April 11, 2012. Issue 36. The Late Issue.
Good Girls
Good girls don't fuck to Guns 'n' Roses.
They don't lose their virginity in barns,
drink malt liquor for dinner,
dance in their underwear to Social Distortion.
They don't have sex in parking lots,
get high on the drive to Pittsburgh,
hike up their dresses for truck drivers.
They don't forget to pay the phone bill,
smuggle rum into movie theaters,
spend the rent money on cocaine.
They don't become the other woman,
masturbate in the morning,
meet the wrong kind of men in bars.
They don't mind sleeping alone.
I Watched My Mother Watch TV
In adolescence, I avoided the living room after dinner.
My mother,
tired from sitting all day as a secretary for the local electric company,
would sprawl out on the couch,
remote in one hand,
while the other moved from box of snack crackers
to mouth
and back again
over and over
an autopilot assembly line.
She watched reruns, then Must-See-TV, then QVC
filled her emptiness with food and shopping.
I remember the TV casting its flickering shadows on the ceiling and walls
throughout the night
the descriptions of Black Hills Gold, Diamonique
and the whispers of Today's Special Value
became a siren's call
that simultaneously beckoned us both.
For me, it was the promise of big waves of deep sleep,
she heard it as urgency only eased by dialing the toll free number
placing an order before it was too late.
2 am, 3 am,
She was still not satisfied.
I know she believed that this is all there was—
A tiny existence stuffed until bloated
with me and crackers and brown cardboard boxes
delivered right to our front door.
My Grandmother is Dying
She says she's just finished pressing clothes-
impossible from her 3rd floor hospital bed,
the front of her baby-blue housecoat stained orange with Jell-o,
a reminder of the poison inside her.
She asks me how work is,
tells me I should be thankful that I have a job.
No matter what answer I give,
she says she heard on the radio that unemployment is high.
There is no radio in her room,
Just a mandatory handwashing sink.
Visitors must scrub vigorously
before and after their visit.
She does not know this,
thinks we're helping with the laundry.
Before, when she was better,
she often called me the wrong name
confusing me with nieces-in-law, sisters-in-law, other distant family members.
Now there's no slipups, as if she knows
she has little time left
to get it right.
The Bar was Called Rosecliff
You deserve better, he said,
to be treated like a princess.
I thought of princesses,
locked in towers
tumbling hair
crowns of jewels
pricked fingers
dancing all night.
Jägermeister drunk,
he spit red drops onto the table
like a sacrifice
for our friendship.
Your boyfriend's not affectionate enough to you, he said.
His words slurred
and I thought about the time he groped me
in the car
too drunk to remember
to realize
what he did.
by James Valvis
Your Ear
Your ear is a hurricane,
swirling, swirling,
rampaging through
the forest of your hair,
its center a dark eye,
and there-on the lobe
it has picked up my heart,
a single diamond stud,
and it is swirling,
swirling,
swirling.
The Day We Agreed to Part
In Fort Ward State Park,
not far from the Kitsap shore,
cormorants perched on a fallen log,
as separate as possible,
some looking left, others right.
In the dusk their shadowy forms
resembled bottles of hand soap
left on a store shelf
after a sale when everyone
wanted some fancier brand.
Green Summer Gowns
Blackberry flowers,
so red they're purple,
line the sides of the trail.
It's been a wet, cold April,
but now things are thawing,
growing green summer gowns
of vegetation. I love
how impotent man is to stop this,
the saltation of seasons
so much greater than man's misery,
money, or even manners.
In August I'll eat the blackberries
as nature drops her gown
and all winter flaunts
her bronzed nudity.
Arguing with Sonnet 116
Let us not to the old marriage admit indecency
that I loved her no one can doubt
but what was left after she left
was only an idea of love nothing more
love is not love which deceives itself
denies evidence of ending
love must alter not as one finds but as one goes
love is not time's fool but everything's fool
love must bend every moment bend to the next
yes each lover bending to love
love must look on tempests but not its own
not bring storms on love's head
then declare the love weak for falling
love is not license to lasciviousness
if this be in error and upon me proved
I still writ still loved but not for love's sake alone
but knew love's as fixed loving elsewhere another.
Table of Contents
Notice
Sometimes the house gets quiet and I
think about someone's dead father. Like two
nights ago when I got a phone call from
a woman in Tucson who told me
all about a death. She was crying but she was
not hysterical. I kept thinking this
is where hysterectomy comes from.
