luke-gagnon
American
I'm a part-time poet. At least I sometimes string words together in ways that don't completely suck. I'm 24, in law school, with no real creative outlet so it metastasizes in this space. I also exist on the internet here: / http://withstrongshoulders.tumblr.com/
I had this dream
you were there
clouds grew in the sky
above the wilderness-houses
safe, normal with windows, you were there
flower box gardens contained stand ins for flowers, mountain dew cans, red-shaped candy wrappers, you
were there
I could not buy green bananas, there is no
wait, you were there then I was born
smiling somehow, cotton stuck to my teeth,
vasoline,
but my face it melted, you were there,
it fell down to my
knees,
you were there you stole my ears, and then you stayed away
if you were here, if you were,
I wouldn’t lay down
awake to pray for me to
sleep
Jul 18, 2015
Jul 18, 2015 at 9:15 PM UTC
1 4
she offers me, a spot of dust
she raises me under the couch,
on platitudes and warm bread I know it’s
in return for my devotion there
she loves me like the boats today, I start spring-cleaning,
she keeps out on the ocean (this alone
she loves me to be molded, should receive
not to be unfolded more recognition than it will)
I pull out the couch
she bore me bones the vacuum doesn’t quite
the lacrimal bone reach the dust lying
the breastbone on unused carpet,
all the cervical vertebrae the head
I use them to simulate keeps hitting the wall
her expectations unproductive
I put the furniture back
2 in place
I have names, no one will see the lack
I wear them like badges of progress
inspired by something not quite
earned yet 5
while lucid dreaming
I assigned constellations were on
each name my skin
a compartment and freckles in
of me the night sky
If I name them maybe
they will become pollution drowned out
real, not just necessary two thirds
even if most imploded
before they were seen
3 6
with enough necessity were it not for shadows
anyone can tell a lie I would surely learn to
hate the light
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 6:43 PM UTC
time-limit me.
build a house of shelves,
shutters down, and
walls. make rooms yours to wrap, hold,
divide. but allow windows.
allow benediction, and a sadness
my parents never had
time for.
time-permit me
to be born, not re-
moved. my brother hasn’t formed
yet.
time-emit me.
emit depths,
so I can swallow
my own residue
until I can be
full.
yield me a clearing-through,
compose small
town inertia, and wake the moths.
scar something,
something burning
until I can pin it on
myself when I choose.
time-admit me.
make me small enough
to enter.
I exist. continue. bring light
to my lack, emit me.
admit me. accept me until I
remain.
Jun 28, 2015
Jun 28, 2015 at 9:41 PM UTC
I
in the dark starvation is real.
In dark, the emesis that fills my
cheeks is a currency I soak inside, animal
coinage, the fine
bulbous talons of Sepiidae.
Savagely, pelagically
starving made me rich when
Muskrat’s claws pull apart delicate meat.
Sad Spanish blood, I would like you
to panic about what has been lost.
No body, no crime—we are all cannibals; so the muskrat ate
flesh from the dugong-heavy remora
a parallax of sorts occurs
when I cannot find my own entrails—
perhaps they are ruminating in my gut—
boiling in my optic nerve.
But–I found little boys betting quarters for eating bowels
of goat. I was small enough to fit through
playground gates so I could swing
swing in earthquakes, and portents
ride out this day on the waves—to succeed
foothills, grasses, and bath salts
by the creek. I got my quarters.
They asked me who made me as Mountain
Dew dribbled down my chest.
Infant teeth shattered my infant
fists and I did not eat divvied livers and
Victim watchers.
I wrote on
my protruding
viscera
proverbs from my ancient days
–extraordinary porch things, depleted
Phosphorus, and, on bendable limbs
I catalogued my windscraped knees.
How does one so young
become
so fed up with
hunger.
II
Starving made me easier to tie.
easier to lift.
my ancient autopsy of starvation
made me feel gutted out
like Finished
ice-cream containers.
Made me able to hold my breath for
up to six minutes—starving
made me full of Household Gods and rickety
rosaries,
small brown globular clusters,
1 arcsecond of stress
capable of aligning me
with spring-loaded washers
I pop one nut—two—
Dental Work can be a rhizome,
ordering wee-soldiers from
its tethered nodes without
lactation, laceration, infection into
my sleep-deprived throat,
Choking on bird chirps
and x-ray bursts
below the cradle where
my android sleeps. I
have named him The Alabaster.
(Synching The Alabaster.)
The Alabaster–Allie–is a kind of boat
that I have hole-punched into; like
children of the deep I have hurled
nearby rocks into its lungs.
I have wrenched crumbs of my honeymoon
sidewalk, for a beast that panics.
I would trade
the last of the dugongs
for a muskrat’s smile–
now there exists a cult for Plastic
that the spotlights started,
and in the night it will not
end with the filter feeder sinking
to the depth of the imagined water column,
spinning in the Gyre disposal.
There isn’t a colander large enough
to sift through the pejorative waste.
I knew the night would be fraught.
It makes my fusiform body necessary for
transport. Makes Monophyletic solid consumption
trucks and ACE arms reach for
well-behaved spearfish bodies.
Makes days disappear and cold
seem like simmering.
Makes staying out of sight
a trim.
And I told them,
the Fusiforms and Balusters, that
the spearfish would devour the hero who comes
from afar bearing the gift of travel–
Tully-Fisher, with his cottonseed oil
“Manufactured in USA” in
compounding pharmacies.
He made me.
And I told him:
to Tell me to trawl for something less
plastic than my second
self–that I which exists
in Mary Poppins cannons, compact
intimacies, medical and portable–
to dig within my throat, discover a nurdle
that failed to photodegrade during the the day
the Sirenia sang,
the Muskrat gnawed off his leg and hand
fed it to the remora.
