferable to loneliness imposed.
(…) many of us recognize that we may long for deep and abiding intimate bonds of communion in love that are not sexual. And yet we want these bonds to be honored cherished commitments, to bind us as deeply as marriage vows. Individual women are choosing to create lifelong partnerships or to make lifelong commitments with individuals they never live with, or live with for a time.
(…) I knew with my whole heart that it is best to have a circle of love, with committed bonds that extend beyond one privileged partnership.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

sock drawer

I am remembering a girl
17
With candyapplecaramel eyes
Who took two men
To the same bend in the river
(On different occasions.)
One
(sweetmellowblandchocolatemilk)
The other
(tangytearjerkinglemondrops).

Sitting on a concrete island
She attempted to mold them into the same man.
Folding their faces memory and tucking in the corners
Until they hid
(On )
(Among)
(In)
(Along )
each other.

Unfortunately she felt nothing
In her raw steak heart.
fissured between dual lovers
(Lemon and milk)
And her throat well
Reverberated hollow
With each stone
She pushed into
The rushing water
(clearsolidapplecrunchsplash)
Beneath her feet.

She felt
Lonelier in love
Than in solitude.

Go figure.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 5:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

She told him now;
“If you choose something stronger than a pencil,
Things like that often happen�
She laughed again.
I knew before he spoke.
(although that was not likely to make it easier to settle)
I rolled over him, making myself as heavy as possible.

Do you have to be so fucking rough all the time?

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“So, which one of you is the straight one?�

-she leaned in through our car window, pierced lip fierce,
Smiling.
Shifting her eyes between my friend and I. (the objects of her curiosity)
Cigarette in hand she paused to brush the ash off the windshield.
The question lingered like the smoke.

“So, which one of you is the straight one?

My mouth hung open with a smile
I stammered and looked at Jen, in the drivers seat next to me for assistance
Her face hung with the same silent humor as mine.
I finally broke the silence.

“Is that a trick question?�

-------------------------------------------------------------

-Judith Butler explains Monique Wittig

A lesbian is not a woman. A woman (…) only exists as a term that stabilizes and consolidates a binary and oppositional relation to a man; that relation (…) is heterosexuality. A lesbian, (…) in refusing heterosexuality is no longer defined in terms of that oppositional relation (…) transcends the binary opposition between woman and man (…) a lesbian has no sex; she is beyond the categories of sex

Judith Butler

What a tragic mistake, then, to construct a gay/lesbian identity through the same exclusionary means, as if the excluded were not, precisely through its exclusion, always presupposed and, indeed, required for the construction of that identity. (…) Lesbianism would then require heterosexuality. Lesbianism that defines itself in radical exclusion from heterosexuality deprives itself of the capacity to resignify the very heterosexual constructs by which it is partially and inevitably constituted. As a result, that lesbian strategy would consolidated compulsory heterosexuality in its oppressive forms

(We must put forth)...…an effort to think through the possibility of subverting and displacing those naturalized and reified notions of gender that support masculine hegemony and hetorosexist power, to make gender trouble, not through the strategies that figure a utopian beyond, but through the mobilization, subversion, and proliferation of precisely those constitutive categories that seek to keep gender in its place by posturing as the foundational illusions of identity.�

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adolescent Romance

My first high school him
That early initiation
Was a shop front
For
My first her.

After all,
Where did my loyalty lie?

He was
Backseat fumbling stumbling seat belt buckles and fingers.
My hands aching, shaking - my repeated naïve faking

How many times did I cry out over pleasure not there?

They were my power punctuation those cries - forced moans.
My radical conclusion
Period

An end to those nervous
Driveway dates
Frantic peering out the -smeary window - shirt akimbo
Ducking with the passing headlights
Shattering like butter on the foggy windshield

Adolescent romance is a fumbling humiliation.
An unskilled hand looking under the hood
Of a stalled automobile
We were told it would run smooth.
We’re looking for a pedal
The break
Push pull no fail response
No go and all take.

So,
What was she?
A dropped line in my performance of heteronormativity?

hand held - hallway - fleeting flashes of contact
Heavy lidded apple hair inhale

pencil passing - finger tip fire
The world stopped when she bit at her lip
Admissions of guilt,
As if our confessions
Would save us from this heterosexual mess

whispered behind the drawn curtains
Of our hair

Forget what I said
Pretend it was steam on the air

Oh, to forget
what I have realized.

Bliss
to be baptized in the wet slap of your eyes

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You touched me in places so deep I wanted to ignore you
-adrienne rich

Loving you: Recollection. (2007)

Your Kisses
smacking like my skull against that wall
I ate around the bits you bruised.

You taught me to love myself
As you loved me;
The razor blade way.

The way into my heart starts higher
Learn your anatomy.

To a man I loved . (2004)

I don’t know how to deal.
My hand is numb, numb from
Writing what no one will ever read again
(the stains from this marker swear with my sweat.)
I miss our friendship
You know… the one we left behind
When you had a change of mind;
Just stop.
Because I won’t take testosterone
or pheromones
as an excuse for you anymore.
My life was too intact
For me to sit and watch it crack.
Don’t ask me.
I have my own decisions to make,
So no,
No.
You will not take this from me.
Flesh is just flesh
My love is not my blood or skin
My mouth can lie
So why
Why try sucking out the answer?
Its not there.
The way into my heart
Starts higher
Learn your anatomy
So go ahead
Ask me if I care.
I will lie with a smile.
But not until I learn to say
No
I don’t want
To talk
To you

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

" I had to leave the house of fashion
go forth naked from its doors
cuz women should be allies
not competitors"
-ani difranco

My thoughts on my recent media exposure....

Consider this:

A Painting, a stopped movie frame,
(pause)
a man and woman stand.
Muted blue tones.
Dusk blueblack sky.
snow.
cigarette.
a slight downward angle

Wrapped in cascading fuzz flakes
her silhouette disappears behind a gauze of smoke
(ashy)
expelled from his lips.
cold. brittle. breaking.
And I can only see you.
I mean,
I can only see him.
and the light of his face
(encased in embers)
issues from the corner creases of his eye smile.
that look (of lovelaughter)
is the focal point.
(glowing.)

he is so obvious.
active.
He stands in pieces against the snow.
hat neck cheeks scarf

who is she?
The woman shroud in nicotine haze.
with a hint of sway in the hip
the suggestion of snow hooked in her hair web
she is almost absent
transparent.
The trick is amazing.
I am intrigued.

and then I realize
this woman,
her identity is irrelevant
to the pictures metaphorical purpose.
For her single function
in life
I mean,
in the painting, movie frame
is to pull from his eyes crease
that look of lovelaughter
(the focal point.)

I could go on.
I could tell you that
the blue snow shadows represent
sexual passion.
that the red gloves
are his destructive capacity.
The angle and light
impressionistic
fuzzy focus
symbolize the giddy uncertainty of youth
of immaturity.

But this would only bore you
and myself
because we both know
nothing could possibly capture more metaphor
than a woman's silhouette
(angled)
obscured in smoke gauze.
Who's only purpose is to pull from a man's eyes
a look of lovelaughter
as it is this look that draws the eye across the canvas
(giving it intent.)

and how frightening to realize
that upon viewing the painting

no one will care

who she
is
was
will be

as long as she aesthetically completes what we see.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)