When she finished we hung up and
that was that. I turned on the television and sat
there. The morning was evident in my eyes
when I woke up. I went to work and wondered
what it would be like to be dead at my desk. My boss
coming over and finding me that way,
dead at my desk, a note somewhere
next to my wrist in my own
handwriting no one could read.
Aftermath
The dishes in the sink are broken.
I would wash each piece
but don't like getting blood
in the water. Someone told me
the other day that the pressure
in water lines is much more
than anyone could guess. At night
I sleep as well as most
but do I know you? Do I know
the neighbors down the street?
One day this house will disappear
and I'll be left to forage among my ruins.
by Anna Meister
Responsibility, an Ars Poetica
I must use stanzas like a net
to capture the laughter of my roommates
or my lover or my childhood self
like fish, to pinpoint those sounds
and tell you how they are the familiar
buzz of needle hitting record, or clinking
glass marbles, the sigh of an uncorked bottle.
I must make you hear them, too.
I must make you care about
how Jesus was my family's earthquake,
how I rebuilt my back from a riverside
pile of bones. I must make you fall in love
with the word salt, make you taste it.
I must write sad poems about
how my heart is a chipped mug
or a wailing church organ
so that you nod and say,
Yes, and mine. And I must also
write happy poems about waking
with him like knotted rope
because things are good
more often than they are not.
I must remember everything
so I can write about my mother's garden
and a world smelling solely of tomato
vine and put you there. You can stand
by the sage while she sits on her knees
pulling up creeping charley. I must
make you hear the Motown swimming
from the kitchen, make you see my father's body
moving about the room like a wind chime.
I must tell you of my thirst for late Iowa
summer and you must also be thirsty.
I must tell you all my secrets, bring
you truth in clenched teeth, tonguing
the previously untold, all the things
I have saved just for you. You must say
Thank you, and mean it.
What I Love
What my mother calls piano hands,
stretching spindly spider
fingers across octaves
of slippery keys
& oak barrels or rolling hills
for hips, belly soft and delicate
as a poached egg. & legs
longer than any other part of me,
smooth stone or prickly vine,
depending on the day, decorated
like my mother's, with marks
colored like the flesh of stone fruit
from bumping into desk corners
& stairwells & who knows what
& those moles on my cheek,
my breast, my neck,
speckles of cinnamon over
this almond milk skin.
& the serious fall one Summer
that led to the once shattered & forever
crooked spine my lover loves
to run fingers down, lingering
on the knots & gaps, a ladder with
a missing step.
Promise
we lay in the intertwining calm of after,
all candlelight flicker over my milk
and his honey. him, handsome
like a stranger with a strong jaw
in an old faded photograph. me,
flushed and lucky. his hands
linger on the softer parts of me
as I tongue the salted corners
of his frame. he praises my patience,
my eyebrows, the swell of my hips.
our noses touch and grins match wide
as we whisper about the future,
but without the stomach flip urgency
of youth. instead, two whole, grown
bodies, beings with great love
of numbers and language,
respectively, who have chosen
braided fingers, partnership
stretching across three hundred miles
of East coast highway. we curse
not the distance over the coming moons,
but dream up stick sweat Summers,
the promise of a shared bed.
a third floor walk up in Philly.
or California. we could see
the ocean together, he
whispers, kissing my ear.
we hum home in the dark,
knowing nothing is certain
but the alignment of these bones,
our only goal that we might wake
for the next thousand mornings
with this continuing hunger for
one another's lips.
sex pics
There, I downloaded my best friend's image. There, she's in a wedding dress. There, it is white and long, virginal—halter styled. There, she points out the preworn (in the closet) wrinkles. There, an image of my best friend in her long, white wedding dress saved here between two photos of my bare breast.
irl
in real life I wouldn't be here
I don't think I'd be this naked
with him staring like that
at my fat, dark nipples, and vagina
pointing out scars with questions
feeling them with his eyes
"this? here is where my heart was"
and he laughs out loud, but really
it can be silence—nothing
I have to fill in white space
with smiles until he sends a something
I can feel secure again
in real life.
All I want is Pokèmon for my Birthday
I aimed my pokèballs at any Magikarp
I found on the internet.
Threw my great & masterballs at any Psyduck
I found at a party.
Just to say they were once in my Pokèdex.
Just to say I helped them level up once.
But they never evolved
and I didn't have enough herbs or stones
to speed up the process.
All I have is Pikachu
fighting Brock's Onyx.
And Pikachu's thunder isn't doing any damage.
