Kamikaze leaves dive
And attack our blanket
Dying sudden deaths,
Finding no soil
Only slate gray cotton,
The same color as the sky
When the clouds blot out the sun
And she is beautiful
A hot breeze warming bare shoulders
She watches children play barefoot in grass
It's 3:47 and I realize we haven't eaten
In days
Acrid cigarette smoke is what she uses
To curb hunger
While the smell of the East River
Is enough for me
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 9:01 PM UTC
it’s ridiculous how the cold weather makes me think of you. all this distance is only manufactured if i can’t walk from the kitchen to the bathroom without thinking of the winter we spent in sleeping bags once the heat went out. we just can’t bring ourselves to say it.
i miss you. the snow is going to start falling soon. and you know what michigan looks like covered in a nice blanket of snow. soon…
your hips, protruding from too tight jeans, sway while you entertain, betraying what you just can’t keep quiet. your hair, unwashed and coarse, nothing like a halo when you fall back and tilt your head up. the looks i steal in the moments where you unscrew your eyes. i know exactly which one of your teeth is chipped, the mark on my shoulder jagged. you lose your breath. i won’t say “i love you” except in moments where it doesn’t fit.
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 9:00 PM UTC
think of the earth after the fall of man
or some other cliché about desolate landscapes
stark and clean and sad and alone
piles waist deep
standing in your driveway
the rubber in my chucks is frozen
and we can’t figure out how your broken-down truck is what’s blocking me in
it’s 3:42AM
(I made that time up)
the one light is from your neighbor’s porch
only on the way down
can we see how the ice expands the cracks in the pavement
the sky is falling
but not really
because up there it is empty, unlit closet, soul-crushing, run for the lightswitch black
and down here it is packed full, bare lightbulb, fresh coat of paint white
and it fills me up the way the ocean or the sun does
for people who don’t spend half their years covered in ice
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 8:58 PM UTC
22.2
You mailed me a package with a note that said a person’s boots are the most intimate thing someone can own because they take the imprint of the body. On the other side you scribbled “Wherever I seat myself I die in exile”
15
Today I opened my email (well not really today, this was when my usernames still had words like ‘punk’ and ‘babe’ in them) and there was a little blond boy with the same gray eyes and a note that said “He looks nothing like me and everything like you – what a punishment.” The doorbell rang and I expected to find him at the door but this isn’t the movies and when I got back upstairs I realized I didn’t even know his name but my reply bounced back. I guess I never will and you won’t either.
11
You fed me ecstasy and popped my shoulder back in its socket so I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital. While I writhed on the floor you drove J’s truck into a church and punched a cop.
12
I got tired of competing over who could sleep with more of the other’s friends. ******* it even when I started ******* girls and doubled the pool from which I fished you got lazy and started on my ex-boyfriends and all I could think was “When did I start sleeping with gay guys?” But this was before we knew about more options than just gay or straight and I never thought about how maybe it was Freud who said we are all a little bisexual or pansexual or something like that
14
I was mad, both crazy and angry, when I saw the needles and the black and blue an association with T. D. J. W. W. sometimes hyphen R. produced. How pretentious to have that many names. Sometimes the explanation is worse than the action.
13
You broke into my (our) house in the middle of the night and these are the things you took: bedsheets, toilet paper, every flannel item on the second floor, grandma’s jewelry (mine, not yours, and she just died too) all the money in my piggy bank, ***** eggs, milk, cheese, actually all the food in the fridge, the **** you gave me for Christmas, the car keys but not the car, the prickly green welcome mat and one of the goldfish. Why wouldn’t you just take them both? The name Fishn Chips only works when they are both there, it doesn’t make sense with only one.
14.2
I think this was the first time I saw a grown man cry. How clichéd.
21
I don’t have to pretend to like coffee anymore and when I drink I inhale it deep until brown sludge threatens to invade my lungs. People say I look absolutely euphoric and once I said “Yeah it’s the only thing I learned from T” but that’s a lie because you also taught me how to pop security tags off clothes with a rubber band and what to do if you need to take certain things to or from Canada. Whenever I see a California area code I still don’t answer the phone. We haven’t spoken in years which I find remarkable considering how few I have accumulated and how few you have left. I saved the message you left me from the night you found that kid and I feel weird because the panic in your voice reminds me of when we got in trouble for things much less severe and it sort of makes me happy.
