Tiffany Promise blogs about life, literature, and hairless cats.

Misogynisitic Etymology (or More Trazedone, Please)

2/28/2015

I. Strumpet

There are bats in my belfry, she states too calmly, they told me so.

Sheer wings, cocktail stirrer bones—light as lint—her head’s

In the pantyhose aisle at Target. Not enough nylon to cover

All those spider veins, stretch marks, cottage cheese.

The shock machine ran out of shocks; ice picks are old-timey

But Earth keeps spinning on its wimpy axis

Turtle-backed, or flat as flat can be

Sun/Moon are cutthroat, shit-kicking competitors.

II. Jezebel

I never had a phantom limb, she pines, though I wish I had something to miss.

There’s onion meat under her nails; she’s been

Peeling again: little globes, big as worlds, with sexy slick exteriors

Shopping malls got nothing but bras with sequins on their straps; drats!

You can dig a hole to China

Or follow the bugs burrowing there

It’s real quiet in the center of the Earth

Your heartbeat echoes in your ears and you can taste the blood.

III. Harpy

Mom’d pick it out at rotting, she remembers, or just let it sink on in.

The lipstick on her tooth glints in satisfaction—always Wet N Wild,

Pocketed at Eckerd Drugs: windows usually boarded in hurricane season

Storms with lady-names are the most murderous, worse even than those named after saints.

It’s quiet after lights out

Our circadian rhythms are s’posed to match the sun’s

If you can’t sleep you can’t dream and if you can’t dream you're stuck in this

Scratchy sheet/plastic fork/piss stink clink; more Trazodone, please.

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Saint Magpie

2/3/2015

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I ditched Hatred near the tracks in El Trasho. He wanted to spend one last night—swillin’ moonshine and smokin’ rollies—with those homespun Texas homebums before heading off to L.A. He’d tried to talk me into going with—his devil mouth extra slick—but I’d stuck my boots firmly in the dirt. C’mon Mags, he practically purred, I’ll take you to see X at The Roxy and to eat Oki-Dogs whenever you want. We can make out on that table where Darby Crash planned his suicide; it’ll be killer. But I was too busy to get caught up in Hatred’s Hollyweird Sid&Nancy fantasy. I was willing to hang with him a day or two, but really, being alone was my thing. I had a running game of hide-and-seek going on with myself and I wasn’t into being interrupted. I’d stashed a spare rib in a coffee can outside of Cleveland, stuffed my virginity deep in an underwear drawer at a Victoria’s Secret in Witchita, buried a couple of petal-shaped fingernails in a donut-shop dumpster near Gary. And that was only the beginning of it.

And, even though I’d have loved to lose a toe or two in the city of broken dreams, I figured it was highly unlikely that Hatred’d even make it there in the first place. He’d get off-track somewhere along the line, tempted by some blue-eyed baby punk with bad skin and a homemade anarchy tattoo whose boyfriend’s lip was in desperate need of a splittin’. I’d packed his bindle full of pb&j sammiches, condoms, and smokes before sending him on his way.

Losing was a solitary act, just how I figured religion was s’posed to be. I wore it like a crucifix, fucked it like a lover, used it to light candles, and altered my body in accommodation. I hoped that if I kept on practicing with the patience of a saint, then someday, maybe, it wouldn’t even smart.

I wrote odes and obituaries on hand-made maps; I made up dirges to the rhythm of Johnny Cash songs. It felt important to pay plenty of respect to all the things I’d lost, but I was also keen on keeping some kind of whereabouts-track. I had fantasies of myself as a fully-formed girl, retracing my tire-tracks, trunk full of forget-me-nots to sprinkle on my graves. I hoped that if I wished upon enough stars and eyelashes, the fairies might be nice enough to mark my leavings with seeds. I had my fingers crossed for weeping willows, though magnolia trees would do in a pinch.

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Boy Genius & Poet Laureate of the 1990's: Kurdt Kobain

1/8/2015

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A few weeks ago I took a trip to the ever-dreary, vegan-friendly, grunge mecca, Seattle. When I was a teenager in bumfunk Texas, I had fantasies of moving to Washington—the land of perpetual flannel, riot grrrl, pine trees and independent coffee shops. The Twin Peaks lover inside of me will ever-yearn for Snoqualmie Falls-fueled moments of inspiration and gloom. I make sure to make pilgrimages relatively often—and each time I go, I find/see/taste/experience something that feels life-altering and important.

Whenever I'm in Seattle, I spend a lot of time thinking about Kurt Cobain, but for the first time, I actually felt brave enough to visit his house--the very house in which his suicided body was found. I had always avoided it before, not because I wasn’t interested, but because I was wary of the very visceral response that was bound to erupt throughout my entire body/mind/heart/soul system. I'm a super sensi, pisces type: connected to the deep, archetypal waters of emotion and upheaval. I am full of salty waters, I water your weeping willows with my tears.