Call me Ash Ketchum, no one's really going to
get the reference because twenty-five's
the age where you crack open the bones and
suck out the goo of your childhood
and leave the broken gnawed bones in the trash
instead of feeding it to the dogs, they'll choke.
But call me Ash Ketchum because I'll never ever have enough.
I have to catch 'em all.
Table of Contents
Tinkerbell
Like all, I speak in bells.
Our language needn't match
Because a body is a mood ring,
shading every song. You
Understand me.
Primping across your hand mirror
like a coryphée— Wings
All aflutter and my hands at my hips,
pear-shaped and knocking. I am
a bell.
Please remember
Me. You do believe in me, don't you?
Have faith, trust, and a dash
of dust. I am the one
who got that brass kettle to whistle
like a nightjar for when you brew
your tea.
Before Ordering
My waitress hands over my Coca-Cola.
Placing it to my side, just in reach, not
in front. A classic ruby can,
unopened;
condensation surrounding the cylinder
like pheromones on humid summer skin.
An empty glass, a straw, paper
surrounding the tip as blossom. Bending,
beckoning towards me.
Fingering the stay-on-tab,
releasing a gentle sip. Teasing my palate,
then pouring the rest into the glass
—A chocolaty-caramel-crackle.
Ice grinding together, firecrackers encased in sharp
carbonation, falling into place like a sound check.
Dark amber pushes my straw out.
I agree, no straw.
Gale
In an otherwise ebony entanglement;
lightning is a gray, wirey hair
dazzling the firmament with strobes
and reminding the wane of our footprints
in the sand.
Each rebirth that skins the bark
off trees—
Bolts ruffling the tufts of summer, dappled
green and black olive.
The whirr of everyday comfort stifled, trembling.
Me & Mr. Nolte
Nick and I,
pumped on GHB
tossed a pig skin
around an
abandoned field
dressed in
surgical scrubs
and waving
artificial limbs
in the air
Nolte kept
screaming
"I'm a gridiron god
And my balls are
worshiped in Guam"
as his head began to
balloon in size
I threw the ball his
way with a fake arm
attached and he caught
it between his jaws,
and then his reptilian
forward turned red
and he exploded
particles of Nolte
spread through the
air, his flopping
free face landed
on my head and
could still talk,
saying
"Let's go out on the town!"
The Highs Before the Lows Before the Highs Before the Lows
raging ecstasy
riding a dragon into the clouds
burning everything around in a dizzying
spectacle of ocean waves that shimmer
beneath the brightness of my rotten mind
and its maniacal admiration for burning the holes
of fantasy into the craters of my lifetime
embers fly from my orbit and burn girl’s cheeks
disappoint my parents
befuddle my grandparents in their graves
life in this
mental and spiritual stupor is
a cosmic space maze quandary
of manners
and broken rules
Sweet n Low
Spattered grains of
granulated specks
mingling with
cigarette ashes
litter the
stained counter tops
billowing out of torn
pink paper packets
some of which wind up
in her morning cup‘s
halo of steam,
ushering in a day
of substitute rushes
But never the blue packets
always the pink
until one early morning
there were coffee stained
yellow paper packets
A new brand of cancer
for these contemporary
mornings has been
chosen
by Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas
Coming Home from the Hospital
I see them in their shrouds,
supermen in capes,
yet there's no flying through clouds of tulle;
no passengers,
riding safely on their backs.
I'm dressed in melancholy,
waiting to hear of your quick recovery,
as I sit like a squirrel
hiding in a wisteria tree,
making my nest there, until I'm told,
you'll live through another Christmas.
Tomorrow I will bring gifts
like one of the three kings,
and you will be my baby
swaddled in tubes.
With just a little luck,
perhaps a miracle,
will take place.
Evolution
The cutting board once
used to spread strawberry
preserves on toast, now splits
the dose of your blood pressure
medicine, two times a day
breakfast and dinner.
The regulator I used to dream
of with elaborate scuba gear
has now been assigned the arduous
task of supplying oxygen
to you with its uncomfortable
mask every night at bedtime.
The exact spot where I rested
my head with a pillow on the floor
to watch each new episode
of Jacques Cousteau has left red
dimples on my worn out knees.
Hail Mary full of grace
raise her to a better place.