III
My mouth is parched
for diagnosis of rickets, for
my un-mineralized bones.
I need RR Lyrae, Statistical π,
population “II”s
to stand in for my night.
I need Sweetened,
Spoonfuls of BB pellets and
Spoonfuls of cepheids to help
the tetany go down,
myopathic infants and
ricket Rosary symbols only work
in sacrifice–In this sense,
I have constructed a panic
architecture–Craniotabes are too
vast. Prions and viroids have seeped
through,
Infections more than dreams,
for injured muskrats who yearn for
the last real mermaid’s smile,
or tears if that would smash open
the cluttered ocean and scatter
the unwanted hosts multiplying
in my spinal fluid.
In day there is no more starvation–
the remora bring me
Libations and admire
my six pack rings mobile.
My connective obligatory.
Under my fingernails are thin
crisps that may somehow create equilibrium.
Although I nibble them regularly
I can’t always swallow.
Surrounded by a dense fog of fleas
my tongue is itching.
My teeth are scratching, scraping
away the space that will always be there.
The antique aisle at the local international
superstore is handing out shriveled
heads of past didactic patients.
But I tell them it’s not what’s there that matters
it’s what’s not there. And in my case
there’s a surplus of nothing that
I can live without.
Jun 22, 2015
Jun 22, 2015 at 8:34 PM UTC
The are fragments in the space
inside my father,
allocations of
belts and birchwood and driftwood, or
coin covered wishing trees,
safe as houses
without enough windows.
In shallow places, he tells me
'swallow your chewing gum
and limp into cemetery
grounds. I will forget you
as if you were alive"
Everything he says has
water under it.
It doesn't sit, or stay, or
take root in any meaningful sense.
I guess that's when this all started.
why I stuff an entire pieces of cake in
my mouth just to stay
silent.
I wonder if it's recessive,
this un-satiated need to fill
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 11:02 PM UTC
1
after she gave birth she walked
around the city imagining everyone
glistening, bordered with amniotic grit.
she worried about the dripping,
the wasteful shedding. former parts
of her body flowing into
the city storm drains. everything
reduced to run-off.
she always thought her soul
resided in her ****** now
she wonders if she'll find it
flowing though rusted pipes, swelling
in waves of excrement
and rain water.
2
there's a middled-aged woman sitting
next to her on an airplane.
every woman she sees
feels like her mother.
she wonders how many rooms she's never
been.
how many people she's never
met.
she can see the ripped scarf wrapped desperately
around the woman's head.
it's always the broken
who hold the universe in
place.
3
when i speak of my body's life
i know where it comes from.
how it exists now. i don't know
what it will
produce.
i'm still wondering if
a family can
break. or if it just
evaporates like water
into someone's exhale.
i'll never know
where the condensation lands.
perhaps i'll be a father
to a million different things.
Feb 14, 2014
Feb 14, 2014 at 5:38 PM UTC
A few nights ago I thought I heard my neighbor slap his girlfriend after I heard indiscriminate muffled yells through my apartment walls. I couldn’t be certain what actually happened, so after listening for a while and hearing no more sounds, I did nothing. For three days I haven’t left my apartment. I didn’t go to class yesterday and have no intention of going today. I’ve had moments of numbness that dissolve into crying for no apparent reason. Then this morning I put make-up on for the first time in over two years just to see what I would feel like. I looked in the mirror and felt more masculine than I ever felt.
If you sit and contemplate what you did today or yesterday or last week, all you can come up with are these seemingly unrelated discrete moments. Sometimes I think these moments of randomness must follow some sort of trajectory. I can just feel the connections and it haunts me until I can actually explain why I think domestic violence relates to me, a trans-man, putting make-up on after a spending several days retreating from my life.
Feb 13, 2014
Feb 13, 2014 at 9:37 AM UTC
It happens when you look outside and see paintings.
Paintings, instead of reality.
The world is just
the right distance
away.
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 4:22 PM UTC
My mother chewed her nails off, trying
to consume bones enough to
scrape away the
space that's always been
there.
She still remembers
from time to time when
she had to swallow
the whole earth
just to feel full.
She found herself afraid of her ribs.
So she built a panic architecture,
calcifying her lungs, breathing in
nearby rocks and tree branches,
scattering the animal hosts in
her spinal fluid.
By now the elephants
have multiplied,
stampeding through the open
cracks in her ventricles.
There could be time zones
in the cracks
but just the ones that are
still sleeping.
About once a month I worry
I'll turn into her.
Dec 5, 2013
Dec 5, 2013 at 3:41 PM UTC
I’ve diagnosed it with industrialized rickets,
stomach is open and distended
metal is bowed with greenstick
fractures, hard and bendable,
compensating with growth
disturbances and wider wrists.
If I squint enough
there is movement
in permanent metal, micro-movements
as the ants shape sand hills
far from half-buried
fire-hydrants and barely there
Red Hot Chili Peppers
laced with frat-boy yells.
I’ve named it insieme
just far enough away to be together.
It’s body isn’t big enough
for all the purpose that it has.
At some point it’s been welded,
Atomic number 29,
add tin and it becomes 79.
Gold. It’s on fire, comprised
of a thousand tiny synthetic
flames fused together by rust.
It’s too open a place.
It should be found in ignorant alleyways
where half smoked cigarette butts marry
pavement, where brash teenagers go to cry.
The ants make sense though.
Dec 2, 2013
Dec 2, 2013 at 12:45 PM UTC