Kurt Cobain had a very strong impact on my teenage years and his passing was one of the first cataclysmic death moments that I encountered growing up. To a quiet, nerdy 14-year-old girl with black hair and chunky glasses, empathic little Witch Baby, full of stomachache and angst, Kurt Cobain was an almost-angelic figure. He said all of the things that I needed someone to say, a spokesman for the disgruntled, the unappreciated, the misunderstood. His lyrics inspired me to scribble in notebooks, to etch terse, rune-like fragments of poetry on the soles of my shoes. He helped make everything feel a little more okay.

Seeing his house in person was intense. I felt haunted and effervesced. In the small park next to his house, a lone bench stands--acting as a monument to Kurt. People scrawl messages and leave artifacts, it is the closest that we can come to him. Sitting on the bench allowed me to gain a new perspective into his existence. Not just “Kurt Cobain sat in this very spot and looked at the grass and trees and birds” but a quick icy feeling of utter misunderstanding and the spiraling-gut-suck of being in a room full of people but being so alone.

I am a magnet for ghost particles and have felt very connected to Kurt since leaving Seattle. Little bits of his energy have lodged themselves into my pores and I have been holding him ever-so-tightly in my own heart-shaped box. His baby blues are nothing if not haunting and I am definitely haunted. So much of my aesthetic, my poetic drivel, my fancy-fingered literati has been influenced by Nirvana (and Hole, Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Sleater-Kinney, Pearl Jam, etc.) I am full of milk teeth, poppies, umbilici, angst, depressive tendencies, sappy somethings, teenage rebellion, awareness, parasites, love spells, misspellings, broken wings, bad posture, marigolds, and dirt. Thank you, Kurdt.

i sleep with the drapes

drawn tight well into

daytime, mourning my

youth with the fervor

of a victorian window.

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bookmarks! bookmarks! bookmarks!

12/19/2014

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These spooky cuties were designed by my drear fiend, the ever talented, Spooky Sproul. Contact him for your artsy, creepy, tattooy needs. Letterpressed on thick, luxurious paper and hand-inked by yours ghouly, these bookmarks are all they rage! They will make your books look way cooler than your friends books. I am currently giving them away by the handful. Want a dozen or so? Just message me your addy and they will appear in your mailbox! Yay for snail mail and paper products and candles and books and tea!

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yule monster lake tide

12/18/2014

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like something swollen
with secret: throated, gleeless and aching
for breath, not breath

not enough to fill
this yawning
watered-down sub-space

(it’s edges are filed nicely though: all crystal and sandpaper and shine)

pompous and snag-free,
your holiday sweater’s fully
intact

no snow roses
or tinsel teeth
or pine needle disinfectant

only things left unsaid
and bubbling at the underbrush of
baby talk--really gutsy baby talk--

(we’re talking eyeballs and soft spots and milk teeth here)

we pray to the ancients for bigger everythings
--fins, humps, gills, morosity--
to fill up this endless home-sick-ness

of blackened wishbones
and garish garland
eggs deviled with care

Dear Grand-Monster Ness,
(It’s okay if I call you that, right?
I mean, I know we’ve never met,
But it feels like I know you.)
Your gloom effuses all waterlogged cavities.
I really like your tail.
Seriously, I’ll take whatever,
though an anchor would be divine.
With subtlety and haste,
The The Empty.

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cuts&bits&ouches: Deforestation and Other Side Effects, pt. 2

12/9/2014

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I stick flowers in my milk-jug-sized pill bottles; Martha Stewart told me that flowers have the ability to brighten up any space. I like roses the best, even though they wither the quickest without any water. Now all of my pills have petal pieces stuck to their casings. The magnitude of dead foliage inside my guts is astounding. I hope the grown-outside petals can mix with the grown-inside petals and create a funky hybrid rose. If only I had enough hydration to sustain a new anything.
The pills are sapping me completely. I feel like California: stunted, infertile, dry as a bone. I used to be dense with photosynthesis; it was hella sexy. Now I’m all thin and papery, ripe kindling for a forest fire. Mood stabilizers are well-know for their cornucopia of side effects. My cells are degenerating at the speed of light, my hair falls out by the handful, and my eyes are so sensitive that I have to wear those ugly, blind guy, black-plastic sunnies inside. I’m like the poster child for what-not-to-ingest-if-you-ever-hope-to-get-a-date-again.
From kitchen to bedroom to couch and back: I make haphazard crazy eight patterns with my slippered feet. I chill easily these days, and must keep a blanket pinned around my neck like a cape. I have a small gold couch that I salvaged from the dumpster. The upholstery is flaking off in chunks the size of fingernails. My fingernails are flaking off and mixing with the chunks. I think about sweeping a few times a day, but am easily distracted by the sounds of dying inside. I chug water with abandon. I wonder when my post-hospital-assigned-psychologist will call?