Dali and Freud
always show something in the picture like a dollar or a dime, to provide scale for the perspective buyer anon: tips for using eBay
Dali and Freud mustache and pointed beard find themselves together perhaps they are in line for tickets to Harry Potter or seated side by side in a tiny delicatessen dense with the aromas of kraut, pastrami, and onion fried potatoes each considers the other's facial hair...
a woman has stepped abruptly out of a Marx Brothers film (or was drawn right on the spot, by a New Yorker cartoonist) furs curl around her face like a wreath of steam she speaks, querulous and strident, to her companion and, indeed, the world at large yes, yes she says, impatient, I understand the money in the picture. But why would the gentlemen be waving those yardsticks?
The Night's Tale
in front of Walgreens and six feet tall
describing to the giggling girls
with wide exuberance
almost dancing: "King.
"King, he's always going out
"with them little asian women"
palm down hand by knee
"and he's big, man, King
"he's so big…"
on his toes reaching for sky
sweeps his arm a wide arc
"King is big as hell!"
conjuring
out of oil stains and butts
Kong
nightclubbing with
Mothra maids
i can hear their tiny voices
their drinks have parasols
by Luke Weldon
To Receive
A blue line of fire consumes the lake house
Fish appear before the dock and applaud
The house unhooks itself from the shore and floats away
In a cilice to Israel, for the lord requires the
Coals of worship to be readied
So the lamp of something ancient and dumb
Can be shone into it
I have only seen god in the low
Light, lit from behind, his
Face blackened
A Woman is a Body that Comes in at the Base
i.
The night her nose first begins to bleed she
Awakens feeling warmness, her wet bed sheet
Sticking to her wrist
She holds her head in her hands like a purse in her lap
And gobbles her pearl bracelet
It slicks down into her the way the poison pellet
Fills the rat's throat
Squatting
Sheathing the string
I can see the pale folds of her stomach and
The white caps of her knees showing through her stockings and
This is when I realize
The breast is not a globe but a
Teardrop
ii.
She, sheathing the string—the recumbency in her stomach / material with which a husk is composed / fire men in big blazing red trucks / bloom from the string's end lowered into the cavern of the belly as a fish hook is lowered / it searches with its fingers; no fire to be found
Calling in Despair
I have branches for fingers
They reach for the world around them
To be broken and pushed back
My crooked, crooked fingers
The Tragedy
They did not go in for an audition,
They have never been good at captivating audiences,
Still They fell into designated roles
Everyone talked about the show They were rehearsing for
No one expected it to stand out
But it did, yes it did
In the most unexpected of ways
They forgot their lines midway
Tried to improvised
Only to mess with the flow of the minor characters' parts
Instead revealed way too much of what went on backstage
In the end everyone gave them advice
But offered little assistance
They offered encouraging words
But without paper their words faded fast
Now They have traded roles
And still They mess up the lines
No one really knows what the show is about now,
How it will end—or if it will
From the periphery everyone keeps watch
Everyone makes public their latest shameful act
Everyone makes fun of the way They present their cast
The minor actors mind the attention
But are too weak to pull the curtains
Too young and confused to walk out and find their separate plots
Too innocent to know this one play will not affect
Their merit when they audition for their own starring role
Spineless Prick
Hate
Is a strong word
But I don't care.
I hate your guts.
You're the uncle I can't stand.
The one no one,
Yourself very much included,
Can depend on.
You're definitely not trustworthy.
I think I trust the devil more--
That's saying something--
And no, I don't mean you.
I still can't believe you pray to him;
Did you really stand under the tree outside our house
And ask him to take over your body?
I wish you'd die already.
I bet when you finally do,
I'll think of this letter,
I'll read it and I might regret that line.
I hope I don't regret it because
At the moment
It's exactly what I want.
But I know God will not take my request,
I wouldn't want him to.
So I'll have to wait for Lucifer to get rid of you.
The world will have to wait for Lucifer to grow tired of you
And your poor representation of him.
Really, if you want to be the villain,
Accept your evilness, embrace it,
Don't be a coward and hide behind lame tears.
The devil thinks you're embarrassing,
He's keeping you alive just to have a good laugh.
If you're going to count down
To your mother's death to go inside her place
And take all her valuables and then try to steal
Your and your brother's inheritance,
Then have the guts to admit it when
You're asked about it.
You are a spineless prick.
Remember the time you referred to me by
"Mis dientes amarillos"?
One, I'm not your teeth, and
Two, yellow your future, asshole.
You were drunk, I remember, it was early morning,
I was getting ready for school,
And you ruined my day.
Jerk.
And you know what?
I want to talk about your death again:
I'm counting down to your fatal day
So I can drink my first beer that night
As a celebration--
On second thought,
You're not even worth a beer.