17
Oh how orange suits you (har har har). D says he thinks this will really straighten you out. This makes me laugh because I remember how you secretly like to sleep with the same boys as me. Then he leans over to a stranger, points to me, and says “That’s my only kid…a girl.” I don’t think we are coming to visit again.
10
The holler traps gasoline in the air and I imagine when coal trucks dominated these one lane roads it recycled dust the same way. You drank so much moonshine you swore you felt the mountainside breathing. Then you went blind for five days. When your eyes regained focus you drove my four-wheeler off the road and your leg burned pink and slick. A snake bit my left heel but no one noticed because they thought you would need skin graphs and you had such beautiful legs.
22
You sent a Christmas card to everyone and you were all the buzz at dinner even though I’m going to college and bought presents with my own money and J – forever your defender – says I should be comfortable in my achievements and you need a little more give and I made everyone at the table awkward when I told them that was exactly the sort of attitude that got you where you are now.
19
J and I went looking for you when you stopped calling for money. Two pounds for each inch we found your skin stretched tight over bones and while I coaxed the dirt from your hair you explained the proper way to tie an arm so a vein doesn’t burst. I can’t think of a single thing to tell anyone I know about you, so I don’t. I can think about all the speeches I would like to give to you – eloquent deliveries about what a selfish ******* you are. How you promised to pick me up and it was winter and I was so cold and embarrassed no one had come for me so I waited outside and walked to the store fifteen minutes away to use the pay phone and then walked back. Or how I insisted on saving my graduation ticket for you because you said you would come back to the state but then you never showed and called me ****** and still in California claiming it was February. I realized you were just like my dad and I cut all my hair off.
8
I was confused about how someone could live with us but not be related. When a birth certificate was just a piece of paper before you pushed me in front of a car but after you busted my face open – the definition of “taking it on the chin.” I still think you killed my cat.
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 8:53 PM UTC
I
snowfalls
an epic battle
boom
crashsmack
the white blanket
here
never covers that city
we fled this place for
more mistakes than fingers
and toes
avalanche!
car wheels can
not
navigate
the areas the
4, 5, 6 barrels through
what a problem for
exposed skin
a nose red
ice in your hair
wet.
why didn’t you just
wait
II
for the express train
the local makes me
sick
you know closeness gives me
hives
even if
everyone is
the son
(or daughter)
of someone
each birth celebrated
if only for a moment
the white haired mowhawk man
bald girl
the dreadlocked boy
standing
so close
his exhale
is my next breath
in
III
to the same routine
of forgetfulness
even you
and me
deeming ourselves
the lost children
rust-belt transplants
we too had
futures planned for
but
not
this
living on nicotine
secondhand books
and
pin-up girls on the walls
there’s cat food
but nothing in the cupboard
except
IV
a wooden rosary
wrapped around
too-thin wrists
for a good luck charm
anti-drug shirts
for irony
and combat boots
so there is no mistake
you are not your father’s
child
sprung like Athena
from a thought
already formed
armed and ready
V
to rage against the idea
that we are the products of
an upbringing
less than ideal
and we oscillate
back
and
forth
between a sense
of pity and belonging
because long ago
we lost track of what
was the truth
and what were the
things we manufactured
to make life more
interesting
and
god I love you but
you trouble me
I texted while you
VI
can’t seem to hold
down
a job
coffee and camels
don’t pay for themselves
maybe this attention
deficit
is real
not just something
made to
keep
us
still
during classes I won’t
show up for
except when I want
attention and you’re already
spent
falling all over
yourself
and then me
because
VII
we stopped pretending
months ago
this was anything
other than a practice
in dating each other’s
mothers
but I can’t be the only one
who knows how to roll
our cigarettes
while you shower
with no curtain
and I lean back
letting steam mask
the smoke that’s not allowed
in an apartment with no heat
and no door ****
less fighting
more complaining since
VIII
the mattress is
on the floor
who can afford a bed frame
these days
but it’s probably for the best
the windows won’t close
all the way
anyway
it’s snowing inside again
and you note
men leading lives
of quiet desperation
it isn’t nearly as poetic
as it sounds
so your mother argues
but fights to say:
oh how I love you
IX
so
love,
find the bright
in the gray
dinginess
rings loud
you’ve been
hearing
colors
again
smelling sounds
olfactory hallucinations
brought on by a lack of
overhead lighting
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 8:40 PM UTC