UNEXPECTED DELIVERY from MY ADOPTED MOTHER(fucker)
by Jessica DePue

I recieve four cardboard boxes
Snail mailed from my childhood address
One letter from a person I called "Mom"

A few words in black and white
She typed unsentimental closure
Sent a book by Asshole Schlessinger

Titled "Bad Childhood Good Life"
This after years of absolutely nothing
Not nothing as in happless attempts at something

Nothing as in nodda
Until today's special deliverance
Typed words about returning my possessions

She signs her name no "Love", no "Sincerely"
I contemplate tears over laughter then
An anacdote appears- some copied glib bow

About "Letting It Go" christian style
By the grace of God this woman is entitled
To lasso her high horse and cut me out

Then excuse herself with a cutesy quip
Southern Christians have simplistic consciences
When it comes to reasoning the Lord's way

I absorb this estrangement
Cast from the Southern tip of space
I look up at my man- laugh, squelch hysteria

And suggested we hit the bar to find Gary
Casting his eccentric spells at Mirabell's
I forget my aforementioned rejection slip

We're at Gary's high rise upon La Cientega
Balancing wine bottles nose to nose
If you inhale the spell disintegrates

I'm flooded with a clear glass bottle
Of vodka encasing a pear for amusement
Nobody knows my pain is leaking

Yet I feel something twisted gnawing
My heart is like that intoxicated pear
A fruitful chamber to some toothy worm

I want to smash the glass, bite the pear
I want to poison myself with fermented fruit
Feel its juices interogate my liver

I want to slam my body against the tub
I want to fall asleep ass up
Half way into bed

I'm taking punches from Texas
I'm slammed, contorted against the can
Whailing "I'm dying- I'm not- but I am,"

I've done it to myself
The cold tiles press chill into my cheek
I'm frozen
I'm dying and trying so hard
To let it go

CONDOLENCE
By Jessica DePue

I know you must be human inspite of your purple heart
My choice color and organ of preference

Lucky days. Empty lots our street across
Became treasured past midnight's trysts

Life beyond your impact marks my skin unfairly
Pale form dissolves to water falling

Maniacle inspection and one telling infection
You were never wrong, it was me all along

Getting off towards this wayward abandon
Cryptic parallels got me thinking new worlds

Possess keys to love your void
Creative vices answer silence with more

Fuck my size against your sighs
Transcend my therapist's degree

I like talking into blank tapes
Bleak and strung with hopeful lust

My emails mimic voices coherent into wind
So many times you fail to listen

Succeed to carve my cavities
Stoic blocks of hollowed ice

I am a physiology diagram
Where the body split open sesame

Revealing acute dimensions
Except for where I drip asymmetry

Messy leak bleach clean my spots
Donate a mess to Science

Make my display steril
Brush me away, change everything

As I observe through plastic veins
No feeling

...Good