Maybe what I'll do is drive over to the
House we used to live in,
Stand under the same tree you did,
And thank the Devil for taking you home.
A Demon's Love
And they are still together
And for the sake of her children
I would like to see her leave him
And get herself a better life
He is one in obsession with himself
With all things holy
Though he has yet to be accepted
Still he will not be independent
He cannot get a grip on reality
He clings instead
Though he claims to be divine
Of better worth than his own children
He digs his fingers into their skin
And makes his supposed love cry
And she puts up with it all
With all his bullshit
Which even he admits is trickery at its lowest
She has mistakenly chosen to believe
Pity will save him and her self-worth
But it will not
It cannot when she values a man's life over her own
And okay
Maybe he is not well
But last time I checked
She is not a doctor
She cannot medicate
Cannot even diagnose her own illness
Let alone his
And she does not keep her word
Time after time
Her children are disappointed
Have lost the ability to empathize with her
She has lost her own thoughts
Thinks what he tells her she should
He knows she is his last resort
His sure backbone through and through
And I know she must wonder
How much of his old self still exists
How much of him really loves her
How much of him is with her because she is all there is
And so now I want to know
In five months
In five years
Where will we be
How will each one of us be affected by his beliefs
Influenced by her weakness
And what will she say
To justify
Her hopelessness and her role
In our demise
In her children's twisted values
In their fractured idea of care and love
Will he even react
When his backbone is paralyzed with surrender
And he falls apart in his own hands
The malicious and divine pieces of his mind useless
Locked out of his own lost paradise
And will she follow
And leave her damaged goods to rot
Leave them to her children
So they may have something to play with
In their own petty games of seeking
Companionship with a demon
Social Security Office
I expected to smell bleach
or shoes worn sock-less
on the hottest Atlanta days
since burning.
Instead, just a coat closet
housing ruddy and domestic
expanses of childhood.
Not clean but not filthy either
in a way that comforts
members of the American lower class.
There was an armed guard
indiscernible
from a handful of boys I beat daily
in a former life as alpha.
He smiled more than needed
and stood and aided
a multilingual kiosk
delivering numbered tickets
directing traffic's flow
to chairs
then windows
which composed the congested waiting room.
I sat in a worn seat
which looked re-appropriated
from a debunked airport
or bus station
upholstered in the early 80's.
The seat next to mine had a sign which read
"out of order."
A woman in front of me
applied makeup
for my visit's first half.
Her hair was starchy and burnt.
She wore a velvet jumpsuit
a half size too small
with drops of semen or snot
splayed on the left shoulder.
She stood and walked
displaying a stomach woefully pregnant
and rubbed it
with grandma's hands.
A man coughed through the door
hunkered beneath
a camouflage bag
big enough to carry everything he owned
in sweat pants
and jaundiced undershirt.
He talked loudly in half shouts
and made us nervous.
His shoes had no shoelaces
and his behavior was erratic.
He asked the room for the date.
A man responded, "December 30th."
"December 13th?"
"30th"
"13th?"
"Thir-TEE-ith"
"Oh. Thanks" he thanked the man.
On my right were the windows
and behind them,
attendants
who answered questions through a slotted grate
that could double as a shower drain.
They exchanged documents
through a slot
of brushed stainless steel.
The man outside 14
didn't understand English
but knew enough to say so in English
and asked for a translator he wouldn't receive.
Koreans were called to another nearby.
A young man and a woman
and the young man's father followed behind
but stood off the side.
He watched with the silent grace
that's become stereo-typical
of Asians in cinema.
Nearest to me,
a family called "Juarez" sought benefits
for work the mother did
under another social security number.
The attendant was patient but curt.
For the first time in a long time
I felt like an adult.
At the Estate Sale
A respected real estate agent,
Chinese by birth
and alien by circumstance,
once smuggled in rose print rags
padding a rose wood crate
from which he was raised
upon crying
to drink from rose shaped breasts
of mothers once strangers
collectively turned smugglers
of six boys with heads like durians,
carted at night
from an Autumn Harvest Uprising
and any unknown masculine obligations therein,
American dream and evidence
of the inherent goodness of consumptive capitalism,
secular society
and Ronald Reagan
was found utterly deceased
at the abrupt and unloving age of 83.
Case-in-point
of the healing powers of tea
when mixed with a Protestant work ethic,
a cocktail of western medicine
drank down with two shots of bourbon twice daily,
the male adornment of satin lingerie
concealed beneath a constrictive pair
of wool tweed trousers
and living alone
in a 4 story Californian Georgian.
