Anna Witiuk

To All Those

To all those misguided, two-faced sided, those who were forced and
     lied about it, the ones who easier scuffed and slipped than glided,
To all those who turned around on the crippled laws others so
     willingly abided by.
To all those fallen and who almost fell, all those crawling, nails
     scraped clean upon the barred well, those who have been
     committed to their own two feet, chains locked into chains
     locked into cells, those living in an early introduction to hell.
To those crazy for love because they’ve realized it doesn’t live way up
      above, those crazy for sanity and someone else to shove,
     those crazy for clarity.
To those who can find love but can’t feel it, where hands cover
     the pain deeply peeling.
To those who try and fail, those who can’t cry but daily hang
     aimlessly by a rail,
To those who blindly caress themselves knowing nothing
     but the burning, which streaks their face like hot hail.
To those with strength and will, persistently plowing through
      the days, through their own criticizing minds,
     through clouding words and flaring red stop signs.
To those beaten and brawled, eaten and smalled,
To those awake sleeping, walking with fizzed out eyes,
     passing cop cars beeping, a child stabbed, a businessman.
To those cheap on food and high-spenders on dope, the hookers,
     the mothers, the fuckers, the brothers,
And to the high divers off of cement summits into
     more shiny and solid drivers.
To those who push,
To those who pull,
To those who stall afraid of what could happen and will.
To those breaking and broken,
To those taken and scared,
      You are silently spoken for. You are still here.

Tuesday

I kind of looked like a whore this morning. Like I wanted it.
How I held my head like a prize and wandered my marbles into some
      other guys’ eyes.
The whore inside me snatched up a stump skirt and
     dripped it over my butt like scorching wax.
I kind of looked like a nobody today. I didn’t want to. I held my head low like the tail on a scraggled dog and the church bells of my arms anchored me down. I wore tan, austere shoes to match my skin. I was naked there and a roaming nobody downtown.

I kind of felt holy at midnight. My deity lace flickered on my shadowed thighs. Bullion of priceless proportions. My windswept body like a dusk-lit crane and I felt my wings starting to grow again, burgeoning from the daggers on my back blades.

When I Start to Think Again

This morning I feel sick I don’t want anything touching me.
The flannel seams of my pants rubbing up against me,
inside me like a mechanical horse
and my underwear with dried smell crinkled into me and my
     face feeling like it’s been injected with a disease:
infected by his tongue, his mouth
and I start to feel a slight burning for a groin
maybe not his but then I feel sick,
my head still slightly spinning.
I thought last night I’d collect my winnings
and in some ways I did but I feel sick

and I wish he lived far away so maybe my hazy,
fluid memory of the biting rug and
cramped lane where our bodies laid, stacked, could float away
      piece by
      piece
with him. Like a jigsaw puzzle unclipping, chipping
from the side of a hairless porcelain doll.