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cuts&bits&ouches: Deforestation and Other Side Effects

12/3/2014

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I’ve been out of the bin for a few weeks now. The Powers-That-Be (thankfully) approved my discharge plans and sent me packing. Now all I’m supposed to do is this:
1. Take my medicine
2. Take my medicine
3. Take my medicine
4. Admit that my insides look like everyone else’s insides (A.K.A.: Deny the existence of a flora-and-fauna-filled wilderness in my guts.)
Easier said than done done done, I say. You must suffer the darkness in order to see the stars, they say. Bullshit macaroni treetop cytoplasm, I say. I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet, they say.

**(I will be posting little experts from stories here and there and here. If there is a bit that really catches your eye, feel free to leave a comment, and I will probably post more of that story!)**

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(epi)dermis

12/1/2014

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thinnest on the eyelids

thickest on the feet

sometimes cells sleep

or slough clustering by

cluster in kitchen corner

corners things hidden

below (secret things)

stratified layers that burn

off fast leaving

baby-soft black boxes

of dutiful silence

underneath (shhh)

quiet in the eye

quick on the feet

but slumped tough

in the aftermath of after

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Alcatraz

11/29/2014

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sometimes ghosts hitch themselves to uteri
trespassing indelicately
to ride the rough rough Pacific
in a semi-watery semi-bloody not-quite-grave.

there’s an ancient stink in the clink
it’s archetypical in context:
crime/capture/confinement/escape
it’s maddening in reality.

someones must have died here
(they don’t tell you on the audio tour)
i’m breathing in their death like dandelion puff
their confinement is my confinement
is their confinement; i can’t quite cry it out enough.

we showered meticulously when home
scrubbing at leftover sadness with loofa and salt
i forgot about that empty pear-shaped vessel
stuck solemnly beneath the constant fullness of gut.

sometimes ghost come to full term in less than 37 weeks
bathed in their own tears and lullabyebyed in echo
they find ways to creep out like they creeped in
seeking comfort in escape, death is footnoted.

my body a cracked egg, oozing with ectoplasm
sometimes ghosts take up more space than they know
cleaving an ozone-shaped hole, they meander on and on

i forgot to be forewarned, now i’m all solitude and clank.

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Original Goth Girl: Emily Dickinson

11/25/2014

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I recently took a 3-week/5-state/17-town trip to New England. (Which you already know all about if you follow me on Instagram. If you don't, you are missing out on hairless cats, abandoned buildings, and artsy/literary/creepy/weirdo stuff. Find me now: SOMETIMESGHOST.)

The absolute most important stop on my epic, fall-time adventure was to the Emily Dickinson Museum/House in Amherst, Massachusetts.

I don't remember exactly when I read my first Emily Dickinson poem, all I know is that her words have historically had the power to sear my head completely in half: leaving my planet-shaped skull hairless and bloody, exposed to all of the despondence and glee that the heavens hold. Emily's words are magic.

In undergrad at Sarah Lawrence College (years and years ago) I undertook a "Queering Emily Dickinson" independent study project. I spent hours with her words, becoming very involved in her (lack of?) romantic interests, magnifying-glassing her correspondence, and picking apart the fleshy loaves of her poems. She is the archetypal madwoman poetess, the solitary scribbler, another product of her time/place. She lived for her poetry. She lived inside of her poetry. You can still find her there if you look close enough.

Emily's poetry is full of constant movement. I have found that with each reading (especially as I read them at different points in my life) her poems are always alive with new meaning(s), they are always fighting stagnation. Her strange punctuation, and plus signs (+) allow for multiplicity in meaning and breath. She never allowed herself to be boxed in; her fluidity spiiiiiiiiilllllls.

While listening to the awesomely-engaging, poetry-spouting tour guide at the ED Museum talk about Emily's practicality and ingenuity (she had a tiny pocket sewn into each of her dresses to hold a small piece of paper and pencil), I felt a slight buzzing at the nape of my neck. When I turned around, no one was there, not any psychical being anyway. Of course Emily's energy would feel fluttery and bee-like! I thanked her for the inspiration and support, blew her a kiss, and offered my own pocket as a safekeeping for ghost pencils and ghost paper.

Here are a few of the pictures from my pilgrimage:

Emily's house.

Paying homage.

Emily's Epitaph: "Called Back."

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
by Emily Dickson

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading – till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum –
Kept beating – beating – till I thought
My Mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down –
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then –

(For tips on how to read Emily Dickinson's poetry, go here!)

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Misogynisitic Etymology (or More Trazedone, Please)

Saint Magpie

Boy Genius & Poet Laureate of the 1990's: Kurdt Kobain

bookmarks! bookmarks! bookmarks!

yule monster lake tide

cuts&bits&ouches: Deforestation and Other Side Effects, pt. 2

cuts&bits&ouches: Deforestation and Other Side Effects

(epi)dermis

Alcatraz

Original Goth Girl: Emily Dickinson

Emily's house.

Paying homage.

Emily's Epitaph: "Called Back."

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