Cara Writes

Christine Christine once told me she would never describe herself as sweet. I wondered, then, what does she see herself as? Her middle name, Lee, is a version of Lena, her grandmother. And my middle name, Lenore, a version of Eleanor. When do we stop becoming versions of one another? Lena is a name I would describe as sweet. I think that will be my daughter's middle name. But not a version of it. Other people describe Christine as generous and giving, that her heart is in the right place. Some describe me as that way too. It used to bother me that she didn't think of herself as sweet, because I see myself that way. I guess I need to stop thinking of myself in versions of Christine. Brooklyn the sun rises, the morning glory opens its vine climbs up the harsh criss-crossed metal, a symbol for the city which contains it. children run their hands along the fence, the occasional flower casualty springs a foot on my chest. I pick up this fallen warrior, ten years later make it perman...

This pigment creeps; It turns my pallid skin into shades of smudged charcoal, Breathing Black. Ink. I'm sinking in this puddle, my body a dying star collapsing in on itself only to expand again and diffuse into the universe I wonder if you notice the ampersand of my mouth every breath giving birth to letters and numbers forming mushroom clouds beneath the ceiling-- Each breath is potential every gaze a new word melded somewhere between this life and the unrealized Cool finger tips caress along my meridian lines tracing out the next stanza of a broken hearted widow or a school girl named Jaimie. I writhe with(in) this ink like a carbon copy pressed to metal, the pressure subsides and all that is left are faded imprints of the original There's a question mark on my forehead, it refuses to break loose.

I don't know enough about the world to write poetry. I don't know about foreign lands and broken bridges and the pages of history I never turned in high school- Maybe I should have turned them. I don't know all the animals that have sex for fun, or the ones that don't have sex at all, all I know is that both of those have described me. I don't know how to write fiction; I think fiction, I am fiction-- its potential string of words grabbing me into a black widow's web, tantalizing that soon I shall die, or it shall die Or at least suffer from the slow sting and poison. I don't know about anaphoras and hyperboles and all the words we assign to movement trying to explain the inexplicable quickening heartbeat and waves of hot blood flooding into our veins as if we suddenly feel ourselves alive and this is the first time we noticed all day. It's lucky if we notice at all.

Alabaster silver, Barcelona red, Hybrid colors of half fueled thoughts Too cheap to go all the way And run on electric dreams The spark plug ignites. The left front door is gone, It cries in protest. There is a foreign body Named “Jewel” in the backseat. She doesn’t fit in the red car, No, They thought her bubbly persona Went best with indigo .

"OMG! I love that post you wrote on your blog... you know, the one about tangerines." Gotta love drunken blog comments.

Hey everyone, my short story Samsara was chosen to be posted on Chris Collins' website, nonsensesociety.com. Some of you may recognize his name from the documentary This Is Iraq. Anyway, the site is a creative collaboration of music, video, art, literature, etc. There's some great stuff there so go check it out, and submit something if you want!

We were driving. We were more than driving, we were laughing and I was free. I opened my arms, my eyes, to the majestic autumn mountains, breathing in the faint taste of pumpkin patches, and smiling that I had been released of my prison. It was cold. Too cold for the three-quarter length shirt I sported, hoping that if I dressed like it was still September that it would be. I held my breath; if only to swallow this inevitably ending moment, opening my palms to grasp what this freedom felt like. Words like Keppra and Chemo didn’t exist there, the grass wouldn’t understand it, and the wind wouldn’t allow it. I took pictures just in case one day I couldn’t remember how the cerulean sky was painted and the way the world spun, but it is so ingrained in my being, you can see Polaroid’s of it every time I blink. We ended where we started; back in the car, laughing. I rolled the windows down, wanting to drive with the breeze until it would be too cold for this sort of thing. I drove about a m...