Stranger to himself
and even stranger to his kids,
he divided his last living years
between concealing and forgetting to conceal
the effects of Alzheimer's
on his tired but determined mind.
I never formally met the man
but like everyone in town I pretended I had
to great personal benefit
on no less than 2 occasions.
4 days after he died his kids had an estate sale
at which they sold everything
(even the house was priced)
that the poor old man
left in his absence.
Once emptied entirely,
his life's contents draped amidst open air,
dressing each stretch of the broad,
even capacious plot.
In that place,
a place that was once a meadow
and a pond
teeming with exuberant ecology,
crowned by 27 precocious year-round species of bird
that either nested
or fed from the grounds,
home to mammals both soft and coarse,
which composed a communal center
similar to, but not akin
to anything found a few miles deeper in town,
if for no other reason than none of it
was owned by anyone,
let alone 6 neglected children
who sold it all
in a breeze
to strangers with yawns
on a muggy and otherwise unremarkable
weekend afternoon.
They even sold a box of the old man's porn.
Granted, they were only Playboys
which hardly qualify as porn
if you've ever really pulled one out
but regardless, the bastards
sold their dead Dad's jack box to strangers
and even placed it
next to what we can only assume
was his personal collection of women's underwear.
Equally precarious
was the museum of beautifully crafted
and well preserved tools
in a line along the side of a pear shaped swimming pool.
All of which were priced indifferent to value
and teetering on the edge of a caustic aqua marine.
Amongst them was a two wheeled wheel barrel
for which they only asked a dollar.
There was a time not long ago
when wheel barrel
implied one loose
and lifeless training wheel
wedged between crooked supports
which, if you were lucky,
left the whole thing
clumsy and dumb but not entirely immobile
as it inevitably spilled cargo
over the sides
every time you climbed a curb
or rode over a root
or a hose
or collapsed down a mole hole.
With the old kind it was impossible
to not spill
whatever the hell it was
you were lugging around.
Just like the kids later that night.
Shit drunk celebrating
the sale of their Dad
before he'd gone cold as the ground around him.
Every last piece of their dead Dad sold
like not one of them meant a thing.
Treasure Map
When I still wet the bed
my sister and I buried an envelope
full of cash
from a garage sale our parents sold dreams at.
To cut weight.
To pay for a U-Haul and close bills
before moving to grandma's.
Mom cried.
Dad grit teeth and hummed.
He hummed tunes to songs that didn't exist
and smushed his belly between empty hands.
They looked like cracked,
balding monkeys
forced into happy concentric circles
of offset pats.
It was the first time I noticed him do it
and have spent the past 20 years
observing. Wondering.
I've nearly asked him about it.
If he knows when he does it
or if he even knows he does it at all.
In cramped halls.
In a men's room waiting to leak.
Standing in a fridge's glow,
not hungry.
The humming is like a dozen different birds with harmonicas.
Mocking nothing if not me.
Or him and me both.
Mocking the man-child father and his man-child son
living together, broke and hopeless
like pirates without maps.
We buried it in the back yard.
We hoped the search would bring us together.
Our favorite movie was Goonies.
But Mom just cried
and we forgot where we dug.
So Dad hummed and rubbed his belly
and dug alone in the rain.
Low Tide
I lay like a couch's plastic cover
between spacesuit coughs.
Tonguing brown hung over cigarette clumps
left clinging inside me since 15.
I chew gum like tobacco.
I push it with my bumpy tongue
like a watermelon
in a swimming pool
caught between calloused lips and yellow teeth
like child hands and step ladders.
My breaths are like dying bulbs of whale song
scratching dying minds
floating beyond me to die alone.
And you try to think of yourself
as you are to them
like something in a room
that disrupts it with a void of roomlessness
characterized in a word
like ugly or dumb or failure.
And you think of a bridge falling down
around you and upon you
and then you're dead but you know you're dead
and you're sorry about it
as the bridge stands up
and put it's pants back on.
The people you meet
look like trains on splintered tracks to you.
The sounds of a highway's shoulder
sound like pissing to you
on the computer you parents bought for you
with a loan
on the night you ripped all your money
and punched a tv screen
and bent keys
and cried because you were
and wished you weren't.
Golden tiara and cigarette
Wispy white eyelashes burning hot
You're cold
Cellophane skin, you
Your name is
Echo
Echo
Golden crown and reefer smoke
Whispering in my
Ear
Echo
Echo
Golden tiara and cigarette
Wispy white eyelashes burning hot
You are
Cold